Full Pipeline without 3+ BDRs or a Lead Gen Agency ✨ Top 5 Clay Creator | Founder @ Enablement.ch

You're doing cold outreach already. So your sales pipeline should be full. 

But where are the leads & deals? 

Creating a full sales pipeline is easy. 

You just have to:
→ Create an apollo account and build a list
→ Use an email template from a "LinkedIn Influencer"
→ Send emails & LinkedIn DMs with Lemlist

and on top of that - share content on LinkedIn every day 

You probably tried this already. 
Or hired a Lead Gen Agency to do it for you. 

Why does it not work? 
Here's the truth

#1 - Time
You don't have the time to manually build lists 
AND personalise every message. 

So either reach out to just a few people
or you just spray and pray

#2 - Trust
Everyone can send 1000 emails. 

Just look at your inbox:

→ You are spending 5-10 minutes every DAY to delete emails
→ You look like another Joe Shmoe wanting to ""jump on a call?""

= You & your message don't stand out. 

BUT 

You also know that this can work. 

You see people raving about tools like Clay, RB2B and AI generated messages. 

And you heard about that through people on LinkedIn. 

Ergo personal branding & outreach DO work. 
they can generate qualified meetings,
a full pipeline
and $$$

ONLY 

If you do it right
and create an actual engine
where everything is connected & automated

This system is not just cold outbound
and not just praying that your LinkedIn content creates inbound
This is ALLBOUND

And how do I know this? Two reasons:

#1 - I've done it twice already
 
I generated over $2.4m in revenue in my last role as sales leader at a HubSpot Agency
↳hyper personalised messages at scale in 2022 - BEFORE ai was even possible. 

And now at enablement we generated $200k pipeline in 20 days from a single campaign. 

We practice what we preach. 
Here's how we make our money: 
→ 49.4% Outbound
→ 29.3% LinkedIn
→21.3% Referrals

#2 - We worked with over 70 B2B Tech Companies in the last 18 months

Bound (fintech) 
→ 2x Pipeline in Q1 24
→ 70% Revenue from Cold Outreach

Scrypt (fintech) 
- 10 meetings with C-level per month

Skribble (B2B SaaS)
→ Reduced BDR Team by 80%
→ Still hit revenue targets

XPLN (B2B SaaS)
→ 20+ meetings with CEOs per month

Fruitcore Robotics (Robotics) 
→ Consistently book 85+ meetings per month
→ $543k in Pipeline

If you're thinking now:

"That makes sense, I want know how you REALLY use AI & Automation to create a full pipeline - without a Lead-Gen-Agency or a big BDR team" 

here's the next step. 

DM me and we have a chat. 

PS: This only makes sense if you ACTUALLY want to make a fundamental change in your business and not just looking for a quick fix

Lanny M. Heiz

Humanity is done...and nobody even noticed it

I always thought it was at least 6-12 months out. But 2 weeks ago Gemini just cooked - Gordan Ramsey level. 

Friend told me that Gemini 3 is INSANE for images and he's never seen anything like it. 

So I wanted to give it a try. 

Just took me 2min to create this side-by-side comparison (prompt is in the comments) 

The results are mind blowing. 

The image created by nano banana 2.5 is good - but you can tell it's AI. 

With Gemini 3, no chance

ZERO

Makes me wonder what that means. 

"Pic or didn't happen" is a thing of the past. 

My son will not understand that phrase. 

Welcome to the post-foto-proof world. 

Yes, this is amazing and I'm already training a custom gem to do my LinkedIn graphics. 

...but it's also very strange. 

 What do you think? good or bad?

Lanny M. Heiz ✨

More Pipeline, Less BDRs - using custom AI Agents ✨ Clay Enterprise Partner | Founder @ Enablement.ch

I've spent over $100,000 on tools over the last couple of years. Most of it was wasted. Here are the best (and worst) sales tools for 2026. S + A tier replace a 5-person SDR team and only costs you $2500 a month. 

𝗦 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 - 𝗖𝗮𝗻'𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 (𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗽𝗮𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲)
→ @gemini (google)
→ Anthropic 
→ Clay 
→ n8n 

Clay & n8n give you ANY data you ever wanted AND allow you to automate everything with it - using AI agents

Gemini (Google) & Anthropic (Claude) give you the AI power to run it. 

And I will get hate for this, but OpenAI is not S-tier anymore. It's just cheaper - not better. 
 
 𝗔 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲)
→ OpenAI 
→ lemlist 
→ Common Room 
→ Teamfluence™ 
→ Smartlead 
→ HubSpot 

Commonroom & teamfluence give me the best triggers to run fully automated outreach. 

Smartlead (or Instantly)and Lemlist give you the infrastructure to land in the inbox

HubSpot is still the best CRM. 

𝗕 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲)
→ HeyReach.io
→ TheirStack 
→ Trigify.io 
→ emlen  
→ Make  
 
All tools that give you unique signals and allow you to automate your GTM Process

𝗖 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝗕𝘂𝘆 𝗶𝗳 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗱)
→ Apollo - only for listbuilding (only 1 seat needed)
→ BetterContact (if Clay credits are not enough)
→ FullEnrich FullEnrich (if Clay credits are not enough)
→ Findymail, Prospeo.io, LeadMagic  
→ Sales Navigator

If you need a LOT of data, it makes sense to buy credits from the tools directly and integrate them in clay/n8n. 

𝗗 𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗵𝘆𝗽𝗲𝗱, 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝘆)
→ ZoomInfo ZoomInfo (unless you target only 50 acocunts)
→ Most data providers like Lusha, RocketReach etc.
→ Any linkedin tool other than heyreach & lemlist

Legacy tools that were good 4-5 years ago but did not manage to stay relevant in the AI age. 

𝗘 𝗧𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁)
→ Outreach  
→ Salesloft  

Every single user I know churned eventually. 

Just don't - unless you want to land in spam. 

What would you change in that list? What would you add? 

Comment 👇

R.I.P. to posts with 3 likes and 0 leads

Gemini 3 didn't just Linkedin content better... it completely changed the game.

Founders know LinkedIn content is important - but they don't post 

...no time
...no idea what to say
...no framework to go viral

Does AI solve this? 

I hoped. 

I tried it all

ChatGPT, Claude, Grok...

All sound like AI.

Robotic... 

AI slob does not generate pipeline

So I built a custom Gem on Gemini 3

analysed 10,000 viral linkedin posts

trained it on the top 10% 

Result after 2 weeks

→ 2 posts, 57,866 impressions
→ 14 inbound sales calls
→ $89k in sales pipeline
→ $37.5k new MRR

Here's how it works:

→ Give a post idea (or let it create one)
→ Writes to create meetings - not just likes 
→ Creates 3 posts (trained on the top 10% frameworks)

Want it? 

I got you

Here's the gem 💎 

https://lnkd.in/ebzk5HQU

I’ve spent the last 6 months obsessed over the perfect linkedin post (that is not a “comment x” post). 1.1M impressions and thousands of leads later… I cracked the code. 

And the best part? 

It’s super simple

It’s a framework we now use to write linkedin posts that go viral. And bring leads. At will

And they are NOT giveaway posts. 

Honestly, it was not always like that.  

I used to think only lead magnets would go viral. 

They work. But I did not want to depend on them.  

But I had to. 

Because my normal post got nowhere

→ Zero reach
→ Just a few likes & comments from friends
→ No idea how the algorithm works

So I started to dig. 

Analysed thousands of posts

Talked to ChatGPT till 4am

Tested every hook style possible. 

Then, it finally clicked. 

Suddenly, my posts got 88k, 101k, 312k impressions. 

And NONE of them are lead magnets. 

We now call them TLC posts. 

Giveaway posts are great - but you need to be more than a 1 trick pony. 

That’s why I turned the TLC strategy into a plug-and-play template. 

You get: 

👉The 1 thing nobody talks about that makes you go viral
👉The exact framework we use for all our viral posts
👉What do (and what to avoid) to turn likes into $$

It’s the exact playbook we use at Enablement that turned us into a 7-figure business. 

Get the guide here
https://lnkd.in/ervY6ZJp

I analyzed 20+ B2B companies and discovered something staggering: Companies using 2020 GTM stacks are getting crushed by 73% lower pipeline velocity. Here's what the winners upgraded in 2025:

I pulled data from companies ranging from 50 to 500 employees.

The pattern was crystal clear.

2020 stack = survival mode

2025 stack = domination mode

Here's the exact transformation separating winners from losers:

FINDING LEADS: 

2020: ZoomInfo + Apollo → basic lists

2025: Apollo + Clay + Apify
→ Use Apollo to scrape basic list 
→ Find more leads with Clay 
→ Scrape websites with Apify actor to increase TAM

DATA ENRICHMENT: 

2020: Manual ZoomInfo + Apollo research → Outdated info, missing emails

2025: Clay + Leadmagic + Bettercontact 
→ Email + phone waterfall 
→ Deep research using Claygent 
→ Context-rich personalization

DATA VALIDATION: 2020: 
→Hope emails work 
→ No validation process 
→ No catch-all verification

2025: Findymail + Prospeo + Enrichley 
→ Waterfall enrichment validation 
→ Below 2% bounce rate 
→ Verify catch-alls with Enrichley

SALES ENGAGEMENT: 

2020: Salesloft + Outreach email sequences

2025: Smartlead + Heyreach + Lemlist 
→ Multi-channel orchestration 
→ Social context integration 
→ Personalized touchpoints

CRM: 

2020: HubSpot isolated island → Manual entry, zero integration

2025: HubSpot with API + automation
→ Seamless data flow 

SOCIAL SELLING: 

2020: DM outreach

2025: Teamfluence + Trigify + Claude copilot 
→ Retarget profile visitors 
→ Social triggers for outreach 
→ Personal branding

The numbers tell the story:

→ 2020 teams: 12 meetings/month per rep 
→ 2025 teams: 41 meetings/month per rep

→ 2020 conversion: 2.3% 
→ 2025 conversion: 8.7%

But here's what most people miss. 

The shift isn't just tools. It's philosophy:

2020: Collect tools 
2025: Build ecosystems

2020: Hope data is accurate 
2025: Know data is perfect

2020: Spray and pray 
2025: Precision targeting

Your stack determines your ceiling.

Most teams stuck in 2020 while competitors dominate with 2025 approaches. Companies making this transition in the next 90 days will have massive advantage.

You: 743 followers, Your post: 348 impressions
(What to do instead) 

LinkedIn Influencer: 24'912 follower
Their post: 134'521 impressions

Yes, you can walk from Berlin to Zurich
But taking the plane is faster. 

So instead of making tiny steps and getting 348 impressions, comment on viral posts in the EARLY minutes. 

Your comment gets the SAME 134'521 views as the original posts

You go just as viral as the post. 

This is why this works so well

You're high-jacking the reach of influencers for your micro-posts that disguise themselves as comments

Here's how I added 5k followers in the last 6 months

1. Follow 20 influencers my ICP listens to
2. Activate notifications when they post
3. Leave a "micro-post" as comment

People see that and notice

"This Lanny guy is smart"

Check out my profile

I catch that signal and automatically qualify them in clay and reach out if they are a good fit. 

Books 4x more meetings than your normal cold outreach.

In the last 6 months, we helped 36 tech companies FIX clay - after they've tried it on their own for half a year and got no results. These are the 3 mistakes ALL of them make

It drives me crazy. 

Companies spend $12,000 and 120+ hours implementing clay - and still don't have a full pipeline. 
 
6 months ago I had to explain to people what Clay is - now companies come to us asking for help (after they've failed to implement it) 
 
And it's always the same 3 things why it fails: 
 
1.) TIME & KNOW-HOW
Everyone underestimates the learning curve you have with clay - because it requires a new role to work with it
 
...RevOps can connect the tools but they don't know marketing & sales
...Marketers are not good at writing cold emails that convert
...SDRs are not tech-savvy enough
 
That's why you spend 2-3 months setting up clay when in reality it should take you 3 weeks. 
 
You need a GTME. Hire one or get a partner to help you. 
 
2.) NOT CONNECTED
 
If you have clay and you're still using ANY csv files - you do not understand the point of it. 
 
Clay is the glue that connects your CRM/Product data with your outreach
 
If you have it connected properly, you can do things like
 
- Auto-enrich your CRM
- Reach out to free trial/PLG users 
- Exclude deals/clients from your outreach
- Personalized nurture sequences for lost deals
 
and much more. All of it on autopilot
 
3.) ONLY USE IT FOR COLD OUTREACH
 
You're using clay like it was Zoominfo or Lusha
 
- Find leads, emails and phones
- Add to a sequence
 
New tool, old way of working
 
But that's not what clay is about. 
 
Instead, it's the tool to combine your outbound and inbound motion into an Allbound GTM motion. 
 
→ Identify Inbound Leads (Ads, website, social) 
→ Qualify leads for ICP fit
→ Personalise outreach
 
These allbound campaigns perform 14x better than normal cold outreach for us. 
 
TAKEAWAY
1. Get an expert to set it up (internal or external) 
2. Connect it with your CRM + outreach tools
3. Combine inbound + outbound = Allbound

How we book 20+ meetings per month with 2h of work for that last 11 months (and turning it into 100k+ p/m)

👉 # 1 Content

Last year we lost out on 6 figures in revenue. At least. 

This year we stared to take LinkedIn seriously.

It pays off: 

→ 3x followers 
→ 200k impressions per month 
→ 23% revenue from LinkedIn Inbound

We created our own AI to do the content for us.

I review it quickly and post it
Takes 30 min per week.

👉 # 2 Collect Leads

If you viewed my profile
commented on a post
or left a like

Teamfluence™ ™ collect all the leads and sends it Clay
It's like RB2B for linkedin

👉 # 3 Enrich, Qualify and Personalize
 
Clay automates everything

→ Qualify the lead if they fit our customer profile
→ Find and validate the email address
→ Personalise the message
→ Send to campaign

👉 # 4 Engage Leads

We enrol the leads in our best performing campaign. 

The conversions are 166% higher than before

The tools?

Smartlead for emails
HeyReach.io for LinkedIn

👉 # 5 Sync Positive Replies

We created our own Tool (InboxManager) to use AI an all replies

✅ Positive? 
➡️ Sync to HubSpot

This way we have all the data in our CRM
and can report where our revenue comes from. 


👉 # 6 Win Deals

We win 68% of all our deals. 
20% come from this Allbound flow alone

# Summary

There is ONLY one manual step in this entire workflow. 

Copy/paste the LinkedIn content our AI wrote

The rest is FULLY automated. 

Every. Single. Step.

It feels like we're printing money. 
with 0 effort

Should I post a video about this in detail? 
Comment your thoughts below👇

Allbound Flow

Chili Piper hit $30M+ pipeline with just 2 marketers in 2025 — while cutting costs by 50%. Now they leaked their 2026 budget (it's the opposite of what most tech companies do)
 
INSIGHT

Back in November 2023, Founder Alina Vandenberghe 🌶️ was staring at spreadsheets with bloodshot eyes.
 
Every tab told a different story.
 
Sales leads in one silo. Marketing campaigns in another.
 
Deals were stalling. The quiet blame game had started.
 
The obvious fix? Hire more SDRs.
 
She did the opposite.

After looking at the data, she found one pattern:

- Deals from Marketing close in 243 days
- Deals from SDRs close in 300 days
- Combined they close in 192 days

That's 36% faster. 

And they were also bigger. 50% higher ACV

The problem was not headcount or marketing spend. 

The problem was the mindset

There is no inbound. No outbound

Only Allbound.

That's when she decided to shift the budget
 
BUDGET SHIFT

Investing 6-10% of your ARR on GTM is the gold standard. But most B2B companies spend it wrong: 

- 40-50% on programs (demand gen, content etc) 
- 10% on tools & tech
- 40% on people

Companies overspend on people because they still follow the "predictable revenue model" - and this requires a lot of people to run. 

That does not scale in an AI world. 

Chillipiper's Allbound budget looks different: 

→ 60% on programs (demand gen & content)
→ 25% on tools (AI agents + orchestration)
→ 15% on people (GTME not SDRs)


Before they had 10 inbound SDRs manually qualifying leads. Now, 1 GTM operator does the same job with AI Agents. 

Same pipeline output.  Fraction of the cost.

Here's what the AI Agents do: 
 
→ Inbound qualification and routing
→ Meeting prep summaries 
→ Filter our spam leads
→ No-show follow-ups 

  
THE RESULTS
 
→ Costs down 50% 
→ 30,000,000 in pipeline
→ 100% increase in ACV
→ Deals close 36% faster
 
🔑 THE TAKEAWAY
 
2026 isn't about buying more AI tools or hiring more reps.
 
It's about two shifts:
 
1. Move budget from people to programs + tech
2. No inbound. No outbound - just Allbound
 
The teams that win won't have the biggest budgets.
 
They'll have the tightest alignment.

Cold Email as BDR for Google: 

"I'm impressed you breathe air. I breathe air too!"

"Here's a 5-paragraph AI-pitch-slap"

"Book a meeting with my link"


Email still lands in the primary inbox and the prospect books the meeting

Cold Email as BDR for Startups: 

- 6 clay tables and 2 n8n workflows to build lists
- 100 inboxes sending only 5 emails a day
- Warm-up your inboxes for 4 weeks
- Don't ask for a call, give value 
- AI hyper-personalisation
- Signal-based outreach


Takeway:
Be Google


Kudos to all the startups cracking cold email as an unknown brand

PS: Google please don't ban all my future emails for this one.

PPS: More memes in the comments

I don't care how much hate I'll get for this: Here are 5 AI agents I created instead of hiring, training and managing humans (exhausting). They make us 7 figures. Here's how. 

BACKGROUND
I was always impressed by founders who have big teams and a lot employees. It was a proxy for success. The more people, the better. 

This is just not true anymore. It just means you are a dinosaur that works in a pre-AI world. 

And I don't like to manage 10-20 humans. 

So I created these AI agents for us. 

1/ Content Writer
 Last month, we made ca. $80,000 directly from LinkedIn alone

That wasn't always the case. I knew it was important, but I was facing the same 3 challenges over and over again:

1- WHAT should I post?
2- HOW do I write, so people read it?
3- WHEN do I even find time to write a post?

Our AI content agent solves all 3: 
→ Identifies trending topics in sales
→ Turns insights into post drafts for LinkedIn
→ Adds my personal experience & insight to every post

I just review it quickly on every Monday morning. 

2/ Campaign creator

If you're building you want to launch a campaign you are starting from zero every time. And you contact people randomly - not only the ones who are IN THE MARKET right now

That's why we created a signal-based AI agent that reaches out to qualified leads on autopilot and books us 20+ meetings a month.

→ Uses signals like job changes or LinkedIn engagement
→ Qualifies each lead for ICP fit
→ Personalises every message
→ Reaches out automatically

3/ Reply Manager
We used to have a VA handle our email replies. Now it's all done by an AI agent trained on our previous responses. Reply time is down to 0

→ Analyses responses from LinkedIn and Email
→ Segments into negative, neutral or positive
→ Gets me the lead's phone number
→ Creates tasks in HubSpot
→ Drafts replies

4/ Sales Coach

6 months ago, my closing rate dropped to 20%. And I had no idea why. Last month it was 53.85%. Here's how I build my AI agent that breaks down every call

→ Trained it on 100 sales call transcripts of won deals
→ Automatically sending every sales call over
→ Agent scores it + detailed breakdown 
→ I review the best & worst parts

5/ Customer Onboarder

When we started 2 years ago, every customer had to fill out an onboarding form asking questions like

• Who's your ICP? 
• What's your value prop?
• What titles are you selling to? 
• What case studies do you have? 

If you're selling AI & Automation, this is not what you expect. And it took customers 2 weeks to fill it out properly. Now it's done in 3-4 minutes by our Agent

→ Reviews your website + competitors
→ Gets case studies, pains & value prop 
→ Drafts the first messages for the campaign 
→ Creates the list of target accounts + personas


TAKEAWAY:
Look at all your business processes. What steps are you doing over and over again?

Ask yourself: "HOW can this be done with AI instead of Humans?"

Scalera

Scalera is an ETH Zurich spin-off revolutionizing construction tendering through AI-powered automation, enabling contractors and suppliers to transform the tender-to-offer process from hours to seconds.
As Founder and CEO, my role is to build Europe's leading construction technology platform while assembling world-class engineering talent to help the construction industry build faster and more efficiently.
Key Responsibilities:

- Setting vision and strategy for AI-driven construction innovation
- Leading fundraising efforts and managing investor relations
- Building and nurturing a diverse team of 20+ including former Google and Yandex engineers
- Driving expansion from Swiss market dominance to DACH-wide growth
- Maintaining direct customer relationships to ensure product-market fit

Achievements/Results:

- Raised $6.5M in pre-seed/seed funding despite two YC rejections
- Scaled to 110+ B2B customers within 18 months of launch
- Processed over €8 billion in tender volume with 65% market penetration in Switzerland
- Recruited world-class team including ETH CS PhDs and engineers from Google, Yandex
- Secured partnerships with industry leaders and angel investors including Slack's founder

Ready to revolutionize your construction tendering process? Book a demo at scalera.ai or connect with me on LinkedIn.

CEO & Co-Founder

InClub

InClub was a B2C social platform connecting people with similar passions through IRL experiences, reaching over 15,000 users before its acquisition.

As Co-Founder, my role was to build and scale a consumer social platform from concept to successful exit, including pitching on Switzerland's Shark Tank ("Die Höhle der Löwen").

Key Responsibilities:

- Product development and user experience optimization
- Securing investment from 4 out of 5 sharks on national television
- Building partnerships and managing investor relations
- Leading marketing initiatives and community growth
- Managing technical development with remote teams

Achievements/Results:

- Grew platform to 15,000+ active users within 3 years
- Successfully pitched and won investment on Shark Tank Switzerland
- Featured in multiple national newspapers and media outlets
- Built and managed distributed team across multiple countries
- Learned invaluable lessons about B2C dynamics that now inform B2B strategy

Startup Co-Founder InClub AG

Plug and Play Tech Center

Plug and Play Tech Center is a global innovation platform connecting startups, corporations, and investors across 40+ locations worldwide.

As an Investment Intern, I analyzed early-stage startups for potential investment and accelerator programs, gaining crucial insights into what makes startups succeed or fail.

Key Responsibilities:

- Evaluating 50+ startups per week across various verticals
- Conducting due diligence and market analysis
- Supporting portfolio companies with strategic advice
- Connecting startups with corporate partners and investors

Achievements/Results:

- Analyzed early-stage, Pre-Seed to Series B startups in specific verticals
- Built expertise in investment proposal analysis and decision-making
- Developed skills in brainstorming solutions during bottlenecks
- Created network connections that continue to benefit my entrepreneurial journey

Investment Intern

Notariat, Grundbuch und Konkursamt Stäfa

The Swiss notary system handles critical legal documentation for real estate transactions, company formations, and official certifications.

As a Notary Public, I gained deep insights into legal structures and bureaucratic inefficiencies that would later inspire my entrepreneurial journey.

Key Responsibilities:

- Processing real estate transactions and land registry updates
- Managing company incorporation documents
- Ensuring legal compliance for complex transactions
- Direct client interaction with construction and real estate companies

Achievements/Results:

- Completed comprehensive 3-year vocational training in Swiss legal system
- Gained expertise in company formation and legal structures
- Identified massive inefficiencies in construction/real estate documentation
- Built foundation for understanding the pain points I now solve at Scalera

This experience taught me that the construction industry was desperate for digital transformation - a realization that eventually led to founding Scalera.

Notariatsangestellter 

I'm on a mission to revolutionize Europe's construction industry - making it faster, smarter, and more efficient through AI.

At 20, I took the leap into entrepreneurship, starting with event management (our first event drew 1,200 people!), then building a social platform that reached 15,000 users and caught the attention of Shark Tank Switzerland.

But it was construction that captured my imagination. Walking through Zurich and seeing buildings rise from the ground, I knew this industry - with $130B+ TAM - was ready for transformation.

Today at Scalera, we're making that vision reality. Our AI platform has already processed over €8 billion in tender volume, serving 110+ companies across DACH. Backed by Speedinvest and Firstminute Capital ($1.5B+ AUM), and 150+ Unicorn Founders, we've achieved 65% market penetration in Switzerland alone. With a world-class team including former Google and ETH engineers, we're turning a process that takes hours into one that takes seconds.

What drives me? Every building I pass in Zurich might have materials that went through our platform. That's the impact I'm after - not just software in the cloud, but real infrastructure you can see and touch.

Ready to build faster? Let's transform your tendering process together.

→ Book a demo at scalera.ai
→ Connect with me to discuss the future of construction tech
→ Join our team if you're a top engineer ready to build Europe's future

P.S. Still a doer at heart - I believe in taking action over endless planning. Let's build something great together.

Leonard Reinhard

For 4 years I worked full-time while studying for my bachelor’s degree on Saturdays. Looking back, it was the most disciplined period of my life.

At that time, InClub wasn’t generating revenue yet.

We had articles written about us, but not much traction. I wanted to use the period productively and develop myself while we were figuring things out.

So I structured my entire life around making it work:

• 5 AM wake-up every morning
• 1 hour of focused study before work
• 45-minute boat commute from Küsnacht to Thalwil
• Full workday until 6-7 PM to catch the last boat home
• Never missed a Saturday class
• Never missed an hour of work

I did this for 2 years straight during our toughest phase, when we were pivoting from InClub, shutting down consulting, and going all-in on Scalera.

The gym was part of the structure too.

In 2023, even with this schedule, I trained six days a week.

At some point, the discipline became a flow. I would wake up automatically at 5 AM. If I didn’t train, it felt wrong.

That consistency also shaped how Scalera operates today.

In our old office, everyone sat in one room.

You could hear the sales team calling all day. You could feel the tension. Everyone was putting the reps in.

That’s the culture we built: act fast, stay disciplined, stay focused.

When I finished my degree in May, I considered doing a master’s. Instead, I decided to go all in on Scalera, and that determination grows stronger. Day. By. Day. 

But I’m grateful for that period.

It showed me that if you structure your days well and stay consistent, things that look impossible become doable.

And that discipline is now part of how we build Scalera.

Making Construction Tendering 10x Faster Through AI | €8B+ Tender Volume Processed | Founder @ Scalera (ETH Spin-off) | Scaling from DACH to Europe

Last week was my first time at Slush, and it ended up being a lot more eventful than I expected. The theme this year was “Welcome to Hel-sinki”. They really leaned into the joke. 

It was my second time in Helsinki, but my first time at Slush, and what surprised me most was how many founders from Switzerland I ran into.

• Jan Schnyder (Nunu .ai)
• Lukas Steiner (Arcium)
• Quirin Hasler (Refluenced)
• Pascal Weber (Manukai)
• Stefan Rau (ChessLine)

It almost felt like a Zurich meetup inside Europe’s biggest investor conference.

For context: Slush is the major investor conference in Europe.

Startups, scale-ups, investors, ecosystem partners - everyone is there. 

You get a startup ticket, scale-up ticket, investor ticket, or ecosystem ticket (think Stripe, Siemens, etc.), and the whole event is organized around back-to-back 1:1 meetings.

And those meeting rooms… it's just endless tables, every one of them booked. I was fully booked for the entire event - back-to-back meetings all day.

A funny moment:

A friend of mine, Lukas, ended up talking to another founder working on a hardware compression startup, and now he’s considering making an investment. What started as a quick chat turned into a real angel conversation.

But the most important takeaway for me was the investor perception of Scalera.

Across two days, I got to speak with almost all the S-tier funds relevant to our space.

And I was invited to the private investor lounges, the two-floor area where only the top funds host meetings - Thanks, again, Northzone, for the first invite. Dominik Esen 

Before Slush even officially kicked off, our investors (First Minute) hosted a joint pre-party called Day 0 with Creandum. That alone was one of my highlights.

And later that day, Kelly Kung at Accel invited me backstage in their tent, which felt a bit like being treated as a rockstar in Helsinki.

Overall, the few days made something clear: Scalera is resonating externally just as strongly as it is internally, and we’re solving a real problem in a market most people underestimate.

And reconnecting with other Swiss founders there reminded me: Switzerland is just the starting point. European construction is where the real opportunity is. And I’m really proud of the ETH ecosystem.

There’s real momentum, real interest, and a market that’s finally ready for the kind of change our team is building toward.

We tested OCR solutions from startups that raised $100M+. Our in-house solution, built as a byproduct, outperformed them all (Kudos to our tech team). Here's what happened:

Scalera needs to extract data from construction tender documents. 

These aren't clean PDFs. 

These documents are messy, inconsistent, and every position can have its own context, unit, and formatting. 

For example, quantities might be in cubic meters, tons, or units, and they can appear anywhere in the document.

So we tested external OCR solutions first, hoping to avoid building this ourselves.

We tried tools from companies like Reducto (backed by a16z, over $100M raised) and Unstract (backed by Lightspeed). 

They handle OCR for sectors like healthcare and finance. We hoped we could simply use them instead of building our own.

But they couldn’t read tender files accurately enough.

The problem isn't technology in general. 

It's the specific complexity of construction documents:

• Context matters → A concrete specification on page 1 affects how you read page 100.
• Quantities appear anywhere → Cubic meters, tons, units, all scattered across varying formats.
• No standardization → Every architect and contractor formats documents differently.

Algorithmically, this is extremely hard.

So our engineering team built the capability internally.

We developed rules for interpreting context across pages, and bounding boxes to reliably locate quantities, even when they appear in different places every time.

It took heavy engineering work, but it now handles the files we work with every day.

What’s interesting is that OCR is the entire product for some of these companies. For us, it’s just something we needed in order to automate tenders properly.

They’re not competitors. In fact, we’d prefer if we could just use their tools.
But since they don’t yet support construction, we can stick to our solution for now.

At Scalera, we have a mannequin in the office named Bob dressed as a construction contractor, and Bob’s job is simple:

To remind everyone that we're building for users, not for ourselves.

When engineers debate features or prioritize the roadmap, I point to Bob. 

"Did you talk to him about this?" 

If not, it's time to schedule customer calls.

It's a humorous approach, but it reinforces one of our core values: talk to users.

That value isn't just a poster on the wall. It's built into how we evaluate every team member at Scalera.

We benchmark employees across multiple dimensions:

• Problem-solving skills
• Communication effectiveness  
• Speed of execution (pragmatic action over endless deliberation)
• Client interactions (how well they understand and respond to customer needs)

If you want to grow here, these values matter. It’s how we evaluate whether someone is truly a Scalerian.
_____

Right now, we're hiring backend engineers.

Technical stack:

• Python (backend)
• React + Next.js (frontend)
• Terraform, OpenAI, GCP across the stack

But technical skills alone aren’t enough.

We want engineers with strong communication skills who are willing to talk to customers, understand their pain, and turn that into product decisions.

That’s why the mannequin stays.

It’s a simple way to reinforce a simple value: Talk to users.

If that sounds like you, we’re hiring in Zurich (or willing to relocate).

Recently, Sven (our co-founder) and Markus Breu (Zindel Group) presented what Scalera delivers in front of 200 people. The results he shared:

1. Group-wide rollout across the entire Zindel Group
2. 80% reduction in technical office workload for supplier and subcontractor coordination
3. Significantly better quote quality through clearer requests from the technical office – faster turnaround included

What surprised me most was the questions came from managing directors and sales leaders who know that skilled labor shortage isn't a problem you solve with job postings anymore.

Here's the truth nobody likes to say out loud: AI simply expands the team’s capacity for real value creation.

When your technical office spends 80% less time on coordination, what do they do instead?

• They advise customers
• They optimize calculations
• They win the projects that actually matter

It was a wonderful experience validating the reason we built Scalera, and I hope to see more at next year's conference.

Until then: Those who don't automate today will lose due to their own inefficiency.

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