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.

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

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)

JSESSIONID

Grow | LinkedIn

li_at

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

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 👏

"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

We found a way to boost email deliverability by 40%.
And it's now available to all our users 👇

In 2025, deliverability is the #1 blocker for email outreach.

You can write the best copy in the world...but if your emails land in spam, it’s game over.

At lemlist, we track deliverability data from hundreds of thousands of inboxes. 

We optimize every part of the platform to make sure your emails reach the inbox.

And now we’re rolling out something that makes a big difference.

It's called "ESP matching".

Here’s how it works:

Instead of sending an email from your Gmail account to someone using Outlook (or vice versa)...
lemlist automatically detects your prospect’s email provider

Then sends your email from the best-matching inbox on your domain

Simple change but big impact.

We tested it internally. 
Then our partners tested it across dozens of campaigns
+40% improvement in deliverability

This isn’t a hack, it’s just how email systems work

ESP matching is live now for all lemlist users 😍

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?

No alternative text description for this image

Ramp, one of the best outbound teams in the world, just shut down their AI SDR program.

That says a lot about where outbound is going.

In the past, this program was driving up to 30% of their pipeline.

But they mentioned 2 things changed:

1/ New tools came out and made what Ramp had... available to everyone
So the edge disappeared.
More teams doing the same thing = fewer results.
Outbound is continuously evolving which is what makes it interesting and creative.

2/ Their Sales team got really good
Ramp now has 500+ reps who are great at storytelling.
So they moved from machines doing the job... to humans doing it better.

Here’s how I read this 👇

→ Innovation is everything in outbound
The more people use the same playbook, the less it works.

→ Good Sales still beats AI
If your reps are junior or don’t understand the market, AI can help.
But when they’re well trained and sharp... humans win.

→ The future of AI is decentralized
AI won’t run outbound.
Sales won’t run tools.
GTM teams will build simple internal tools powered by AI.
And Sales will fine-tune them and use them (hopefully)

→ Quality > Quantity
Ramp did volume for a while and it worked.
But now they’re going all in on: better targeting, better story, multi-channel.

This has been our vision at lemlist. 
Really exciting to see leading companies with similar findings.

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? 😈

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

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.

🙌

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 🔥

GTM Europe at ElevenLabs

Tekpon

CEO, SalesCaptain | Clay London Club Lead 👑 | Top lemlist Partner 📬 | Investor | GTM Advisor for $10M+ B2B SaaS

SalesCaptain

I Make You Bring Home More Bacon | CEO @Forge | Unlimited LinkedIn & Mailbox Senders + AI SDR | Always Hiring AI Agents & A Players

Salesforge.ai 🔥

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.

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.

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.

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!

Only 20 sales reps got me to reply in 2 years. Tom Greenwood from Paddle is one of them.

He came to our office and broke down his entire approach on camera.

Tom is an Enterprise BDR at Paddle.

He consistently overachieves his quotas. Every quarter.

I wanted to understand what makes him successful.

Because I get hundreds of cold emails every month.
And I ignore almost all of them.
So I asked him.

Here's what he shared with me:
→ Discipline.
→ Enjoy the process.
→ Monitor results.
→ Multi-channel.
→ Multi threading.
→ Hyper personalization with a human touch.

He shared a fun story where his sound didn't work when recording a batch of video and it actually generated great results.

This illustrates well that in our AI-world, people still buy from people and flaws makes outreach look more human.

Tom recognizes outbound has become harder since he started 2.5 years ago.

But when you are creative and continuously improve you can still be very successful.
You can still source large enterprise deals.

Paddle is a living example, they are now over 100M and one of the leading merchant of record globally.

---

I recorded our full conversation, hope you'll like it.

Now my question for you: 

➡️ Who is the next BDR or Business Development Leader I should invite to Paris?

Tell me and I'll interview them to share more tips on how to be successful in outbound in 2026.

---
By the way, if you want an all in one solution to manage billing, payment processing, revenue recognition, taxes, chargebacks, fraud and more, Paddle is a one stop shop for that.

Reach out to Tom so he can have at least a few inbound leads 🤜 🤛

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.

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.

Michel Lieben 🧠

Founder / CEO @ ColdIQ | Scale Outbound with AI & Tech 👉 coldiq.com

I’m (Michel) the Founder & CEO at ColdIQ, a sales prospecting agency (+ we compare the latest sales tech, too!).

We worked with 100+ B2B organizations (including SaaS & Agencies!) and are using Clay, Prospeo, FullEnrich, Instantly, Lemlist, Ocean.io - alongside other great sales tools - to run outbound campaigns that flood 🌊 our (and our clients’) inboxes with interested prospects.


We can help you:

• If you’re a B2B business leader who doesn’t have the time to handle your prospecting engine or to hire and manage salespeople… You can outsource your lead gen to us, and we’ll transparently show you the exact way we run your campaigns. (We’ll provide SOPs, too… if it works so well that you want to build your in-house team).


• If you’re a sales leader or an outbound agency owner: We’ll help you set up the exact systems & tools we use to run automated ‘trigger-based’ campaigns that convert like crazy. 


• And… if you simply want to improve your B2B sales automation skills or learn to run these campaigns yourself, we’ll teach you by building a campaign from scratch together with you —from ‘idea’ to ‘running campaign’ (we’ve done it more than 50 times already, and the rumour says people ❤️ed it).


We've launched hundreds of campaigns, so you don't have to.


Thus - if you: 
- are a B2B service/solution provider making > $50k/month
- provide solutions with Lifetime Value > $10k
- want to shortcut your outbound success


We can help.

Send a DM, and I'll share more details.

Alternatively, reach out to michel[at]coldiq.com 
or via the website 👉 coldiq.com 


__________



And if you're looking to build your top-of-funnel tool stack... 
Check our curated lists of the best outbound tools here 👇

👉 coldiq.com/tools 👈
👉 coldiq.com/ai-sales-tools 👈

Performance-based B2B lead generation 💥 | coldiq.com
→ We help you scale your prospecting activities by implementing outbound sales systems in your business. We take care of sourcing leads, researching your ICP, crafting the sales messages, automating sending and ensuring the high deliverability of messages. We let you focus on what brings money into the business: closing deals.

I turn 31 today. My business made $557,000 last month. But before that, I failed 7 businesses in a row:

Here’s what I tried building... 
and why I'm convinced each 'fail' got me closer to a 'win'


1. I started a clothing brand with my friend Thibault Selderslagh.

👎 We barely managed to sell 15 t-shirts. We had to order minimum 400. So we ended up with 385 t-shirts... now collecting dust somewhere.

👍 But, I learned how to create websites during this process.

↳ ... a skill I used to create the V1 of my website ColdIQ.


2. I co-founded a raffle lottery in the UK 🇬🇧

👎 I invested 40,000€ of my personal savings. We only managed to sell £1,000 worth of lottery tickets.

👍 But, I learned to run ads while desperately trying to sell these tickets.

↳ ... a skill we now use to book 50+ monthly meetings via ads. And that we offer as a service to clients (with some closing > $1M as a result!)


3. I tried to become an Instagram influencer.

👎 I found a hack that grew my account to 29,000 followers. Then it stopped working, and I've lost followers ever since. I never made a dime from the platform, nor did I get offered any free brand product.

👍 But, I learned about social media & algorithms.

↳ ... a skill that got me to be a LinkedIn influencer instead (😆). But more seriously, this led to 15,000,000+ impressions & 1,000+ inbound meetings for my company.

(And we now offer it as a service too... send a DM!)


4. I ran a sports betting affiliate website.

👎 I grew it to $6,000/mo, until it dropped to 0 overnight because of regulation changes in Belgium 🇧🇪

👍 But, I learned a lot about monetizing affiliate brand deals.

↳ ... a skill that allows us to generate > 5-figure per month in passive affiliate revenue.


5 & 6. I started an MMA Betting blog AND a Crypto blog.

👎 None of them made a single $1.

👍 But, I learned SEO & Copywriting

↳ ... skills that are responsible for driving 100s of thousands of visits to ColdIQ's website.


7. I launched a Facebook Ads agency

👎 I booked 15 meetings, and didn't manage to close a single client.

👍 But, I learned cold email in the process.

↳ ... a skill that turned into a service we currently deliver for 70+ clients, amounting to > $500K in MRR.


Takeaway?
You win, or you learn.

And each failure turns into a lesson that lets you try again... better.

So keep pushing!

P.S: What's the worst business idea you've tried... and what did you learn from it? 👀

Failing 7 businesses before growing one

Silicon Valley is the hub of GTM unicorns.

But have you seen what’s going on in Europe?

Giants are being built in countries with just 11M inhabitants 🇸🇪 🇧🇪

And it’s happening all over the continent.

Here are some of my favourite EU success stories:

1. Odoo 🇧🇪

Founded by Fabien Pinckaers, Odoo quitely grew to 40M€ MRR and is now valued at well above $5B.

They did that by breaking all the rules:

→ A generous Freemium model.
→ Kept it open source & community-powered.
→ Built 100s of apps, instead of just ONE block.

All the while: 

- his board was trying to get him fired.
- spending 7 years near bankruptcy.
- losing 16M€ from overnight

Today, it’s 6500+ employees & 750M€ in revenue in 2025.

I’m especially proud of this one, as a fellow Belgian 🇧🇪!


2. Lovable 🇸🇪

Founded by Anton Osika & Fabian Hedin… it’s the loudest success story of the year.

Lovable hit $200M ARR last week, one year after hitting $1M ARR.

At ColdIQ, we use it to build free tools for lead generation purposes.

Testing out prototypes required technical people. 
Most of our team is able to spin off a ‘free email finder’ or a ‘custom client dashboard’ in a day.


3. lemlist 🇫🇷

The French success story that should be studied by everyone in GTM.

Founded by Guillaume Moubeche, now led by Charles Tenot.

It includes lemlist, Taplio & now Claap under one umbrella.

Some things to takeaway:

- A 300K+ combined followers, employee-wide LinkedIn content strategy.
- Unseen build-in-public transparency by their Founder & the entire team.
- Bold acquisitions (i.e: Taplio, Claap) so their app ecosystem covers every GTM function.

At ColdIQ, they're our #1 choice for all our multichannel prospecting campaigns!


4. n8n 🇩🇪

They’ve been a staple in automation teams for some time…

But with the rise of AI agents… they became a category of one.

More modulable than their competitors, more powerful, less expensive… it’s an essential component of modern AI + GTM tech stacks.

It’s saving our team hours of work everyday!


Other GTM success stories across Europe:

🇨🇿 Apify
🇫🇷 Aircall
🇫🇷 arcads AI
🇫🇷 Argil
🇫🇷 Dust
🇫🇷 FullEnrich
🇫🇷 Hyperline
🇫🇷 Prospeo.io
🇬🇧 Attio
🇬🇧 ElevenLabs
🇬🇧 Synthesia
🇲🇰 HeyReach.io
🇪🇸 Genesy
🇪🇪 Pipedrive
🇦🇹 Storyblok
🇳🇱 Expandi
🇳🇱 Framer

… and the list goes on!

P.S: What EU SaaS is on your radar at the moment?

How I would find my first 10 clients if I had to restart from 0:

It's how I've hit > $6.5M+ ARR in 3 years 👇

1. I'd find a ‘free’ way to get my brand out there.

In the beginning: 

You have lots of time.
You have little money.

So you want to start with a time-consuming channel that doesn’t require much funds.

This could be:
→ Writing blog articles.
→ Creating LinkedIn posts.
→ Recording YouTube videos.
→ Being active in niche communities.

I tried them all.
The one that worked best for me was LinkedIn.

It’s what I recommend to all my friends in B2B to get started.


Software you can use:
- Design: Canva or Figma
- Content Ideation: Taplio or Scripe 


2. I'd direct this ‘visibility’ to a short landing page.

Your brand efforts will gather interest.

Interested visitors will check your site or your social profiles.
You want them to understand asap how you help.

The most effective way I found to do so, is to record a 5-min video sales letter, breaking down your offering.

Some people won’t buy straight away.

For them, I’d suggest creating a lead magnet to grab their email addresses
… and nurture them with valuable content over the long term.

For the ones that didn’t provide their emails, you can use visitor identification software to de-anonymize them (in the US).


Software you can use:
- VSL Hosting: Wistia
- Landing Page: Webflow or Framer
- Visitor Identification: Midbound or Instantly.ai


3. I'd reach out to warm ‘high-fit’ leads.

Many prospects will engage with your content but won’t try to schedule a call

Still, they might be interested.

In this case, I’d suggest reaching out to every prospect who’d make an ideal client but hasn’t messaged you yet.

I recommend writing your first 25-50 messages by hand, before trying to automate.

This could look like:
“Hey {{name}}, seems my post on {{topic}} resonated with you. Are you working on {{potential initiatives}}? Happy to swap notes if that’s helpful.

Whatever you write… the magic of manual notes is that it forces you to re-read & improve your messaging every time.

This allows you to uncover patterns…
Which will be invaluable once you scale your sending.


Software you can use:
- Email Outreach: Instantly.ai
- LinkedIn Outreach: Expandi
- Multichannel Outreach: lemlist
- Email Finding: Wiza, Prospeo.io, LeadMagic or FullEnrich.


4. I'd repeat the above steps for 3 months straight before considering giving up. 

This 100% works.
It sounds simple, but it’s challenging to keep working hard when things are uncertain.

Working hard is difficult on its own.
But working hard, when doubting that there’s a point, is even harder.

To make it work, you must somehow convince your brain that you’re not doing this for nothing. Even when you get 0 results in the first weeks, or months.

Repeat these steps enough times.
And you’ll inevitably improve.

Improve enough…
And soon enough, you’ll reap the rewards of your hard labour.

Good luck ✌️

P.S: Who's starting something new in 2026? 👇

Claude can now build advanced n8n workflows from a single prompt.

Just use this Claude project setup, and it will handle 90% of the work 👇

This completely changed how we build automations at our $6.5M ARR agency…

Here’s precisely how we run this:

1. Write a basic prompt describing your workflow. 

Claude (Sonnet 4.5) will read it, break it down & output an n8n JSON file that can be imported.

2. Claude takes care of the complex implementation.

That is:
- Filed mappings + expressions
- Data flow between nodes
- Trigger configurations
- Conditional branches
- Sticky notes for docs
- Error handling

Beware: there are usually a few small items to debug, and it won’t add your API keys for you. But everything else is handled.

Now, what’s included in the system:

1️⃣ Full Claude Project Setup

The system infrastructure that transforms Claude into an n8n workflow builder. 
(Just need to copy paste & you’re ready to go!)


2️⃣ Over 70 n8n Documentation Pages

The official n8n GitHub documentation from which we extracted syntax, capabilities & node references. 

That’s how Claude knows how to build functioning workflows.


3️⃣ Templates & Frameworks

Templates + Frameworks you can copy-paste for use cases like lead routing and social listening.


4️⃣ Real-life Examples 

Our actual prompts vs. the workflows Claude ended up building.
(So you can see what worked well, and what did not).


5️⃣ SOPs to always stay updated with the latest Docs

Step-by-step guide to pull and compile n8n documentation every time there’s a new feature.
(Which is every week in AI world)


Once again, this is democratising complex workflow buildouts.

Starting from scratch or piecing together documentation used to take a lot of time.

“How to build n8n workflows?” has always been a bigger challenge than “what n8n workflow shall I build?”

This flips the questioning on its head.

Spend most of your time thinking about which automation moves the needle for your business. Not how you'll build it.

...and leverage Claude to get 90% of the way there.

If you want to get the entire system, including the documentation package & guide to set it up yourself, comment “PROMPT”, “n8n” or “CLAUDE” and I’ll DM it to you!


P.S: Kenny Damian is our n8n 🐐 at ColdIQ, and the man behind the agentic workflows we build for our > $10M ARR clients. If you want to get access to these value drops before everyone else… you NEED to follow him!

Most companies bet their entire LinkedIn strategy on the Founder.

We get the whole team involved:

Last month, this allowed us to sign 14 new deals, totalling ~$70,000 in MRR for our agency. Plus, another 16 customers won for our educational program.

It’s a win-win.

For the team:
→ They grow their brand, a precious asset they own… and that will benefit them whatever they decide to pursue.

For us:
→ They send visitors to our site and generate qualified leads every single day.

Everyone shares around their domain of expertise: 

- Ivan talks about ABM, LinkedIn Ads & Funnels.
- Millie shares tips on Founder-Led branding.
- Monika shares her best cold email rewrites.
- Kenny shares his latest n8n workflows.

… and the combined posting volume makes it challenging not to come across ColdIQ on your LinkedIn feed.

2026 will be the year of Employee-led branding.

Don’t miss this shift.

Founder: “There are so many sales tools, how do I even pick?”
Me: "I run outbound for 75+ companies. Start here 👇"

(Pick just 1-2 tools per category)

1️⃣ Databases

Accurate data sourcing is the foundation for successful outbound.

You need at least one very reliable data platform.

Some of my favourites include:

1. Clay (starts at $149/mo)
↳ They aggregate 100+ data providers in one place, including as intent platforms and AI agents.

2. Openmart (from $149/mo)
↳ My favourite database for SMBs & local businesses.

3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator (from $99/mo)
↳ The O.G B2B database.

4. Exa’s websets (from $49/mo)
↳ List building agent that retrieves niche data based on plain English prompts.


2️⃣ Enrichment

Your sourced lists will often miss contact data (i.e: email addresses & phone numbers)

To enrich these, I recommend a combination of:

- Wiza (starts at $49/mo)
- FullEnrich (starts at $29/mo for 500 credits)
- Prospeo.io (starts at $39/mo for 1,000 credits)
- LeadMagic (starts at $99.99/mo for 10,000 credits)


3️⃣ Agents

AI agents best prospecting use-case is automating lead research.

Depending on use case, I'll use:

1. Relevance AI (starts at $19/mo)
↳ Ideal to build custom agentic workflows.

2. Claygent (starts $149/mo)
↳ Within Clay, best agent to perform at scale research on your lead lists.

3. n8n (starts 24€/mo)
↳ One of the most flexible, powerful & cost-effective workflow builder.


4️⃣ Signals

You can’t know for sure that companies are in-market for your services.
But you can make an educated guess by monitoring buying signals. 

Some reliable platform to source these signals include:

- Clay (starts at $149/mo)
- Common Room (starts at $1,000/mo)
- Trigify.io for social signals (starts at $149/mo)

lemlist also recently release a ton of signals within their all-in-one platform.


5️⃣ Outreach

Next up, you’ll want to contact your leads, while maximising the likelihood of your messages getting delivered.

Some great options include:

- Instantly.ai for email outreach (starts at $37/mo)

- Expandi for LinkedIn outreach (starts at $99/mo)

- lemlist for multichannel outreach (starts at 69€/mo)


6️⃣ Closing

Tech doesn’t replace a great seller, but they can help by:

1. Facilitating deals data logging, storing & cleaning: Attio (starts at 36€/mo)

2. Recording meetings,taking notes & gathering sales insights: Attention.

3. Capturing lead interactions, and routing insights to Salesforce: Momentum.io (from $69 per user per month)

4. Automating inboud routing: Default (starts at $500/mo)

5. Building clean proposals: Qwilr (starts at $39/mo)


P.S: Have you tried a great sales software recently?

Which one it is? 👇

Sales Technology Stack

I tested way too many AI Sales tools.

Here are the categories I’m closely watching in 2026:

1/ Workflow Builders

Why?

↳ They help you build advanced, multi-step, automated prospecting workflows.

Example use-case: Running a signal-based Clay campaign that scores leads, segments them into several tiers, adds an AI-personalized first line… and pushes contacts to your favourite sequencer. For 1,000+ leads. On autopilot.

Examples include:

→ Relevance AI
→ Outbond
→ Clay
→ n8n


2/ MCPs

Why?

↳ They enable AI agents to take actions by connecting to your tools. Without you needing to manually open them.

Example use-case: Connecting Claude MCP to Google Calendar so that it… 

[1] checks how many sales calls you have today
[2] researches each prospect
[3] provides relevant talking points for the qualified ones…
[4] cancels meetings with unqualified leads. 

All that, without opening your calendar app.

You can prompt via tools such as:
→ Cursor
→ Claude
→ VS Code
→ Mistral AI

And connect to your apps using:
→ Docker, Inc
→ Pipedream
→ Composio


3/ All-in-One Sales Platforms

Why?

↳ They consolidate every essential cold outreach feature within one platform.

Example use-case: Warming up domains, building a lead list, monitoring relevant signals, enriching contact data & automating email outreach (Instantly.ai) or multi-channel outreach (lemlist) without any other prospecting tool. In essence, running your entire prospecting campaign in one place.

Examples include:

→ Instantly.ai
→ Expandi
→ Artisan
→ lemlist


4/ Sourcing Agents

Why?

↳ They source data autonomously, given a set of prompts.

Example use-case: Sourcing a list of Sales Leaders, based in SF, in VC-based startups that have > 5X’d revenue 2 years in a row within the last 3 years… by simply telling Exa, in plain English, that this is the list you’re trying to build.

Examples:

→ Relevance AI
→ Outbond
→ Claygent
→ Tavily
→ Apify
→ Exa


5/ Conversation Intelligence

Why?

↳ They record meetings & extract relevant insights from your business conversations.

Example use-case: Reviewing your latest 100 sales calls via Attention’s agent to figure out the most frequent objections your sales team gets from prospects.

Examples:

→ Momentum.io
→ Fireflies.ai
→ Attention


6/ Signal Platforms

Why?

↳ They monitor intent signals to help you uncover prospects in buying mode.

Example use-case: Monitoring previous product buyers (champions) in Common Room, to pitch your solution when they move to a new company (that doesn’t use your product yet!)

Examples:

→ Common Room
→ TheirStack
→ Outbond
→ Clay


7/ AI SDRs

Why?

↳ They automate your prospecting entirely.

Example use-case: Letting Valley write your outreach, qualify your leads, monitor replies & answer on your behalf.

Examples:

→ Artisan
→ Valley

P.S: What AI Sales software category are you betting on in 2026?

AI Sales Categories for 2026

We’re about to hit $7m ARR. Here’s the GTM workflow that signed us 70+ high-ticket clients: 

Step-by-step breakdown ↓

1. Our team publishes 250+ LinkedIn posts every month.

- We use Taplio to identify posts that outperformed.
- We study the hooks, formats & visuals of these outlier LinkedIn posts.
- We solve our prospects' pain points in our content pieces.

↳ This works so well, I want to do more. Hopefully reaching 500+ monthly posts across the ColdIQ team.


2. We spend $10,000+ a month promoting our most effective publications via LinkedIn Ads.

- We study what posts generate qualified meetings.
- We analyze which ICP books from the posts.
- We boost said post in front of said ICP.


3. We identify anonymous visitors & reach out likers/commenters who didn't schedule a call.

- On ColdIQ’s site: Instantly.ai & Midbound de-anonymise our visitors.
- On LinkedIn: Clay captures our social activity.


4. We route all our warm leads to Clay.


5. We use LLMs to Tier, Segment & Score prospects.

- Claygent automates research at scale on our inbound leads.
- OpenAI prompts segment out leads.
- We contact warm leads via LinkedIn, Email & the phone.


6. We enrich the contact information of our filtered leads.

- We use Prospeo.io, LeadMagic, Wiza to find emails adresses.
- We use Prospeo.io, FullEnrich to look up phone numbers.


7. We send DMs, emails & call ‘warm' prospects.

- We make our outreach concise & valuable.
- We use lemlist for multi-channel outreach
- We use Instantly.ai for email outreach.

- Expandi is another great option for LinkedIn outreach.


8. This workflow booked us 1,500+ meetings in 2025 & closed > $3M ARR already.

- It helped us grow to > 35 FTEs
- It helped us reach > $6.5M in yearly revenue.
- It helped our clients close $500K+ in revenue at > 3-10X ROI


P.S: Anything you’d improve in the workflow below to get us to $10M ARR?

How I get > 30% replies via LinkedIn DMs

By doing the opposite of the 100+ weekly pitches I get:

CONTEXT

I sent 5M+ outbound messages for my $6.5M+ ARR Agency.

Nowadays...

Answering DMs costs me more time than running campaigns.

I'm the CEO at a 33-person company.
(I can't imagine how much outreach execs in big orgs get)

That said, I know most execs check their inbox.
And many reply.

Here's how I decide whether I'll respond or not...

And how I changed my own outreach because of this ↓


✅  DMs offering free work

Some DMs offered a free landing page rewrite or samples of already-made work.

I ran prospecting campaigns and pitched free custom lead lists.
(These were getting me more positive replies than I could handle)

My recommendation: Imagine your prospect is an existing client. What's the first thing you'll do for them? Do it already and send it over!


✅ DMs asking to be referred

Let's say you:
1. Send a message based on a current initiative of ColdIQ
2. Searched who is in charge of this initiative.
↳ I'll gladly refer you to said person

PS: You can automate this 'play' via Clay by combining intent signals & retrieving a leader/manager in a specific department.


❌ DMs asking for time on the 1st touchpoint

Meetings are my personal hell.
I'm fighting every day to eliminate as many of them as possible.

If you're "just asking 15 min of my time" to pick my brain, I won't answer.


✅ DMs from ‘known’ people

An unfair truth in cold outreach: $WHO sends a message matters even more than WHAT the message is.

If you're a well-known executive, I'll most likely reply.

I saw this firsthand as I grew my LinkedIn to 60K+ followers...

The exact same message would perform better, without changing anything.

Pro tip: If you sell B2B products, build your brand on LinkedIn.


❌ Generic templated outreach

The only way to make impersonal, generic outreach work is to send at a massive volume (millions of messages).

LinkedIn doesn't allow such volume.

So you'd be better off doing this by email.
Or better yet... not at all.


✅ DMs sharing valuable insights

Jihad explained this better than I could under one of my posts:

"
The best "free work" isn't actually work → it's insights.

I send technical audits of prospects' platforms.
→ 5-minute analysis
→ 3 specific optimization opportunities 
→ No strings attached

Example: "Your checkout flow has a 23% drop-off at payment verification. Here's why + 2 quick fixes."

- Takes me 10 minutes.
- Shows immediate value.
- Demonstrates expertise without asking for anything.

The key: Make it so valuable they'd typically pay for it.

Generic "free consultation" = everyone does this.
Specific actionable insight = rare.
"

Solving prospects' issues before they pay you a dime is the fastest way to gain their trust.


🔘 Videos or Voice Notes

I listen to voice notes or watch videos.

It annoys people.
But if they're well done, they'll grab attention.

What's a DM you receive you could NOT ignore?

Share it 👇

30% LinkedIn DMs

AI agents are replacing human employees.

Funny enough, they operate in very similar ways:

The smartest agents don’t work alone.
They work in teams.

Some behave like assistants.
Others as managers.

And as with any sort of team, there are different ways to structure their collaboration.

To illustrate this:
We can look at how 3 multi-agent setups would handle the same task…

For example: Scheduling a quarter business review with an important client.


1️⃣ Hierarchical setup

A manager agent assigning tasks to its agent team members.

1. The manager receives a task = Schedule a business review.

2. It tells a subordinate agent to check potential times to meet with the clients.

3. Another agent checks product usage from the client. "Has usage recently dropped? Is engagement still strong?"

4. A 3rd agent drafts an email based on client availability & product usage: 

"Hey Achilles, it's been a while - wanted to ensure you're using the product to the fullest. How about a quick chat next week, Wednesday?”

5. The manager reviews everything and sends the email.


2️⃣ 'Human-in-the-Loop' 

A smart assistant tapping your shoulder when needed.

1. The agent drafts the business review email and finds some available times.

2. But… it sees the client gave negative feedback 2 weeks ago.

3. Before sending the email, it asks you: “Do you want to review the email before I send it?"

4. You make small tweaks, and you send it.


3️⃣ 'Sequential' setup

Like a factory or an assembly line where each person does one task and hands it off to the next.

1. 1st Agent asks: "Is a quarterly business review due?" based on the client's last meeting time.

2. 2nd Agent pulls client's usage data.

3. 3rd Agent drafts a short email.

4. 4th Agent sends the email to book the meeting.


So, when should you use which?

As a rule of thumb:

- Hierarchical setups work well for complex, multi-step tasks.

- Human-in-the-loop setups are recommended for high-stakes, sensitive tasks.

- Sequential setups for ordered workflows with clear dependencies.


P.S: What's one process in your team that would run better...
with some smart agents working behind the scenes? 👇

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