Benjamin Donteville

We launched Scalability 5 years ago with one controversial decision:

Stay 100% bootstrapped.

Everyone told us we were crazy. "You need funding to scale fast." "Competitors will outrun you." "You're limiting your growth potential."

Here's why we ignored them all:

👉 Full control over our decisions
No board meetings about pivoting our vision.
No pressure to chase vanity metrics.
We build what our customers actually need.

👉 Growing at our own pace
(Which turned out to be pretty fast anyway)
We focused on sustainable growth, not hockey stick fantasies.
Every dollar earned was a validation of our market fit.

👉Healthy foundations first
Add revenue before adding losses.
Profitability from day one meant we could reinvest smartly.
No burn rate anxiety keeping us up at night.

The path has been long and complex.
Some months were brutal.
We've had to say no to opportunities that required big upfront investments.

But it's the most beautiful adventure we're living right now.

We're building Agentic Outbound on solid ground, not on investor expectations.

Next week, I'll share our entire bootstrapping playbook - from the first dollar to building a profitable tech company without external funding.

What's your take on bootstrapping vs raising? Worth the trade-offs?

Mass outbound is dead.

Too much noise. Too much automation. Not enough intelligence.

The future belongs to expert salespeople—freed from growth engineering, powered by agentic systems that operate at scale.

Not AI that sells for them.
But agents that work for them.

Agents that structure data, orchestrate signals, and industrialize execution without diluting human intuition.

Because a salesperson's job isn't to manage tool stacks—it's to understand, convince, and deliver value to clients.

Agentic Outbound means shifting from volume to relevance, from blind automation to intelligent orchestration, from stacked tools to augmented salespeople.

Outbound that scales without losing the human touch.

Welcome to the era of Agentic Outbound.

Want to know more ? Send me a DM 🫡

CEO at Surfe 🏄‍♂️ | Connect your CRM with LinkedIn in 60s

Out here challenging the status quo in sales with real-world sales strategies and data-driven insights 🤙🏼

I’ve spent the past years building a strong sales team motion, and a tool that empowers sales, not replace or overwhelms them. I believe in blending people-first approaches with cutting-edge tools. 

My journey from founder-led sales to building scalable, repeatable team motions has given me a deep understanding of what works – and what doesn’t – in the world of B2B sales.

I come from a Sales Family, and I grew up watching my dad doing cold calls since I was 12 years old, and my mom teaching me her negotiating tactics. 

My dad said: “Please, never end up in sales”. But here I am. 

As first-time founders at Surfe, Romain and I bootstrapped the company with €20k to €1m ARR in under 2 years. We also secured companies like Google and AWS and signed our first $1M deal.
This year 2024, I was proud to make it to the “Top 25 Founders” by Capchase, amongst Henry Schuck from ZoomInfo and Alina from Chili Piper. 

Here you’ll find me sharing no-nonsense, practical advice that helps sales pros cut through complexity and achieve real, measurable results. Brutal honesty, and all the things you may not hear in a classic podcast - that’s what you can expect! 

I like to keep it real, and often unconventional. Not afraid of sharing unpopular opinions, getting into constructive conversations, and challenging the traditional methods of sales and business growth.

I share things about:
→ Transitioning from founder-led sales to scalable teams
→ Growing your business sustainably and building a SaaS product
→ Leveraging data to optimize outreach and engagement
→ Building efficient sales processes based on accurate data
→ CRM workflows for better team performance and revenue growth


If you’re ready to rethink how sales can work for your team, or if you just want to exchange ideas on how to scale effectively, let’s connect!

David Chevalier

This is the SDR experience.

You call. You hope. Sometimes you get threatened.

2026 should be different. 

At Surfe, we’re building a sales copilot so reps focus on accounts that are already moving.

Less blind outreach. Fewer threats...

CEO at Surfe 🏄‍♂️ | Building the world’s most powerful prospecting engine

SDRs and AEs constantly complain about misalignment.

This is not a people issue.
It is a system issue.

When SDRs disappear after booking, qualification stalls.
When AEs never debrief, nothing improves.

What works is simple.

Before the meeting, the SDR helps the AE prepare.
Context, intent, risk points.

After the meeting, the AE debriefs with the SDR.
What landed. What failed. What to qualify better.

Both own the deal.
Both get better.

Alignment is not a mindset.
It is a workflow.

There are two types of AEs.

Some are machines, others are sensitive.

The machines:
They run the deck, follow the script, and deliver long presentations.
They talk a lot, ask little, and mistake a monologue for selling.

The sensitives:
They listen first, read the room, and understand what actually matters to the prospect.
They build a real connection and propose a solution without hiding behind slides.

Machines sell features.
Great salespeople sell an emotion before they sell a solution.

That’s why a great sales team will always beat a great product.

Getting along with your co-founder isn’t enough.

Chemistry helps at the beginning.
It does nothing once the company starts scaling.

What matters is whether your skills can evolve with the business.

My co-founder Romain Ginestou, and I work well together, but that’s not why it works.
We are fundamentally different.

Romain started as our CTO.
As the company grew, he naturally transitioned into a COO role.

Today, he owns operational delivery, organizational scale, roadmap execution, and team performance.
Everything internal sits with him.

I focus on company vision, strategic direction, major commercial relationships, partnerships, and investor relations.
Everything external sits with me.

This works because Romain’s strength was never limited to technical execution.
He always had a deep interest in business and deliberately built that understanding.

In parallel, I pushed myself to understand engineering fundamentals instead of ignoring that gap.

Investors didn’t back two founders with good chemistry.
They backed a complementary system that could scale.

If you are choosing a co-founder, optimize for the skills your company will need later, not the comfort you want today.

Clean data doesn’t move a business.

Decisions do.

A lot of systems stop once information is:
sorted,
arranged,
presented,
explained.

Everything looks right.
Nothing actually happens.

The real failure isn’t data quality.
It’s the absence of a clear next move.

Clarity isn’t understanding more.
Clarity is knowing exactly what to do next.

If data doesn’t create motion,
the system is incomplete.

Cold calling is hard.
Especially when you call blind.

In 2026, volume is not the lever anymore. 

Timing is.

Buying signals tell reps when something is already moving. 

That changes the conversation before it starts.

The goal is not to call more. 

The goal is to call better.

Sales is an emotional reset game.

The call ends.
You hang up.
What matters is how you show up on the next one.

Top performers don’t carry the last call with them.
Bad pitch, awkward silence, hard no, it stays behind.
They start the next conversation clean.

That ability to reset emotionally is not a soft skill.
It directly determines consistency, confidence, and output over time.

Some reps lose deals on the call.
Others lose momentum between calls.

Being in sales means doing sales.

Not hiding behind automated sequences.

Sending emails blindly isn’t selling.
It’s gambling.

Real sales looks different.

Cold calling.
Getting it wrong.
Bafouilling.
Getting hung up on.
Learning timing the hard way.

That’s how instincts are built.

Today, the real edge isn’t volume.
It’s timing.

Call when something changes.
Reach out when it actually makes sense.

That’s the vision at Surfe.

We don’t automate outreach.
We automate relevance.

AEs get the spotlight when deals close.
SDRs rarely get mentioned.

When an AE closes a big deal, they become the star. Everyone celebrates the close.

But the SDR did the harder job.

They identified a pain, proposed a solution, and generated enough interest to get someone on a call. That's cold outreach. No relationship. No trust yet.

Booking a meeting and closing a deal are two different arts.

If an AE closes, it's because the SDR set it up right.

Here's what breaks most pods: 

AEs do deal reviews and never mention the SDR who booked it. The SDR feels invisible. The relationship dies.

What we do: in company meetings, we break down wins and talk about who contributed. The SDR who booked it. The AE who closed it.

It becomes a company win, not just a sales ego moment.

AEs should also share their knowledge with SDRs. Persona insights, deal context, what matters. Great pods happen when AEs take SDRs by the hand.

SDRs run the volume. AEs provide the depth.

When AEs motivate their SDRs and give them credit, the whole system works.

Most founders don’t fail at execution.

They fail earlier.
At decision-making, when no system exists yet.

No process.
No playbook.
No reliable signal telling you what the right move is.

Just fragments:
partial information,
delayed feedback,
and decisions that only reveal their impact months later.

That’s the hardest part of building a company.

So the job isn’t to work harder.
It’s to design structure while operating inside the chaos.

You remove friction.
You reduce choices.
You decide what matters now and ignore the rest.

Not to go faster.
To move clearly.

Over time, things change.
Decisions feel lighter.
The noise drops.
Work starts to make sense.

Not because everything is solved.
But because the system finally carries the work.

The handwritten note didn’t close the deal.
Timing did.

97 days of silence wasn’t a follow-up problem.

Nothing had changed on the buyer’s side.

No message, no matter how creative, was going to move the deal during that window.

The deal moved when the buyer’s situation changed.
The note just arrived at the right moment.

That’s what people misunderstand.

Sales isn’t about saying something memorable.
It’s about showing up when the buyer is ready to act.

Creativity helps you stay visible.
Timing is what closes.

The best enrichment is the one your users never notice.

Because it feels native.

A lead comes in.
And the product already knows:
who it is,
what company,
what role.

That’s what white-labeling changes.

No extra tab.
No copy-paste.
No “enrich this first”.
No missing fields becoming the user’s problem.

Routing works.
Automation stops breaking.
The CRM stops filling up with empty records.

You can see why builders pull this layer into the workflow like Surfe x Clay.

White-label enrichment doesn’t add features.

It removes friction.

Very happy to host Clay Club in Paris at our Surfe office 🇫🇷

With Clay and HeyReach.io, we’ll spend the evening talking about the future of GTM workflows.

Link to register is here: https://luma.com/nzptp9s3

Looking forward to sharing the discussion with:

Jérémy Grandillon  
Bojana Petkovic  
Ebru A.

In 2026, timing is the new sales currency.

You can have a strong pitch.
You can be great on the phone.
You can write perfect emails.

None of it matters if you reach prospects at the wrong moment.

Most outreach fails because timing is ignored.
Not because sellers lack skill.

In sales, you cannot predict everything.
But you can increase your odds.

With the right accounts.
With the right moment.
With the right context.

This is where Surfe is going.
Helping sellers act at the right time, with clear direction.

“Do 100 cold calls per day” is not about hustle.

It’s about building a database.

Calls create accounts.
Accounts create history.
History creates signal.

Without that base, intent-based selling collapses.
You cannot act on intent if you don’t know who to watch.

That is why most reps default to random outreach.
They are operating without data.

The alternative is public data.
Scraped.
Delayed.
Shared by everyone.

That is exactly the gap real-time sales intent is meant to close.

The best reps master two things:
They know what is happening in their market.
They act the moment intent appears.

That is the direction Surfe is taking.
Real-time intent, directly usable by sales, before everyone else sees it.

Most cold emails fail because they arrive blind.

Wrong moment.
Wrong signal.
Wrong timing.

Strong cold email is triggered by intent data, not guesswork.
It shows up when something actually changes on the buyer side.

That’s why it doesn’t need to push for a meeting.
Timing creates relevance.
Intent creates legitimacy.

When you arrive at the right moment, pressure becomes unnecessary.

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