Charles Tenot

CEO @lemlist & lempire. I share what I learn as the CEO of a profitable SaaS growing to $40M to $100M+. Follow me to learn from the journey.

I'm a business generalist who loves tech & running high-performing businesses.

Happy to meet Sales professionals
If you're:
- An SDR or Sales Rep
- A Sales Manager, Head of Sales, or Head of Sales Development
- A VP Sales or CRO

And you work at a B2B company between 50 and 1000 employees,

I’d love to connect for 30 minutes to chat about outbound strategy, share ideas, and learn from each other.

Don’t hesitate to drop an email on charles@lempire.co

COO / General Manager

Growing lempire from 20M$ to 100M$ while generating 35%+ EBITDA

lempire products: lemlist, lemwarm, Taplio, Tweet Hunter, lemcal - more to come

Outbound is about to change forever.

Today we’re launching the most important feature we’ve ever built.

It’s called Signals.

And I believe it’s going to become a new industry standard.

Because here’s the truth: 

People don’t hate sales reps.

They hate being interrupted for the wrong reason.

But when timing and targeting are perfect...

Sales doesn’t feel like spam. It feels like help.

It feels like:
→ An expert spotting a problem you missed
→ A guide bringing a solution you didn’t know existed

That’s what we’re making possible with Signals.

It tracks buying intent across your accounts.
Or it finds the right ones for you, automatically.

Right now we detect 3 key intents:
→ Website visits
→ Hiring activity
→ LinkedIn engagement

And we’re adding 4 more in the next few weeks.

This is just the beginning.

Our long-term vision is simple:

Make intent-based outreach insanely simple
And partner with the best data providers for every signal

So now in lemlist you get:
→ 450M lead database
→ Email & phone enrichment (80% / 60% find rate)
→ LinkedIn, email, phone, WhatsApp, soon SMS
→ Deliverability tools built-in
→ AI outbound coach
→ And now... real-time signal tracking

We’re building the most complete outbound platform for small & mid-size teams.

Sign in & security

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Talks about #tech, #sales, #growth, #startup, and #revenueoperations

CEO @lemlist | Building the sales operating system teams actually want to use

Really excited to share that from today, lemlist is SOC 2 Type II certified 🔥

Until 2024, we had never lost a deal because we weren’t

Then in Feb 2025, we lost our first 50+ seats deal

Just because we weren’t certified

Then another one; then a third

That’s when we said ok, let’s do it

It took us around 4 months

In the meantime, we signed a few deals with an exit clause if we didn’t provide the report by a given date.
That gave us just enough time to complete it

We already sent the report to 10+ prospects who had been waiting for it

Excited to see what it brings

One more step on our way to becoming the go-to sales engagement tool for 5-100 sales teams

Big congrats to the team for pulling this off 👏

Here’s a real outbound email that helped an SDR book a meeting with the CPO of a $40M ARR business (us) 👇

Every line was about us.
→ It referenced a product we just acquired.
→ It made a strong connection between that move... and their product.
Overall, it didn’t feel like outreach. It felt like someone already in the loop.

Here’s why it worked:
→ The SDR shows deep industry expertise.
→ They understood our product roadmap and what matters to US
→ The email is sharp, clear, remaining short but with the right level of details.
→ They wrote the email like a real person, not a bot

No fluff, no gimmicks.

Just sharp thinking and human writing.

Most teams do the opposite:
They automate what should feel handcrafted.
That’s why reply rates are so low.

You can of course have templated micro-campaigns (50-150 leads size) for lower tier leads, but for top tier, you should go 100% human.

This is what the best teams do, they go smaller and deeper:
Fewer prospects.
More relevance.
Higher conversion.

Because ultimately it's better to achieve 10% reply rate on 20 leads (2 meetings) than 0.05% on 2000 (1 meeting)

Spammy cold emails are dead. But outbound is still the #1 growth lever when done right.

Here’s how it evolved over the past 7 years, and what it takes to win in 2025:

2018: Let’s automate follow-ups and send cold emails to as many people as we can

2019: You can personalize emails a lot more and even add videos to increase your reply rate!

2020: Limit cold emails to 30-50/day or you will land in spam. 
Warmup tools become a thing (👋 lemwarm)

2021: LinkedIn + Email gives 3x better reply rates

2022: Buy as many domains as you can to send 100K+ emails/month for $500/month

2023: Multi-channel is the new king. 
World-class Sales team combine LinkedIn + Email + Calls to maximise reply rates.

2024: AI SDRs & "email infrastructures" start flooding inboxes. 
Spam filters get tougher. Reply rate decreases.

2025: High-quality data becomes essential, high-volume senders spend their lives in the spam folder.

2026: Spray and pray is officially dead.

So what works now?

→ Reach the right person, at the right time, with the right message
→ Use the most effective channel
→ Rely on signals, not luck
→ Send fewer messages, but make them sharp
→ Sales teams act like experts — helping solve real problems
→ And they make serious money doing it

And no matter the year... two rules never change:
#1: You must stand out. That’s true in sales. It’s true in marketing. It’s just true.
#2: If you bring real value, results always follow. Always.


What’s your take, where do you see outbound going next?

4 good reasons why we 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱𝗻'𝘁 have bought Claap. And why we still 𝗱𝗶𝗱 👇



1 - We could have built it
Today, it's easy to build something that records meetings and gets transcripts. There are even APIs to do it in minutes.

But, software always looks simple at first.
That's why you see new tools coded overnight every day.

But the devil is in the details.
You can build a feature.
But building a product takes years.
Even with AI.
We could have built something that checks the box.
But we would have built 5% of Claap.

Claap is not about recording meetings.
It's about capturing conversations & interactions and turning them into value for Sales:
→ Reps coaching 
→ CRM filling
→ Get insights across all conversations

That's not a feature. That’s a product.


2 - Founders might just wait for the earn-out
Classic M&A risk. Founders join, stay 2 years, don’t push, then leave.

With Robin Bonduelle, Pierre Touzeau & Thomas Hernandez, we share the same ambition: build a global leader.
I’ve rarely seen a team more committed post-deal.

Robin even joined our SteerCo retreat last week... last minute.
That tells you everything.


3 - M&A = defocus
To succeed, you need focus. We learned that last year.
By focusing 100% on building the best engagement tool for sales teams, we’ve grown like never before.

But now the team is more mature.
And sometimes, creating a bit of chaos is what drives long-term growth.


4 - Integrations take forever

You pause your roadmap. You lose speed. You lose your edge.

We don’t want that. We’re not rushing integrations. 

We’re focusing on growing both products while creating integrations on selected use cases that makes sense, like
→ auto-create tasks from meetings
→ re-engage prospects at the right moment

Small, high-value use cases first.

---

You can always find good reasons not to do something.

No one ever got fired for not buying a company.

But if you still feel it’s right, even after listing all the cons...maybe you should do it.

"Clay might be the most impressive company of the last 5 years".
I said that to Bill over dinner last week. He asked me why.

There are a few reasons:

1️⃣ Resilience
They struggled for years before the so-called overnight success.
Just like Notion.
This is incredible to see Founders fight for their vision for years to ultimately being proven right.

2️⃣ Customer obsession
From day one, they knew they had something.
But they spent years meeting hundreds of growth people before cracking it.
They ended up with one of the deepest market understandings I’ve seen.
And made the most advanced growth techniques accessible to anyone.

3️⃣ GTM playbook
They turned partners into a growth engine.
Thousands of them, at scale. And they grew with them.
Their GTM model will be studied in business schools.

4️⃣ Category creation
When Gainsight created CX tools...
Clay created GTM Engineers.

5️⃣ Corporate decisions
They already gave a $20M secondary option to employees.
Very cool signal to reward people who committed early.

6️⃣ Brand
This one is more subjective, but I really think they nailed it.
The name, the visual identity.
It all feels fresh, clean, and modern, and it sticks.


---
Really excited to welcome Varun Anand, one of Clay’s co-founder, at our office tomorrow.

He is clearly one of the leading minds on where GTM is heading.

With the amazing Bill Stathopoulos from SalesCaptain, we will be talking GTM trends for 2026.

Join us (link in comments), limited spots

I once hired someone despite average references. He turned out to be a top performer with us.

That’s when it clicked for me: performance is often more about context than talent.

I’m a big believer in reference checks. 

I think they’re critical.

Some CEOs even say they care more about references than interviews.

But here’s the nuance:

Strong performers are situational.

The same person can be mediocre in one team... and absolutely shine in another.

Why? Because people aren’t good or bad by nature.

They’re good or bad depending on:
→ the culture
→ the manager
→ the mission
→ the stage of the company
→ the role itself

I’ve lived it myself. 
I was an average performer at Allianz.
I did the job, nothing more.
But, in my next roles, I went 10X.

Not because I changed overnight but because the context did.

So, how can you spot someone who might shine in your setup?

Here’s what I look for:

→ Deep curiosity: not just job titles, but someone who nerds out on stuff—even in their free time

→ Frustration patterns: people who stopped trying because no one listened

→ Short tenures in the wrong places: some people leave bad fits early. That’s not a red flag—it’s a green one

→ Obvious skills alignment: their strengths match your current needs and team dynamics

--
References matter. 
But they don’t tell the whole story.

Just landed in Paris from Tekpon AI Summit and in 1 hour, I’m going live with Taplio.

I’ll break down everything I’ve learned growing to 34K followers.

→ How I come up with ideas
→ How I organize my content
→ What drives the most engagement
→ What I’d do differently if I had to start from 0
→ How Taplio actually helps me
→ Even the stuff I don’t do (but probably should)

Already 1000+ signed up.

Why not you?

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The real reason we bought Claap is 𝐍𝐎𝐓 because it's an invisible note-taker that fills your CRM automatically... It's much more evil 😈

Context is to AI what fuel is to a car.
Or what records are to a CRM.

No context = useless AI.

When you ask for public info like Einstein's birthday, ChatGPT nails it.

But when you ask:
→ When is this prospect planning to buy?
→ Who's the decision-maker in this account?
→ What competitor am I facing in this deal?

ChatGPT doesn’t know.

Because it wasn’t trained on that kind of private context.

That context lives in:
→ Sales calls and meetings (captured by Claap)
→ Emails and LinkedIn messages (soon captured by Claap)
→ CRM notes and fields (captured via Integrations)

Sure, you could connect all these sources yourself.
But good luck building a data architecture that scales across your entire GTM stack.

That’s not plug-and-play. That’s enterprise-level messy.

And even if you do it, there’s another problem:

Generic AI isn’t built for Sales.

It works by looking at "semantic proximity", fancy way to say: finding similar words.

So when you ask for "Competitors", it might surface "Rivals" or even "Enemies"
...instead of your actual competitor in that deal.

That’s why vertical AI beats general-purpose tools.

To make AI work in GTM, the entire chain needs to be built for GTM, not just the prompting layer.

That’s where we’re heading. 

Claap will become the AI context center for lemlist products.

What do you think of this plan? 😈

I was shared over 50 AI use cases by world-class GTM teams.
Only 10% are actually driving positive ROI.


Every team wants to add AI to their GTM stack.

But the "why" and "how" should come before the "what" ; and that part is often forgotten.

AI looks amazing in demos. It creates that "wow" effect.

But when it comes to turning prospects into customers... it often falls flat.

That said, a few use cases are actually working. 
And they all have one thing in common:

They help teams handle large volumes of unstructured data.

Here are use cases I’ve seen deliver results across top GTM orgs:

→ Data cleaning & smart filters
Use Clay, lemlist tables, or even a Gsheet linked to LLMs to streamline data cleansing or enrich your records.

→ Research automation
Clay (Claygents), Firecrawl, and similar tools can automate prep work and save hours.

→ CRM hygiene
Auto-fill CRM fields with tools like Claap to save reps time—and finally get data quality you can trust.

→ Prospect scoring
When you're handling high volumes, AI can score leads by combining structured and unstructured data.

→ Deal & account scoring
Top GTM teams do regular deal and account scoring using all touchpoints—calls, emails, signals—and AI helps scale that.

→ Lookalike identification
If you're still mapping your ICP, AI can help find similar customers so you focus on who’s likely to close next.
Some more advanced use cases are also showing serious ROI:

→ ElevenLabs (cc Jonathan Chemouny) built a voice agent using their own tech to guide inbound leads through their buying journey.

→ HubSpot and Pipedrive are testing AI sales agents to answer product questions.
 It sits between website and sales and from internal feedbacks I could get, it gives pretty interesting results.

I’m sharing more about this today at the Tekpon AI Summit.

I'll walk through what I learned from 20+ GTM leaders at Ramp, Revolut, Paddle, Alan, Pennylane, and more.

And over the next few weeks, I’ll keep posting examples here.

Please help 👇
What AI use cases have you seen deliver ROI ; or fall short?

DM me if you're working in a 5+ people sales team and want to chat use cases.

---
PS: this pic is from the event: great session with Bill Stathopoulos from SalesCaptain and Frank Sondors 🥓 from Salesforge 🔥

We did 40% off for Black Friday last year. But, we won't be doing it again this year for a few reasons.

Every year, PLG SaaS tools rush into Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) like it's a must.

We did it for 2 years. It worked "on paper".

But now we're done with it.

There are a few reasons:

1- Time-shift revenue vs. actual revenue

Yes, we got a spike in conversions.

But it just pushed people to convert earlier. 
After the deal... conversion dropped for a while.

This means we just time-shifted revenue.

2- It kills focus.

The team spent days prepping offers, landing pages, emails.

We'd rather have:
• Product & Tech improving the tool
• Marketing working on stuff that brings actual value to Sales teams

3- It impacts Brand perception

It sends the wrong brand message.

We're not a random tool you can find for cheap, and don't want to be.

We're a team of 50+ engineers based in Europe, building something great.

We want to build trust, not urgency.

4- It doesn't really help customers make better buying decisions

Buying software is not a 24h impulsive decision.

It's a choice that should help you for months, ideally years.

But a Black Friday offer puts pressure.

People buy because of the price, not because of the fit.

And that leads to the wrong kind of customers.

Most of the discounted users churned within a year.

---
We're not here to be the cheapest.

We're here to be the most helpful.

To deliver recurring value, over the long term, with an unparalleled product.

---

So this year, no Black Friday. 
No FOMO.
Just focus.

🙌

You don't need to send 1,000+ emails a month to close $1M in outbound sales.

Actually... the best reps I know send very few messages.

But each one is tailored with care.

Let’s do the math:
→ $1M target with a $40K ACV = 25 deals
→ Let’s say you close 1 in 4 = 100 qualified meetings
→ A good personalized outbound can get 5% reply rate
→ That means you need 2,000 leads
→ That’s just 9 accounts per day

Don’t tell me you can’t do that.

Every day:
→ Pick 9 accounts
→ Do your research
→ Write quality messages
→ Book one meeting every 2 days

Sales is not a spam game. It’s a discipline game.

The lazy shortcut is blasting 10,000 emails.

The smart way is caring enough to make 9 count.

Last minute plans are always the best.

Paris was not even supposed to be part of Varun Anand's Europe tour for Clay.

Thanks to SalesCaptain and TC9, it was added at the last minute.
And it turned out to be an amazing event, my favorite of 2025.

The energy was 🔥

A room filled with insanely talented GTM engineers building best in class systems to make outbound always more precise and targeted.

Varun said that he believes France has some of the top talents in Growth in the world.

He gave the example of our Growth Twins, Edouard and Louis, who are, he said, building GTM engines for Pigment comparable to what exists at Stripe or OpenAI.

My vision for 2026 is unchanged:

We need to keep improving GTM systems to make Sales more targeted and more valuable for buyers.

Spam is the enemy.

GTM Engineers should focus on building small and very targeted lead lists.

Or even better, focus on scoring and helping sales teams prioritize by giving them tools that make all the context available quickly so they can make better decisions on what to do next.

This is why Clay and lemlist work so well together and why so many customers use both.
→ Clay helps source, score and prioritize leads
 → lemlist helps engage across all channels including email, LinkedIn, phone, WhatsApp and SMS, which maximizes the chances to get buyer attention

Thanks to everyone involved yesterday and to everyone who joined.

--

cc Julia Guenier, Bill Stathopoulos, Jérémy Grandillon, Theo Kanellopoulos, Frank Sondors 🥓 Valentin W., Pierre-Baptiste Landoin

Most CEOs spend too much time with investors, but that's not how you create value for your business. 
Here’s what I believe a "perfect" CEO week looks like in a 100-300 people company 👇

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to use my time better.

What creates real value? What’s just noise?

Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

What doesn’t work:

→ Spending hours with investors. It’s mostly about optics. A 3-month doc + reaching out when needed is often enough.

→ Jumping into shiny new topics already owned by the team. You’ll probably slow them down more than help.

→ Sharing new ideas and articles every day. I’ve been guilty of this. It’s distracting. Focus beats stimulation.

What works:

→ 5 customer calls per week. Mix of long-term users, new wins, and churned ones. Especially those who fit your ICP.

→ 5 employee 1:1s per week. Not just your execs. Anyone. Just listen and understand what’s working and what’s not.

→ 5–10 hours of deep work on big bets. Future products. Strategic questions. The stuff no one else can do.

→ Use your own product or go through the full buying journey. Spot the frictions.

→ Work with your managers like a coach. 
Not status updates. Real problem-solving. Building trust.

 → Talk with other CEOs and advisors. 
Helps you zoom out and see things differently.

 → Take care of yourself. 
Walk. Exercise. Most good ideas won’t come from checking Slack.

→ Stay in touch with the market. A few newsletters. A few creators. Just enough to stay sharp. Not too much to lose focus.

One of our most successful 2025 features is a pure trojan horse. 
And most companies can steal this GTM strategy to accelerate growth.


When it comes to outbound, companies have 3 options:

1/ Work with a spreadsheet and forget 90% of follow ups

2/ Use their CRM, e.g. an "all-in-one" approach (Hubspot, Salesforce Engage)

3/  Go for the "best-of-breed" and use a tool like lemlist or Outreach

All-in-one tools are convenient but not really best-in-class in terms of features.

On the other hand, best-of-breed tools are the most powerful and give better results. 

But they have one big flaw, they require the team to adopt another tool.

And in 2025, teams want less tools, not more.

So what we did is simple: we decided not to position "against" the CRM.

We embraced it.

We embedded lemlist inside Hubspot and Salesforce.

All key jobs to be done... 100% available in the CRM:
→ Enroll leads in a sequence
→ Pause or remove from campaigns
→ Edit the campaign
→ Find phone, email, LinkedIn
→ Engage via email, phone, LinkedIn, WhatsApp
→ (soon) Find new prospects in target companies

No tab switching. No training needed. No resistance from reps.

We have still people using lemlist in lemlist.

Because our overall strategy is simple:
1️⃣ Build lemlist to be the reference for people who do outbound most of their days (SDRs)
2️⃣ Build lemlist "from CRM" for those who want to only use 1 tool
3️⃣ Build lemlist "for builders", via API, for those who want to build more custom use cases

---
It’s not the first time this strategy worked.

At Botify, we launched in the US selling SEO software.

We positioned it as complementary to the suite people already used.

That’s how we grew from $0 to $10M ARR in under 2 years.

---

If your market is crowded, don't fight for space.

Find the cracks.

Last week, I saved 2+ days as a CEO by using a vibe coding tool.

I’m convinced these tools will change how teams collaborate long before they ever replace Software Engineers.

Here are 2 moments where it made a real difference in my CEO role:

1. Pricing Iterations

Normally I’d open Notion or FigmaJam. 
Build a doc no one reads.
Instead, I used Lovable.
I built 5 versions of our pricing page. Using our real UI. In minutes.
Then shared with the team. Got async feedback. Clear and fast.

2. BI Dashboards

I needed specs for 2026 performance dashboards.
The usual way is a long doc, a meeting. 
People misunderstand half of it.

This time, I made a working prototype.
With fake data. Real filters. Actual charts.

The exec team played with it. Commented inside. I updated the prototype.

We had the final version 24h later.

Another example: when we shipped the Calling feature at lemlist, Maël Ezzabdi skipped the doc too.

He used a vibe coding tool to build a live prototype.
The team instantly got the vision. Built v1 in weeks.

So no, I don’t think AI tools will replace engineers anytime soon.
Actually, hiring Software Engineers has never been harder.

But I’m convinced they’ll change how we work together.

One visual beats 100 words.

Curious if others are seeing the same shift?

CPO @lemlist - On a mission to help ambitious businesses become big names!

Me in 2020: "Sh** the candidate rejected us, what did we do wrong?"

Also me, in 2025: "Good news, they understood our culture and said no."

And that's actually a win

Because a good culture is not about pleasing everyone.

It's not a one-size-fits-all.  It's a filter.

If you're trying to be for everyone, you end up being for no one.

I’m not saying losing candidates is good.

But losing the wrong candidates can be.

There are bad reasons to lose someone:
→ You were too slow
→ You failed to explain the role properly
→ Hiring manager didn't inspire
→ You didn’t show what’s exciting
→ You lowballed the offer

But here’s a good reason:
→ They felt it wasn’t the right culture or role for them

That’s alignment.
And that’s exactly what you want.

You’re not just hiring skill. You’re building a team that wants to be there.

Really happy to share that we hit a 9.1 eNPS score (+72)

This is another +0.2 improvement from 8.9 earlier this year.

It might not look like much... but to me, it means a lot.

I’m a competitive person. I love chasing growth.

But I’ve learned you don’t fully control success.

You do control the environment you build.
The people you hire.
The ones you keep.
The ones you promote.

So for me, this is the biggest win.
Seeing the team happy and thriving.

Now let’s make sure we keep that level of engagement as we scale.

We're still hiring:
→ Product designer with strong convictions
→ Experienced Software Engineers (🇫🇷 speaker)
→ Sales reps (anywhere 🌍)
→ Product / Content Marketers (sales mindset is a must)

Reach out if that sounds like you.

Everyone is excited about AI for sales, but very few are getting positive ROI.
And it’s not just my opinion. 

Kyle Poyar and Maja Voje surveyed 195 software leaders.

One of their key findings is scary but not surprising: 

→ AI in GTM is underwhelming.

Ahead of my talk at the Tekpon AI Summit, I spoke with 20+ leaders of top global companies (Ramp, ElevenLabs, Agicap, Pennylane, Paddle, Gorgias, Revolut and more.)

I had the exact same feedback:

→ Everyone has use cases with AI
→ But very few are convinced by the total net impact vs. costs (time spent, tools, etc.)
→ AI is great at some tasks, but disappointing at others
→ Adoption remains the #1 problem to make AI use cases ROI-positive


Ahead of the conference, here’s where it actually delivers value in sales:

→ Processing a lot of info, fast
Example: doing account research before meetings

→ Spotting buying signals in messy data
Example: detecting office openings in news articles

→ Auto-filling CRMs
Example: turning call transcripts into structured data with Claap

→ Turning chaos into clarity
Example: classifying companies as B2B or B2C from descriptions

→ Catching what humans miss
Example: flagging churn risk in emails and meetings

I’ve built a simple framework to figure out when AI helps, and when it fails to deliver.

I’ll also share 9 real-world use cases that are already driving ROI.

All of this is part of my session at the Tekpon AI Summit.

👋 I’ve got 3 free passes to give away.
➡️ Drop a comment and connect with me if you want one.

PS: you can read the full article from Kyle's newsletter
https://lnkd.in/evrRtxpV

Founder & Creator | Growth Unhinged

Bestselling Author | Empowering 9,500+ Companies with My GTM Method | B2B AI-GTM Consultant | Building AI Agents & Agentic Workflows | 73K LinkedIn | 25K Newsletter

Tekpon

Fractional CFO | Helping Founders Scale Beyond $2M ARR with Strategic Finance & OKRs | Founder @ FounderFirst

I didn’t grow up pitching VCs or building apps.

I grew up in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria, where I didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t know anyone in tech.
But I knew how to spot opportunity, adapt quickly, and keep going.

At 17, I taught myself English. At 19, I earned a scholarship to study in the U.S. 
I came with a suitcase, less than $300, no backup plan, and did whatever scrappy thing it took to stay afloat.

Then on April 15, 2015, something clicked.
The startup world found me. And for the first time, I felt like I fit.
The chaos, the creativity, the responsibility - it was mine to carry, mine to shape.

What started as a leap into the unknown became a decade of building behind the scenes.

Since then, I’ve worked with more than 20 early- and growth-stage startups, both VC-backed and bootstrapped, across B2B SaaS, Fintech, and Edtech. 
I’ve helped scale revenue from $500K to $20M, grow teams from 10 to 200, and build finance and ops functions from scratch.
I’ve navigated pivots, layoffs, down rounds, near-bankruptcies, exits, and helped founders get to the other side.

In 2024, I launched FounderFirst to do exactly that: support founders and leadership teams with the structure, clarity, and tools they need to grow sustainably.

What I Do:
- Finance: Fractional CFO support, modeling, forecasting, and investor-ready reporting
- Strategy: OKRs and operating models that don’t die after kickoff
- Coaching: For founders and finance leads navigating the messy middle

When I’m not working with founders, you’ll find me planning my next national park hike or deep in a great book (suggestions always welcome).

Curious what's possible on your scaling journey?

Don't be a stranger. Book an intro call: https://shorturl.at/kjU5J

Mariya Valeva

She cashed out her 401(k) to sell scrubs.
Ten years later, FIGS went public at $4.6B.

At the time, Trina Spear was “living the dream” on paper: 
• Harvard MBA 
• Wall Street pedigree 
• A high-paying job at Blackstone 
• Everything her Cuban refugee parents worked for

But success that looks good on the outside hits differently on the inside. She wanted meaning, not prestige. Then came the call that changed everything. A mutual friend connected her with Heather Hasson.

She had an idea, simple, but radical:
“What if we made scrubs people actually want to wear?”
Heather had seen her best friend, a nurse practitioner, wear the same boxy, uncomfortable uniform day in and day out.
Cheap fabric. No pockets. No pride.
No one had thought to make scrubs better.
Because no one had thought healthcare workers deserved better.
That single insight lit a fire.
Trina couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Within a few days, she booked a flight to LA.
Met Heather in person.
And said the words that would change both of their lives:
“I’m in.”

They didn’t have funding.
They didn’t have supply chains.
They didn’t even have a product line.
But they had purpose.
So they started small.
Selling scrubs out of the back of a car.
Showing up at hospitals during shift changes.
Swiping credit cards on the sidewalk.
Shipping orders from their own apartments.

Investors didn’t get it.
They said the market was “too niche.”
That doctors didn’t care about style.
That nurses wouldn’t pay for comfort.

They were wrong.
Trina and Heather didn’t just sell scrubs.
They built a community.
They made healthcare workers feel seen, celebrated, and respected.
And they did it profitably, sustainably, and on their own terms.

In 2021, FIGS became the first company led by two female founders to IPO on the NYSE.
$4.6 billion.

If you're building something the world doesn't understand yet..
This is your reminder:
You don't need permission.
You just need one "yes."
Maybe it's yours.

At 34, she rang the Nasdaq bell, holding her toddler in her arms.
A $1.6B valuation.
Katrina Lake had just taken her company, Stitch Fix, public.

A company she built from her apartment floor, while pregnant. Twice.
She didn’t come from a family of founders.
She didn’t have a network of angels or tech mentors to call.
Her mother was a teacher who immigrated from Japan.
Her father, a transplant doctor who believed deeply in hard work and quiet sacrifice.

She grew up straddling two worlds - Japanese at home, American at school.
Learning early that success didn’t come from confidence, but discipline.

Years later, Katrina found herself in business school, surrounded by future bankers and VCs.
But she had no interest in finance.
She wanted to build something… useful.
The idea started simple:
What if busy women could get clothes picked out for them - based on data, but curated by a human?

She used SurveyMonkey to collect style preferences.
Tracked feedback in spreadsheets.
Packed boxes from her apartment floor.
And mailed them one by one.
This wasn’t a “tech company” in the traditional sense.
No SaaS margins. No app. No virality.
Just a belief that personalization - done right - could scale.

Most investors didn’t get it.
Too operational.
Too slow.
Too… retail.
And maybe, too female.
So she ran lean.
Proved retention.
And let the numbers speak.

By 2017, Stitch Fix was ready.
She took it public, and made history.
The youngest woman to IPO a tech company.
A new kind of founder.
One who didn’t “fit the mold.”
She just built her own.

A second-generation immigrant founder, raised to keep her head down -
who ended up showing the world what leadership can actually look like.
Quiet. Relentless. Human.
And maybe that’s what more of us need to see right now.

You don’t truly understand a business until you’ve had to clean up the mess.

It’s easy to give advice when you’re not the one dealing with the aftermath.
Easy to sound smart when your strategy lives in slides - not in systems, team dynamics, missed targets, or investor pressure.

But business isn’t built in theory.
It’s built in the uncomfortable.
The tradeoffs.
The reworks.
The silent pivots.
The “we thought this would work” moments.

That’s where real insight comes from - not from watching, but from staying.
From living the consequences of your decisions and iterating through them.

Because until you’ve felt the problem, your solution is just a guess.

*Video credits: simplyougrow insta

Victoria Beckham spent £70K a year on office plants.
And £15K more to water them.
She admitted it, in her Netflix documentary.

Everyone laughing at that.
But I totally respect her honesty.
At least she admitted her mistakes.

Because futile spending isn’t always a wall of designer greenery.
In a scaling business, it hides in plain sight.

Here’s what it actually looks like:
– A senior hire brought in too early (with no clear role)
– “Just in case” software subscriptions no one questions
– Monthly retainer agencies where no one knows the deliverables
– Internal teams doing what AI could now do faster, cleaner, cheaper
– A “culture budget” that’s really a morale patch for broken systems

None of these feel like bad decisions at the time.
They feel necessary. Strategic. Progressive.
Until one day, the runway’s shorter, the burn’s higher, and you can’t quite explain where the money went.

Futile spend isn’t just wasted cash.
It’s a signal.
That the business is operating without enough visibility.
And fixing it doesn’t mean cutting everything.

It means learning to ask:
“Is this helping us grow or just helping us feel in motion?”

Victoria had her plants.
You probably have something too.

She sold her company for $1B.
Then she bought 3 football teams.
But that’s not where her story starts.

It starts in South Korea.
With two parents who gave up their wedding savings so their daughter could go to America.
Michele Kang arrived in the U.S. with nothing but a dream and a dictionary.
She didn’t speak English.
She didn’t have money.
But she had this unshakable belief: “My place is not here. It’s out there. And I’ll figure it out.”

So she studied, obsessively.
Worked 16-hour shifts at Dairy Queen to pay tuition.
Got into the University of Chicago.
Then Yale.
Then leadership roles at Northrop Grumman, where she 4x’d their healthcare division.
And in 2008 - in the middle of a recession - while battling breast cancer, she launched Cognosante from her garage.

A decade later?
She sold it to Accenture for over $1 billion.
Most people would retire after that.
She didn't.
She bought a football team.
Then another.
Then another.
- Washington Spirit
- Olympique Lyonnais Féminin
- London City Lionesses

And built Kynisca Sports, the first global ownership platform for women’s football.
But this isn’t about owning teams.
It’s about owning change.

Michele is pouring millions into women’s sports science, athlete health, and gear designed specifically for women.
Because for decades, women have trained in systems built for men.
She’s not here to play along.
She’s here to build a whole new game.

“We hired a CFO.”
Cool. What’s your gross margin?
“…Uhh.” 🫠

This happens way more than you think.
Founders outsource finance thinking it’s a fast-track to scaling. But if you:
→ Can’t explain your revenue model in 2 sentences
→ Don’t know your unit economics
→ Can’t tie burn to milestones…

You’re the bottleneck.
I’ve worked with 100+ SaaS and B2B businesses, and the root problem is always the same:
No financial infrastructure.

So what do most founders do? Outsource their numbers to a third-party “fixer”
❌ Hire an affordable offshore bookkeeper for $299 a month
❌ Rely on generic finance agency that doesn’t get the model and business from day 1
❌ Assume someone else is “handling it” and “taking care of it”

But without clear understanding of your numbers, you're not delegating, you're gambling.
You don’t need to do the bookkeeping.
But you do need to own the strategy behind the numbers.
Before you delegate, know this:
✅ The financial ecosystem your business operates in (SaaS, eCommerce, services, etc.)
✅ How pricing → margin → cash flow
✅ What it really costs to hit your next milestone
✅ How your runway shifts when things break
✅ Which numbers tell the truth (not just the story)

When you understand this,
then you can delegate.

Until then? 
You're not handing over financials, you're handing over control.

You show up in front of 5 million people.
Pitch your company.
And get rejected on national TV.

What do you do next?

If you’re Jamie Siminoff, you go back to work.

You rebuild.
You fix your margins.
You dial in your acquisition costs.
You scale.
Then Amazon buys your company (Ring) for $1 billion.
No Shark needed.
But he’s not the only one.

Let’s look at what the “rejected” SharkTank founders had in common 👇

↳ Poppi
- Said no to early Shark money.
- Focused on product velocity, strong DTC economics, and repeat purchase behavior.
- PepsiCo just acquired them for $1.65B.

↳ Kodiak Cakes
- Turned down offers.
- Why? Because they knew their margin profile didn’t justify giving up that much equity.
- Bootstrapped to $160M+ in revenue and a ~$500M valuation.

↳ The Bouqs
- No deal.
- Built solid ops, lean CAC, and high repeat order rates.
- Now at $60M+ revenue with a 9-figure valuation.

↳ Swimply
- “Niche side hustle,” they said.
- Founder focused on supply growth, retention, and liquidity.
- Now valued at $250M.

It’s not “they didn’t give up.”
It’s not about ego or rejection stories.
It’s that they understood their business model better than the investors did.

Before asking for funding, they had:
✅ Healthy contribution margin
✅ Repeatable acquisition channels
✅ Real traction with real customers

If you’re raising without knowing these - you’re not fundraising, you’re gambling.
Know your margins.
Model your unit economics.
Build the kind of business investors regret passing on.
Then Shark or no Shark,
you win.

How did a creepy-looking “monster” doll drive $670M+ in revenue in 6 months?
Not Barbie. 
Not Beanie Babies.

Labubu.
A gothic, fairy-tale misfit that became one of the most valuable toy IPs on the planet. And behind it?
A Chinese brand using blind-box economics like a hyper-scalable SaaS company.

How did they do it?!
Created by artist Kasing Lung, Labubu started as a niche character in his series The Monsters.
Then came a licensing deal with Pop Mary and the growth engine flipped on.

↳ Phase 1: Distribution Flywheel
- 2,500+ vending machines
- Branded stores across Asia
- Viral pop-ups in London, Tokyo, LA
- Blind boxes priced for impulse (but built for addiction)
This wasn’t retail.
It was high-frequency recurring revenue disguised as toys.

↳ Phase 2: Monetize the FOMO
- TikTok unboxings everywhere.
- “Demon doll” controversies.
- Celebrity bag charms (Lisa, Rihanna, Beckham).
- Drops, lotteries, and timed releases. Scarcity wasn’t an accident.

↳ Phase 3: Scale like SaaS
The numbers are wild:
- $670M revenue in H1 2025 alone
- 66–70% gross margins
- TikTok Shop: $5.5M in June (more than all of 2024)
- Human-sized Labubu auctioned for $150K
- Now drives 35%+ of Pop Mart’s entire business

Their mechanics look more like product strategy than toy design: 
• Blind boxes = retention loop 
• Mega plushies = ARPU booster 
• Limited editions = urgency engine 
• Vertical retail + owned IP = margin moat

Labubu looks like a strange little gremlin. 
But the growth story? 
It’s operator-level discipline wrapped in cultural obsession. 

Most brands try to buy attention. 
This one engineered behavior. 
And monetized it with ruthless precision.

PS: Thinking of getting one for Christmas? 
(Just don’t open the box on TikTok unless you want 2M views…)

Just because your business is making money doesn’t mean it’s healthy (or valuable).

Profitability is easy to over-celebrate.
Yes, it means your model works.
But it says nothing about whether the business can run without you… or whether anyone would actually pay to own it.

The truth is, profit often hides what enterprise value exposes:
– Pricing decisions built on gut, not data
– Customer concentration no one’s addressed
– No clean financials or operating docs
– Key workflows stuck in your head (or your inbox)
– A team that executes, but doesn’t own

Buyers don’t pay for hustle. They pay for structure.
And the second they sense the business is still founder-dependent or operationally fragile, the multiple tanks, or the deal disappears entirely.

Here’s what they’re really buying:
→ Repeatable revenue
→ Transferable operations
→ Clean books
→ A business that scales without its founder
→ Strategic levers they can pull after acquisition

So if you’re profitable, great, you’re ahead.
But if you want to build something valuable, not just functional, you need to think beyond the P&L.
Start here:
Would I buy my business tomorrow? At full price? As is?
If not, that’s the work.

PS: I broke this down further in today’s newsletter, including what actually raises enterprise value (and what quietly kills it).
👉 Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

Every shortcut you take in the name of “speed”?
You pay for later: in churn, margin erosion, or internal chaos.

There’s no such thing as a free launch.
Most problems don’t come from incompetence.
They come from trade-offs made too fast, and cleaned up too late.
Shipping before you're ready.
Patching metrics to impress investors.
Letting a half-baked finance stack run a multi-million-dollar business.

You can raise on momentum.
But you scale on precision.
The companies that go the distance don’t build the most features.
They build the clearest systems:
– Ops that don’t collapse when headcount doubles
– Reporting that doesn't need a team to interpret
– Pricing and margin models that actually scale
– A decision-making culture that doesn’t burn out your team by Series B

Apple didn’t scale because they built the best hardware.
They scaled because they knew where not to cut.
The goal isn’t perfect.
The goal is aligned, intentional, and resilient.
Most companies look strong from the outside.
But behind the scenes?
They're duct-taped together.
Which one are you building?

*video credits: growasentrepreneurs

One viral thread. $2.4M in ARR.
Sounds like the dream, right?

You post. It hits.
Traffic, users, momentum - all from one channel.
That’s exactly how Copy. ai took off.
No “multi-channel strategy.”
Just one thing done exceptionally well: Twitter.
One thread. $2.4M. Done.

Meanwhile, most founders are still doing content gymnastics across five platforms… and wondering why nothing’s landing.
The difference?
Focus that compounds.

→ Merit Beauty skipped TikTok and podcasts. IG only. $100M+ in sales.
→ Lenny Rachitsky started with one Substack - now brings in $500K+/year and runs a top business podcast. → Glossier? One blog built a $1.8B brand.
→ Physics Wallah? YouTube only. Now $2.8B.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be undeniable somewhere.
I break it all down in today’s newsletter, check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc 

🦃 Happy Thanksgiving - enjoy the pie, and the newsletter!

$450 million. A dream of levitating pods at 1,000 km/h.
An idea inspired by Elon Musk.
Richard Branson on the board.
Dubai’s DP World at the helm.
A media darling. A startup darling.
And then… silence.

By the end of 2023, Hyperloop One shut its doors.
No commercial projects.
No passengers.
No real-world deployments.
Just a skeleton crew liquidating assets.

The last chapter of what was once the future of transportation.
But this wasn’t a simple tech failure. It wasn’t just “too early.”
This was a perfect storm of hype, misalignment, and systemic blind spots.
And the story behind it holds brutal truths for every founder.

It started in 2013, when Elon Musk published a white paper.
He didn’t want to build it. He wanted to spark it.
And Hyperloop One jumped on the chance.
They assembled a team, raised millions, hired talent from NASA and SpaceX.
The pitch?
A new era of transport.
Faster than planes. Cheaper than rail.
Jet-speed pods floating in near-vacuum tubes.
The vision caught fire.

→ Investors flooded in.
Richard Branson joined the board.
Dubai’s DP World invested heavily - not just money, but political capital.
Meanwhile, Hyperloop One opened a test track in Nevada.
They ran demo after demo.
Wired. Bloomberg. Forbes. Everyone covered it.
The startup ecosystem was hypnotized.
But behind the curtain, the cracks had already formed.

→ The tech wasn’t cooperating.
Maintaining a vacuum over 100+ miles was exponentially harder than it looked.
Maglev in a tube sounded cool… until engineers ran the math on G-forces, expansion joints, and emergency exits.
Their best test pod?
172 km/h — not even 15% of the promised 1,200 km/h.
Still, the press releases kept coming.

→ The boardroom wasn’t any better.
Infighting between founders. Lawsuits.
Leadership turnover.
And when Branson publicly criticized Saudi Arabia, he resigned.
That’s when DP World took control.
And DP World didn’t want to shuttle people through tubes.
They wanted cargo. Logistics. Infrastructure.
The company quietly pivoted.
No more “flying humans through tubes.”
Now it was “maybe we can move containers... eventually.”
Internally? The mission was lost.
Externally? No one noticed yet.

→ Then came the final blow: reality.
Governments had no idea how to regulate a hyperloop.
Meanwhile, infrastructure costs ballooned.
To build even one usable route would cost billions, with no proof it would ever work.
So they burned cash.
Delayed decisions.
Until, one day, it was over.

And Hyperloop One - once the poster child of “thinking big” - became a cautionary tale.

Innovation doesn’t fail because of lack of imagination.
It fails when vision outpaces execution.
When systems didn’t match the scale of the story.

How do you raise $350M, hit a $2B valuation…
and still crash hard?

Remember InVision? The design darling that disappeared.
They had everything:
✔️ A killer brand
✔️ 7M+ users
✔️ A market hungry for collaboration tools
✔️ And yes, $350M in capital and a $2B valuation

So what happened?
They made the same mistake too many founders do after a Series A or B:
They scaled hype instead of substance.

Here’s where it went off the rails:

🚩 They stopped listening to the market.
While Figma doubled down on real-time collaboration and cloud-native speed, InVision clung to its old prototype model and released Studio years too late with bugs, missing features, and poor adoption.

🚩 They over-invested in sales, under-invested in product.
Massive sales teams. Endless marketing pushes.
But behind the curtain? A tool users didn’t love and that teams outgrew.

🚩 Their tech stack couldn’t scale.
Studio and Freehand weren’t just late, they were unstable.
Performance lagged. Collaboration broke. Teams jumped ship.

🚩 They misread their edge.
Instead of doubling down on what made them valuable, they spread themselves thin trying to be everything, while Figma was becoming essential to modern design workflows.

🚩 They burned money chasing growth, not resilience.
Headcount ballooned to 1,200. Revenue fell by 50% in a year.
They sold Freehand in a fire sale to Miro.
They went from market leader… to a cautionary tale.

→ Product-market fit isn’t static.
→ Capital can amplify dysfunction.
→ Growth only works if your foundations are solid.

And guess what?
You might already be heading toward an InVision moment.
It won’t look like a crash, until it does.
Ask yourself:
- Are we evolving, or just expanding?
- Do we actually know our operational weak points?
- Is our product irreplaceable, or just familiar?

The worst mistake you can make in business?

Picking the wrong partner.
Not the wrong tool.
Not the wrong pricing.
Not even the wrong strategy.

The wrong person will drain your energy, slow your momentum, or worse, blow up your reputation from the inside.

Should be:
✅ Smart enough to challenge you
✅ Driven enough to keep up
✅ Honest enough to never cut corners

If even one of these is missing?
Walk away.
Because you can’t teach hunger.
You can’t fake values.
And you definitely can’t afford to drag someone uphill.

Your co-founder, CFO, or first 10 hires - they set the tone for everything that follows.
Choose wisely. You’ll either build trust…
Or spend years recovering from a lack of it.

*Video credits: simplyougrow insta

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