Iliya Valchanov

CEO @ Team-GPT | 1,300,000+ AI students on Udemy

Putting AI agents inside marketing agencies.

3x founder, 1.5M AI students on Udemy, ex-math competitor, finance graduate, 3x $0-$1M, boostrapped to $30M revenue.

Creator of content, software, and agents.

Co-founder & CEO

Learn, collaborate, and master ChatGPT in one shared workspace.

Almost 3 years after we started building, we've hit:
- 80K users
- $1M+ ARR
- 20 amazing team members

Most importantly, we've found our focus: Marketing Teams and Agencies.

I'm so, so happy to introduce Juma (ex Team-GPT) to the world.

A product that can:
- Perform any Data Analysis
- Get fresh info from ahrefs to optimize your SEO/GEO
- Help you with anything marketing related: Content, Strategy, Research, Slides, Images

We are massively innovating in the next 2 months.

2 months from now it will be a 10x better product.

But even today, it's quite something.

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Personal website

Juma is a team-first AI workspace for marketing teams. 

We help teams and agencies co-create with AI, stay aligned on every project, and deliver better results together. Because the best ideas don't come from AI alone. They come from teams working together.

Juma is trusted by teams at Costa Coffee, Procore, Maersk, and Salesforce. Backed by True Ventures and Pact.


75K+ users, $1M+ ARR, AI for marketing teams

Co-Founder & CEO

1.5M+ students in the field of statistics, data science, machine learning, and deep learning.

AI Course Creator

3veta is an appointment scheduling platform with 10K+ active users.

Co-Founder

Co-founded and led 365 Data Science to 4M students and $1M ARR.

CEO @ Juma | 1,500,000+ AI students on Udemy

Juma (ex Team-GPT)

Me to my wife: 
'Can you fix my profile photo?'

Wife: 
'Done'

Love is blind.

But also...
LinkedIn algorithm is so horrible these days that it deserves nothing less.

Our organic traffic fell 95% the day we rebranded. 
45 days later it's still quite bad.

On it's last day (20 Nov 2025), Team-GPT got:
- 1,000,000 impressions
- 2,000 clicks 
on Google.

As of 3 Jan 2026, Juma has:
- 100,000 impressions (90% down)
- 336 clicks (83% down)

We are greatly suffering from the rebranding. 

So what are we doing about it?
1. On page technical SEO (we nailed it)
2. Off page SEO -> building links as the old days, adding Juma in directories
3. PR -> mentions, podcasts, guest appearances, taking interviews in media outlets so we can show up as Juma, not Team-GPT


Rebranding is a long-term investment with short term

През ноември месец сменихме името си от Тийм-ГПТ на Джума.

Направихме събитие в СФ (Сан Франциско).

Сега е време да направим и в Сф (София)!

Очакваме ви на 15.01 в CampusX.

Местата са ограничени и само с предварително записване: 
👉 https://lnkd.in/d3ZH3czZ

Interestingly:
- I no longer use ChatGPT... like at all
- Manus rocks and I use it for some tasks (e.g. wide research, slides)
- Grok never resonated with me
- Gemini is useful sometimes but is not a part of my workflow yet
- Perplexity is also not my cup of tea, although I trust it a lot
- Gamma's slides are just too AI generated (Manus is better and soon Juma)
- We pay for Lovable but I'm not the one using it. But I can imagine myself coming back again and again to it

I'm experimenting with other tools but man is it hard to find something that fits your mental model for what AI should be.

We are trying to do

We finally launched Juma (ex Team-GPT) officially, together with 250+ people from the AI community. 

Thanks for coming and super excited for what's to come!

In March 2026, we will be revealing the Juma Superagent, an AI system, which can do all types of marketing related tasks, completely on its own. 

P.S.
Video is a short snippet from our Launch Party on 15 Jan 26.

I've lost trust in LinkedIn's algorithm. 
People who are religiously following me don't see my posts. OUCH!
Lots of my content and following is here but the algorithm is rewarding AI slop and my content has lower visibility. 

(to make sure you see my posts, hit my profile and subscribe for updates via the 🔔 bell).

But nobody will actually hit the 🔔, though.

So what am I supposed to do?

Moving to another social media (e.g. TikTok, BlueSky, etc.) has the same risks- algorithm is not aligned with creators but with the platform overall.

The only place where my content-creation efforts are truly safe forever?
My own website.

It has never been easier to build a website. 

Yet I decided to go for a blog (used Substack).
Website designs come and go. 
Letters are forever.

Created. Crafted. Curated.
👇
iliya (.) ai

Here's what Juma can do today.

It's 10x better than 3 months ago.

It will be 10x better 3 months from now.

AI sucks at Math. 
Juma doesn't. 

If you are looking to analyze your data- 
whether Excel files, CSVs or others, we run real calculations on your numbers.

You can create graphs, charts, or even Lovable-like websites with the results.

The future is now, old man.

Time for AI to do the Math.

P.S.
Charts are actual Juma data.

We like to wait and see what our competitors do.

This helps us solve the problems better than them, hopefully in the BEST way possible.

We know the problems our customers face.

Some call it stealing. 

It's actually called research.

Or more posh: second-mover advantage.

2 months after rebranding, SEO is improving...
(only) 80% decline in organic traffic!

𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱:
~1,000-1,500 daily clicks
Average position: 10.3
"team gpt" query: 5,775 clicks
CTR: 0.55%

𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱:
~400-600 daily clicks
Average position: 14.0
"juma" query: 1,040 clicks
CTR: 0.53%


Interestingly, CTR stayed almost identical. The issue isn't engagement. It's visibility.


According to AI, the recovery timeline is:

Months 1-2: Stabilization ✓ (we're here) 
Months 3-4: 20-30% recovery 
Months 5-6: 40-50% recovery 
Months 6-12: Full recovery with active SEO


Was the rebrand worth it? Absolutely.

Team-GPT made sense when we were a ChatGPT wrapper.
Juma reflects what we actually are: AI agents for marketing teams.

The traffic will come back. 
But it really hurts.

Changed my profile photo- I hope you are happy...

Putting the ultra-close-up resulted in 40% increase in views of my profile.

Works.
Wondering if it affected our sales and how.

We are building the place where 'anyone can market anything'. 
Marketers cringe when they hear it.
Mainly because they think marketing skills are hard.

But what makes a great marketer? Think: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, most recently even Timothee Chalamet..

I think it's: 
- strategic thinking
- 6th sense for what works
- curiosity and willingness to experiment
- understanding of marketing mix and multi-touch interactions (even on a subconcious level is enough)
- taste!!!


What most great marketers can't do:
- Run ads
- Edit videos
- Set-up Google Analytics
- Write SEO-optimized articles
- Know where to find stuff in HubSpot lol

Don't get me wrong- I have deep appreciation for marketing specialists who can do all these.

But keep in mind:

-> The first list will remain human
-> The second list is being automated as we speak

Some professions have it easier, when it comes to AI adoption:

- Developers work in repositories, which they unify through GitHub for instance. So it’s already super organized: you connect the repo and it has all the Context for the project at hand.

- Marketers work on campaigns, which often have a start and end date and must be executed rather fast, context is created at the start and evolves for each campaign

- Agencies collaborate on clients, ideally in the span of years, so they often have this stored somehow

More often than not, context is scattered across tools, drives, archives.

An absolute key step to adopting AI well for your organization is to cherry-pick the right context that the AI will be stepping on.

This is so important, that nowadays we often talk about Context Engineering as opposed to Prompt Engineering.

Context is King.

Full thoughts: https://lnkd.in/dsZvEe6t

I came home for Easter.

I couldn’t do it any longer.

After 2 months abroad, the fundraise was not yet done. This meant the company would seize to exist, I would have let down everybody involved.

Came home to my family to celebrate.

They were hoping for me to talk about the whole experience. However, all they got was an Iliya who was not speaking for days.

I had been pitching for 15 hours a day, every day. For 2 months.

I didn’t know what to say.

I couldn’t look my father in the eye.

I was trying to smile but it was not coming out well.


Read full story here: 
👉 https://lnkd.in/djeWRHPS

We just codified our values at Juma. 

Not because we like being corporate. But because culture wins in the long run.

Here's what we stand for and what we reward:

1. Default to Open
- Share publicly
- Admit mistakes early
- Challenge ideas, not people

2. Own it End-to-End
- Finish what you start
- Deliver on commitments
- Escalate early with a plan
- Choose company wins over local wins

3. Build Great Stuff
- Start with user problems AND business value
- Measure impact 
- Hold a high bar, but ship anyway
- Sweat the details
- Deliver in short term but build for the long term

4. Learn Fast, Ship Smart
- Prioritize ruthlessly
- Test assumptions early
- Learn from mistakes
- Adapt fast

5. Earn Your Spot
- Results over politics
- Same standards for everyone
- Give honest feedback
- Be coachable

6. Set the Standard
- Represent Juma with pride
- Set the bar for the AI ecosystem
- Show up for each other as people


Note:  
This is not wishful thinking. 
It's literally what our culture is- we just wrote it down.

Same expectations. Same standards. For everyone.

I think ~200M people total will be needed for most work in 15 years.
After teaching AI to 1.5M people, founding a Silicon Valley-based marketing superagent (Juma), and helping 75K+ users across 500+ companies adopt AI for their work, here’s how I think people, organizations, and corporations should and will adopt AI.

---

I’ve been thinking a lot about the best path to AI adoption.

How do you learn it? How do you teach it? What does it mean to adopt ChatGPT well? What is stopping teams from adopting GPT? Where is the resistance coming from? Why are people achieving such wildly different results? Why does MIT state that 95% of all AI adoption projects fail?

Most humans will be left behind.

Since ChatGPT came out the world really changed. This technological leap is historically unmatched. The world economy is majorly, irreversably, and inevitably changing and technologically advanced nations and individuals will have much better outcomes in life on average.

The problem is that many people who I respect are denying or soft-denying (not using) AI. Maybe 1 in 5 of my friends use it passably well. 

Full article here:
👉 https://lnkd.in/dsZvEe6t

My top course is The Data Science Course: Complete Data Science Bootcamp.
It has 791,462 students and a rating of 4.5 by ~159,382 people.
We've now automated it with an agent.

Everything that was thought in this course (and many others) is now fully automated by the Juma agent. 

Our agent turns complex data into reports, charts, PDFs, and presentations - all in one chat.

In this video, we:
- analyze 90-day GA4 dataset
- create visualizations
- generate a website
- build a PDF
- make a PowerPoint deck. 

The data analysis agent is just one tiny bit of what the Juma superagent will be able to do.

Stay tuned!

The AI industry will evolve in the folowing way 👇

AI Agents will:
→ Have wide variety of expertise
→ Be mostly a chat interface, where you prompt or dictate
→ Behave like an agent (instead of assistant/chatbot), not only answering questions but also executing series of tasks. Sometimes for hours or days on end.
→ Have access to many tools (in our case that’s marketing specific tools, e.g. keyword research tool, post analysis tool, Google/Meta ad analysis tool, etc.)
→ Access to many hidden assistants (pre-made prompts that are tried and tested- best practices), so that the user doesn’t need to know them
→ Have a single model, which uses different models under the hood, depending on the task

Full thoughts here: https://lnkd.in/dsZvEe6t

The people who are required to train AI models worldwide are probably < 10,000 overall. We can argue that 10-100 people are really pushing the technology forward.

If you have not been in AI for the past many years, forget about building a career creating AI. You will be harnessing other people’s AI at best. And that’s alright. It’s too late to train AI models. I have been teaching people how to train these models. That was almost 10 years ago...

It’s highly probable that a single person (using AI) will drive the next big leap towards AGI (artificial general intelligence).

For most of us... forget about training AI, optimize for using it well.

Full thoughts here: https://lnkd.in/dsZvEe6t

Currently building a superagent for marketing at Juma.

Prior to that I marketed productivity software for the education sector at Microsoft, and sold over +$1B in revenue at WeWork.

I like to surf and play golf on the weekend.

Andre Pedro

Had a call this morning with a 60 person amazon marketing agency.

He found us randomly on YouTube yesterday. Watched our 30-min rebrand video and booked a demo.

His team already uses ChatGPT daily and automated their internal ops with Zapier, Make, and n8n.

Halfway through the call I was thinking why does he need us considering he seems to be fully AI native.

Then he explained:

'We automated all internal workflows, but all our client work is still manual and we don't want to lose our craft.'

His main use cases were:

• Creating 7 different Amazon product images per client (with specific templates for features, benefits, lifestyle shots)
• Analyzing Google Analytics reports
• Writing campaign summaries
• Briefing analysis for new clients

So I demoed Juma. Showed him how to create final client deliverables: websites, dashboards, reports, seo, presentations, images - all through client-specific agents that know their brand guidelines and requirements.

Halfway through he said: 'I can already see how to implement this.'

That's the gap we're solving.

We are going after help you deliver high quality work to clients.

The future of agency work is AI that understands your clients as well as you do.

Andre Nunes Pedro

We just shipped a Data Analysis agent in Juma.
 
You now can:
 
- Run real calculations on your spreadsheets and CSV
- Create high quality reports
- Generate charts and visualizations in the chat
- Export everything as a PDF
- Build websites based on your data
 
I've been using it a lot for marketing reports.
  
You can turn it on from the agent stack below the chat input. 
 
Watch Margarita's demo below for more detail👇 

Give it a try and tell us what you think!

A customer of ours just emailed:

'I’ve sent several marketing agencies your way since the holidays. They love the platform.'

After SEO, word of mouth is quickly becoming the main way people hear about Juma.

If you’ve referred us in the past, thank you so much. Means a lot.

Just got a new batch of juma swag. 

Who wants some? 👀

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Here's how we're running marketing at Juma in 2026.

Sharing our new system:

   1. Monthly Campaigns (bets, launches, experiments, etc)

   2. Always on Workstreams (core channels and things we can't live without)

Each has one clear owner responsible for thinking, strategy, and results.

-- 

We set goals for each campaign and workstream.

For instance, right now SEO is priority one. We're 90% down post-rebrand from Team-GPT to Juma. Meggie owns getting the traffic back.

Her goals:

   - Monthly: 4-8 articles published
   - Quarterly: recover 80% of pre-rebrand traffic; 3x GEO traffic

We manage all the tasks under a basic Kanban so everyone knows what's happening.

We review and plan monthly in a 1h session. 

--

Steal the notion template below in case it helps you plan more easily.

Last year we kicked off our webinar series with illustrious guests from Amplemarket, Miro, DoWhatWorks, and many more.

We are now filling spots for this year. 

The topic is AI at Work, focused on marketing workflows, trends, and AI adoption.

Which marketing magicians should we get on it in 2026 to spill the beans? 🔮 

Tag below.

We’ve repositioned Juma a bunch of times.

What we said over the years:

   - 'Collaborate in ChatGPT'
   - 'GPT chat for your whole company'
   - 'AI workspace for marketing teams' (now)
   - 'Superagent for modern marketing teams' (next)

In ~2 months we’ll launch this superagent: it will plan the work and runs end-to-end workflows across your tools.

If you’re wondering what our positioning will be next year… same.
That’s why I’m staring at the ocean.

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The Battle

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