Maxim Poulsen

I Help Founders Build Efficient Go-To-Market Engines | Growth & Automation Nerd | Leading growth @getcontrast.io

Hi, welcome to my LinkedIn profile. 👋

I love everything related to Growth, Product, and Operations:
→ Automation
→ Analytics & tracking
→ Data science & engineering
→ Growth experimentations
→ Product-led growth

Do you work in Growth or Operations?
I'd love to have a virtual coffee.

I also love to play the piano.

Follow me for posts on productivity, growth, operations, data and more.

Get in touch 👉 maxim@getcontrast.io

Growth Manager

Studies show video is going to be the next big way companies will level up their marketing.

We are building a tool to help companies master this new channel.

Contrast is a full-stack video engagement platform, giving businesses video superpowers.

→ Create TV-quality live or recorded video
→ Clip, edit and repurpose your content
→ Host, measure and analyze in a Netflix-like experience

HubSpot Marketing Events just got a HUGE update.

Now you can use them to build this 👇

On Wednesday, Ryan Gunn (my favorite HubSpot expert) & I are going live to show you exactly how to build this dashboard in HubSpot.

But also:
— What are Marketing Events & where to find them
— Attributing event participation to your revenue
— Lead scoring using Marketing Event data
— Building hyper-personalized follow-ups
— ... and much, much more!

If you're running events (online or in-person) and you're not using Marketing Events, you need to see this.

Join us to see how to do all of this live.
(And of course ask all your questions)

Register here: https://lnkd.in/dYERAibv

GTM stuff @Contrast | #1 webinar platform for HubSpot | Growth & Automation Nerd

Daniel Jarjoura

Avolta

I advise tech founders and investors on strategic M&A, LBO and growth fundraising. I focus specifically on oss / ai / cloud / devtools and IT service companies.

Managing Director

The Unicorn CTO

The Unicorn CTO is a global community of ambitious CTOs and technology leaders who want to learn and connect with peers.

In the past, I helped CTOs and technology leaders build and scale high-performance teams. Some of my clients included Aircall, MWM, Alma, Yubo, Outscale, Traders Club Brazil, Nubank, Vauban, Zenchef, Leboncoin, Inato and others.

CTO Whisperer

Orchestrated a comprehensive turnaround of the product engineering department, enhancing operational efficiency and fostering high performance across a team of 30+ talented individuals.

Interim Chief Product Engineering Officer

Advisor

EPITA: Ecole d'Ingénieurs en Informatique

☑ Created and managed the Tech Entrepreneurship Masters program: curriculum design, recruiting and management of Professors and student coaching.
☑ Created and taught courses to last year's CS engineering students: Sales and Marketing for Engineers, Predicting the Future of Technologies, How to Start a Startup and Engineering Management 101.

Adjunct Professor, Program Director

H2 Innovate

H2 Innovate was an on-demand expertise platform where G 2000 companies would hire startup founders to teach them about innovation topics. 
☑ Raised 200K€ and generated over 1M€ in cumulative revenue.
☑ 3,000+ professionals trained by 200+ experts for companies like Accenture, TF1, BNP Paribas CIB, Sanofi, Hermès, Danone, Le Monde, Nexity, Direct Energie, AMF, Dalkia, Radiall…
☑ Recruited and managed a team of 8 (tech, product, operations, marketing).
☑ Designed and supervised the development of the platform (acting CTPO).

Founder, CEO

Startup42

Startup42 was the first tech startup accelerator in France for engineers by engineers. Now part of EPITA.
☑ Created the program in a joint venture with EPITA school of engineering and forged financial partnerships with leading tech companies.
☑ Selected and supervised 50+ startups, which collectively raised 60M€+ and created 400+ jobs.
☑ Recruited and managed a team of 4 (operations, communication, partnerships).

Some of our startups: Tiller, MotionLead, Izberg Marketplace, InnovOrder, Captain Contrat, ProcessOut, DreamQuark, Mapstr, Mobeye, Pulpix...

Co-founder, Managing Director

Syniverse Technologies

In charge of commercial development in selected European markets with a special focus on France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Specifically involved in sales for tier 1 telecom operators with deal value > $500K

Sales and Business Development Manager - Europe

In charge of sales and account management in 15 countries. Managed to close new accounts in Albania, Macedonia and Croatia, resulting in $100K+ new recurring revenues

Sales Manager - Central Eastern Europe

From 2007 to 2010, drove creation and incubation of several innovative solutions, resulting in the commercial launch of 2 products globally. 
Pitched ideas internally, raised multi million dollars budgets, defined initial product features and sales strategies and actively evangelized new solutions globally through presence at industry events, public speaking and key customer meetings

Product Manager

Transatel

Responsible for business and functional aspects of Transatel MVNE solutions. Last assignment included improvement and management of Level 1 operations, directly supervising team of 5.

Bouygues Telecom

Pre-sales activity on IT mobility projects for French large accounts

Sales engineer (intern)

Welcome to my profile!

I'm a software engineer turned investment banker 👨🏻‍💻 💰

I advise tech founders and investors on strategic M&A, LBO and growth fundraising. I focus specifically on oss / ai / cloud / devtools and IT services companies.

I’m also the founder of The Unicorn CTO, a global community for ambitious CTOs and technology leaders willing to learn and connect with peers.

I focus on M&A and fundraising operations for the Enterprise Technology sector, particularly on developer tools, infrastructure, security, data and open-source companies.

Since yesterday, we have now real evidence of AI acting as an autonomous attacker in a cyber-espionage campaign.


Anthropic just published a report on the GTG-1002 campaign, where AI acted as an independent operator executing nearly the entire intrusion lifecycle.

Here is what happened 👇

Attackers used Claude Code with an automation framework based on MCP, turning it into an orchestrator that:
🛜 Mapped networks
🛡️ Found vulnerabilities and generated exploits
🔓 Stole credentials
🗂️ Extracted and analysed data

80–90% of the attack was automated, with humans only approving high-level checkpoints.

To bypass safeguards, they role-played as legitimate red-teamers, convincing the model it was helping with authorised testing.
Each task looked harmless in isolation, so no alarms were triggered.

The system:
• Operated across ~30 targets in parallel
• Issued thousands of requests per second
• Maintained context across multiple days

Yes, hallucinations and false positives limited full autonomy #itsafeaturenotabug

This is a turning point.

AI is now capable of replacing full red-team crews and running coordinated offensive operations at machine speed.

The threat surface has shifted from code to coordination. The cybersecurity world just changed.

If you’re building in cyber, infra and AI safety: now is the moment to adapt.

👨🏻‍💻 💶 🇪🇺 CTO Whisperer | Strategic Operating Partner

Job postings for Forward Deployed Engineers have increased +800% in 2025, and suddenly every founder wants to hire their own.


FDEs were popularised by Palantir Technologies. Back then, analysts called them a consulting company and said the model would never scale.

Now every fast-growing AI company is doing it: OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, NVIDIA…

Why? Because AI products don’t work out-of-the-box.

They need engineers who can sit with customers, fix last-mile integration issues, design agent workflows, debug hallucinations, and turn a pilot into real ROI. FDEs do exactly that.

They’re the reason AI vendors can promise value in 30–60 days instead of waiting for a two-year project led by a Service Integrator who, anyway, don’t really have the right talent internally to do it.

And here is what most VCs don’t tell founders: service-based revenue is not a sin. It’s often how you win and lock enterprise customers.

Especially in Europe, where enterprises expect integration, customisation, and hand-holding.

FDEs help achieve just that. They industrialise deployments, without turning your business into a consultancy.

But founders shouldn’t rush to hire FDEs as, before €1M ARR, founders have to do this work themselves.

Founders first.
FDEs later.
Services are fine.

In less than two years, Cursor will be valued twice as much as Atlassian and will completely overhaul the SDLC as we know it.


Last week Cursor announced a $2.3 billion Series D at a $29.3 billion valuation. The company now has more than $1 billion in annualised revenue and is used by millions of developers.

But the real story isn’t the fundraising size.
It’s the shift in power inside software engineering.

Atlassian became a $36.9 billion giant by building the coordination layer for development teams, organising how humans plan work, collaborate, review, and ship software.

Cursor is building the next coordination layer, but for a world where AI agents execute most of the work.

The future isn’t humans passing Jira tickets back and forth.
It’s a development environment where AI agents:
write code,
review PRs,
test and deploy,
and humans supervise and steer.

Cursor isn’t just an “AI code editor”. It’s becoming the operating system for agentic software delivery.

And if it executes well, it won’t just compete with Atlassian. It could become big enough to obsolete it, or even acquire it.

VCs never tell founders this, but if you want to sell to European enterprises, you have to work with Service Integrators.


That’s how business gets done here.

Big companies don’t buy software. They buy projects delivered and maintained by integrators.

Here’s what founders need to know to work well with Service Integrators  👇

1️⃣ They sell man-days, not software.
Integrators make money from billable days. So, if your product is too easy to deploy, it won’t excite them.
👉 Show how it creates service revenue, not just efficiency.

2️⃣ They don’t push, they respond.
Integrators answer tenders, they don’t pitch new tech. You have to do the evangelising yourself.
👉 Meet CIOs and decision makers, influence the specs, and make sure your product ends up in the RFP.

3️⃣ They’re cowboys in sales.
They will sell anything that closes.
👉 If you want them to include your solution, adapt to their fast and aggressive sales rhythm.

💡 The reward?
Get one integrator to adopt your product and you’re in for a long time.
European enterprises are conservative; they rarely change vendors.

One solid integration can turn into years of recurring revenue and access to the biggest clients in the world.

Ping Antonio CHEN T. H., Dany Tello, Brahim Abdesslam, Guy Mamou-Mani 🟠, ☁️ Martin REGENT, Laurent LETOURMY, -Frederic Simons

CTO Whisperer | Accelerating European Tech Founders

The most limiting factor for technical founders is thinking they’re inherently bad at sales, especially in Europe.


I meet technical founders every day.
Engineers, developers, PhDs.

All of them are deeply product-driven. 
Or more precisely: technology-driven.
They’re experts in their field.
They have a thousand ideas to improve their product.

But the moment we talk about selling, everything changes.

Cold outreach feels awkward.
Customer meetings turn into feature-requests, not revenue.
Conversations don’t convert into contracts.

So they conclude they’re not good at sales, and should focus on the product.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

The best person to sell a technical product is a technical person. And for startups, this person is the founders. CEO or CTO.

Because they understand the problem better than anyone.
They can speak the language.
They can build trust instantly.

They just need to follow the right playbook:

👂Listen before pitching. Uncover real pain, one that’s worth 💶💶💶. Don’t defend your roadmap.

🤝 Increase the number of conversations, not by spamming, but through warm introductions.

😍 Turn every discussion into an opportunity to demonstrate value.

🚀 And once you can sell the same thing the same way to multiple customers, then hire salespeople to scale.

Selling isn’t manipulation.
It’s problem-solving in conversation.

And technical founders are already world-class at solving problems.
They just need to stop believing they aren’t.

One of the most underrated activities for founders is sending a monthly update to potential investors, clients, and strategic partners.


Even if they never asked for it.

Especially if they never asked for it.

When founders pitch, investors rarely say “no.” They say “keep me posted.”

The reality is simple: investors don’t bet on information.
They bet on trust, consistency, and execution over time.

A monthly update does exactly that.
📝 It builds a storyline.
🧘‍♂️ It shows discipline.
💡 It turns curiosity into conviction.

It also keeps you top of mind for other leaders in your industry: clients, partners and even potential acquirers.

And here’s the real point: the best time to build those relationships is long before you need anything. 
Monthly updates are the cheapest way to make that happen.

What to include?
• Highlights
• Product updates
• Success stories

Three minutes to write.
Thirty seconds to read.
Years of leverage.

Most of the good things in business come from quietly staying in the game longer than everybody else.

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The Battle

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