Founder @ lemlist

👋 I'm G., and here's my story in a nutshell:

- Founded 2 businesses: one sold at $600k ARR, the other valued at $150M+
- Authored a book - "The $150M Secret"
- Featured in 200+ media outlets

📈 $0-$40M ARR in 7 yrs without funding with lempire (lemlist, lemwarm, taplio, tweethunter, lemcal)

💸 Sharing my learnings on Profit-led Growth: the only resource you need to grow a profitable SaaS business

What you'll get by following me:

🚀 Actionable tips to grow a profitable SaaS business

🔥 Transparent & actionable advice, no fluff

💼 Exclusive updates on lempire’s growth

I’ll be posting business growth tips and tricks - so hit that “Follow” button!

Peace, love & profit ✌️

G.

Your friend just launched a company.

You have the power to change their life forever - here's how:

1- Buy the product without asking for a discount
2- Write a review/testimonial
3- Find people in your network who could benefit from it.

You have no idea how much impact you can have as a first supporter to someone who's just getting started ❤️

P.S: If you're not in the target audience, do #3 only.

--> Share what you're working on in the comments if you're just getting started so people can have a look 🚀

Guillaume Moubeche

Most people have no idea what a CEO actually does.

It’s not about having the best ideas.

It’s not about being in every meeting.

And it’s definitely not about building a vision board.

I’ve built multiple products combining to 10s of millions in ARR, stepped away from the CEO role, and invested in 20+ startups.

And here’s what I’ve learned:

Being a CEO isn’t about doing everything.

As Ayman Al-Abdullah says, it’s about owning five things and doing them relentlessly.

1) Hire and fire (quickly and clearly)
Your team is your strategy.
Every bad hire becomes a culture tax.
Every delayed fire compounds dysfunction.
Most mistakes I made early on?
Keeping the wrong person too long.

2) Define success and say no to everything else
If you don’t set the focus, your team will create their own.
Which means: 50 directions, zero progress.
Your job is to simplify.
Not to please.
Not to “inspire.”
Just to say: this is what winning looks like.

3) Build systems that don't need you
If the business only works when you're there…
It's not a business.
It’s a liability.
The real shift came when I stepped back.
And the companies grew without me.

4) Protect the culture like it’s your margin
Because it is.
Culture isn’t your Notion doc.
It’s how people behave when no one’s watching.
The second you tolerate mediocrity, it becomes the standard.
And you can’t build high-performance on low expectations.

5) Don’t run out of money
This is the one that ends it all.
Profit buys time.
Time buys clarity.
Clarity buys leverage.
If you’re profitable, you play offense.
If you’re not, you’re always negotiating from a place of fear.

You miss even one of these?

You’ll feel it in trust, retention, and growth.

That’s the real job.

Not product.

Not marketing.

Not playing “chief energy officer.”

Just 5 uncomfortable responsibilities, executed with clarity.

And the best part?

Once you build it right…

You can step out.

And it still runs.

That’s what real scale looks like.

I don’t believe in work-life balance

Not because it's impossible...

But because for people like me, it’s irrelevant.

I’m not chasing balance.

I’m chasing alignment.

Most people try to split their lives into compartments:
 - Work from 9 to 6
 - Workout after
 - Then “disconnect” for self-care

Personally, I work from my bed when I wake up, I train during the day, I never do recurring meetings, I create mostly at night and during weekends, I socialize with people when I want to... 

And never have the same weekly schedule twice... 

It looks chaotic.

But it feels calm.

Because everything I do feeds the same flame.
• I train not just for fitness, but for mental clarity.
• I build companies not just for growth, but for meaning.
• I think deeply because it makes me execute simply.

This isn’t balance for me... this is integration.

So no, I don’t clock out at 6pm.

I don’t have “work mode” and “life mode.”

It’s all the same mode:
 → Intentional Living.

I don’t need balance.

I just like momentum.

P.S: This post is not a stand against people who love or need "work-life balance", it's just to show that there are other ways to live and enjoy life :)

Your competitor just raised $50M.

Here's how you can still win 👇

Rule 1: They'll go upmarket. Keep serving SMBs. 
$50M raised means they need $1B+ exits. 
That means enterprise. 
That means complexity. 
That means you’ll be able to serve the 10,000 companies they just abandoned.

Rule 2: They'll add features. You remove them. 
With 100 engineers, they must build. 
With 10 engineers, you must focus. 
They'll build Salesforce. You build the "easy to use and efficient.”

Rule 3: They'll buy growth. You earn it. 
They'll spend $5M on Google Ads. 
You write expert content that ranks forever. 
Their CAC is $5,000. 
Yours is $50.

Rule 4: They'll hire MBAs. You hire hustlers. 
They need "strategic thinkers" to impress the board. 
You need builders who ship daily. 
Their average salary: $300K. 
Yours: $70K + equity that matters.

The formula: Do the opposite of what $50M forces them to do.

✌️

Ahmed Mohsen

I get 50+ pitches a week. I delete 49.

Not because they're bad businesses. 

But because the founders already told me they'll fail.

Here's exactly what makes me hit delete:

"We have no competition" 
→ You haven't done research → Or you're in a market nobody wants → Either way, I'm out

"Our TAM is $50 billion" 
→ Cool → But you’ll capture 0 if you keep thinking top-down, not bottom-up → Show me the first 100 customers, not the last million

"We need funding to figure out our business model" 
→ No. You need customers 

"We're pre-revenue but..." 
→ There is no "but" → Charge someone. Anyone. Today. → $10 proves more than any pitch deck

"Our team has 3 MBAs from top schools" 
→ Great. Now show me what you've built → Credentials are lag indicators → I care about velocity, not pedigree

The emails I actually read?

"We're doing $20K MRR. Growing 30% monthly. Here's exactly how…”

Short. Specific. 

Most investors will tell you they invest in people.

Sure.

But I also invest in evidence.

And 98% of pitches are just sophisticated ways of saying "trust me."

I don't.

Show me you can build a business with constraints. 

Then I'll help you remove them.

✌️

“Couples growing a startup don’t work” —> Canva, Eventbrite…

“Solo founders don’t work” —> Zoom

“Entering the US market while being in Europe won’t work” —> lemlist

“This market is way too saturated” —> Notion, ClickUp, Claap

If deep down you feel like you should do it, do it 

Make your own rules ✌️

The simplest path to making money (with actual examples):

1) Find a service people already buy 
—> DocuSign existed. PandaDoc just made it less ugly. Now, it’s worth $1B+.

2) Make it A LOT easier to use or set up 
—> Stripe: "7 lines of code instead of 6 months of bank meetings" Everyone else: "Talk to our sales team" Result: $95B valuation

3) Focus on one use case until it's perfect 
—> Loom said no to screen recording for gaming, no to video editing, no to podcasts. Just "record quick work videos." Sold for $975M doing one thing perfectly.

3) Make your customers your sales team 
—> Dropbox: Free space for referrals 
—> PayPal: $10 for inviting friends 
—> CAC: $0. Growth: Exponential.

5) Don't stop at the 3-year mark 
—> Notion was "just another note app" for 4 years. 
Ivan kept going while Evernote added features. Now Notion is worth $10B. Evernote is dead.


Question for you, what service are you making 10x easier RIGHT NOW?

When I started lemlist I tried to raise funding and got rejected by 20+ VC funds...

Always for the same reasons:
- You don't have a track record
- You have competitors that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars
- You can't build an international company based in Paris

Whenever I saw an article about a startup raising funds in the press, I felt bad about myself.

Like I'm not good enough... 

So I focused on what matters the most: our customers.

3,5 years later, we were at $10M in ARR.

Last month, we crossed the $36M ARR mark (and we will do more than $10M in EBITDA)

Our biggest market is the US, and lemlist is used in more than 100 countries.

I never had an article in TechCrunch, but to be honest, I couldn't care less now 😅

If you're bootstrapping, I know how hard it is in the early days.

Be kind to yourself, and don't give up on this amazing journey!

It's all worth it in the end ❤️

7 years of studying English in school. 
—> Can't have a basic conversation at a restaurant in NYC.

10 years studying business. 
—> Can't make $10 online.

That founder reading for the 6th times "How I Built This"? 
—> Still can't build shit.

That PM collecting Paul Graham essays? 
—> Still can't ship a feature.

That marketer with 500 saved LinkedIn posts? 
—> Still can't write copy that converts.

Here's what schools won't teach you:
- Reading 1,000 sales books < Making 10 cold calls
- Studying market analysis < Launching and watching it fail
- Memorizing growth frameworks < Spending $1000 on ads and losing it all

The most educated founders I know aren’t the best operators. 

Not because education is bad. 

Because business isn't education, it's athletics.

You don't read your way to a six-pack. 

You don't study your way to revenue.

The best founders I know have a huge bias toward action.

Ship before it’s ready.

Post when you think it needs more work.

Call that prospect.

Ask for that intro.

✌️

Last week, 3 founders asked me if they should quit.

My answer to all 3: “If you’re asking the question, you already know the answer…”

Here's the checklist to know if you should quit:

1. You're still "validating" after 12 months 
→ You're not validating. You're procrastinating. → We had paying customers in week 3. → They weren't happy, but they paid.

2. You change your ICP every month 
→ "Maybe it's SMBs... no wait, enterprise... actually, prosumers..." → You don't have a targeting problem. → You have a value problem.

3. You blame the market 
→ "If only we had launched pre-COVID..." → "Investors just don't understand our space..." → "The market isn't ready..." → No. Your product sucks.

4. You're optimizing your LinkedIn more than your product 
→ I see you posting daily about "building in public" → But your last product update was 3 months ago → Performance art isn't a business model

5. You've pivoted more than twice 
→ One pivot = learning → Two pivots = searching → Three pivots = you're just starting new companies

6. You need motivation to work on it 
→ If you need external motivation after year one... → What happens when it gets really hard? —> building a business should be fun —> that’s the bar.

The truth nobody says:

Most founders should quit.

Not because they're not smart enough. But because they're playing founder, not being one.

They like the idea of being a founder. The identity. The LinkedIn bio. The potential.

But they hate the actual work:
- Talking to customers
- Fixing bugs at 2am
- Getting rejected 50 times a day
- Doing support tickets

One friend said, "But I've invested 2 years already."

Sunk cost fallacy.

Those 2 years are gone. The question is: do you want to waste 2 more?

Be honest: Is it hard, or is it dead?

If it's hard, keep going. If it's dead, quit today.

The courage isn't in persisting. It's in admitting the truth.

Here's how to be better than 99% of people in business:

Reply to emails within 4 hours. 
--> Most take 3-5 days

Actually read what people write. 
--> Most skim and miss the point

Send the follow-up you promised. 
--> Most forget by Tuesday

Admit when you don't know. 
--> Most bullshit their way through

Pay invoices on time. 
--> Most pay 60 days late

Kill meetings that could be emails. 
--> Most waste 15 hours/week talking

Thank people who help you - specifically. 
--> Most never acknowledge anything

Give credit publicly, criticize privately. 
--> Most do the opposite

Show up 5 minutes early. 
--> Most arrive 10 minutes late

Document what you agreed to. 
--> Most rely on memory and argue later

Say no politely instead of ghosting. 
--> Most just disappear

Test before you argue. 
--> Most argue before they test

These aren't talents. 

They're decisions.

Excellence is often about doing what feels “boring” for most, and do it consistently.

In the early days of lemlist, our biggest support headache paid us $29/month.

Let's call him Dave.
- Asked for 70% discount
- 197 support tickets in the first month
- Called my personal number at midnight (found it online)
- Posted "lemlist is a scam" when we didn't reply in 2 hours
- Demanded custom integration with his cousin's CRM
- Paid: $29/month

On the other end, our happiest customer was paying us $2,400/month.

Let's call her Sarah.
- 3 support tickets in 2 years
- Sent us champagne when we helped her team with sales campaigns
- Referred 20 other companies
- Understood bugs happen
- Never asked for a discount

Dave cost us $5,000 in support time. 

Sarah made us $200,000 in referrals.

What I found is that too often, cheap customers aren't looking for a solution. 

They're looking for someone to blame.

Choose wisely whom you serve ❤️

At lemlist, I used to think people quit because of pay.

I was wrong.

They quit because of something harder to measure:

They stop feeling like they matter.

In the early days, I was focused on growth, product, profit.

It worked.

But along the way, I missed the emotional debt we were building.

The pressure was constant.

Expectations were rising.

And I forgot the simplest thing that scales:

Recognition.

Not performative praise.

Not “team-building” once a quarter.

I’m talking about real appreciation.

Saying:
– “I saw what you did there.”
– “That was above and beyond.”
– “I trust you to run with this.”
– “You made the product better this week.”

Not in a meeting.

Not in a feedback cycle.

But when it matters in the moment.

Here’s what I’ve learned building companies across lempire:

Money gets people in.

But meaning is what keeps them.

What actually builds loyalty?
→ Feeling seen
→ Feeling trusted
→ Feeling like their work has a direct impact

What breaks it?
→ Silence
→ Distance
→ That moment when good work becomes expected and ignored

Every time someone exceptional leaves a company, it’s rarely because of money.

It’s because no one told them they were exceptional until they resigned.

So now, I do the opposite.

I say thank you.

I send voice notes.

I highlight wins publicly.

And most importantly I make sure people know they’re trusted long before they need to ask for it.

If you’re leading a team, ask yourself:
- Who crushed it this week but hasn’t heard it yet?
- Who’s been consistent when no one was watching?
- Who needs to hear “you’ve got this” from you today?

Founders talk about scale.

But the best culture I’ve seen is built in small moments.

It’s not free.

But it costs nothing.

One year from now, you won't remember:

- Who raised the biggest Series A. 

- Which founder got the Forbes 30 under 30. 

- That TechCrunch article about your competitor.

You'll only remember:

- Watching someone else launch YOUR idea. 

- The acquisition offer you turned down at the peak. 

- The hire you didn't make because of "budget". 

- The pivot you didn't take because of ego…

In the end, the “fundraising headlines” always fade… 

While the "what if we'd moved faster" stays forever.

Success isn't haunted by what others did. 

It's haunted by what you didn't do.

Here’s why founders and VCs can’t work together anymore (unless something changes)

Founders want control.

VCs want liquidity.

Founders dream in decades.

Funds live in ten-year cycles.

At first, those timelines overlap - both sides talk about vision, patience, and building something that lasts.

But as the years go by, the incentives diverge.

The founder wants to reinvest profits, expand slowly, protect culture.

The GP wants DPI (cash back to LPs so they can raise the next fund.)

And every month without liquidity quietly turns alignment into friction.

The system itself creates this tension.

A 7 to 10-year fund structure was designed for a world where IPOs came fast and cheap.

That world doesn’t exist anymore.

Companies stay private for 12, sometimes 15 years.

So what happens?

Founders are forced to play short-term games to satisfy long-term dreams.

Investors push for liquidity while claiming to be “patient capital.”

And both end up trapped - rich on paper, poor in trust.

The smartest investors I talked to are playing with different rules:

They’re designing what I call “liquidity bridges” —> continuation funds, structured secondaries, aligned buybacks - to let founders keep building without forcing exits.

They know the future of venture won’t be defined by who raises the biggest fund…
but by who manages time the best.

Because in this market, capital is abundant.

But time alignment is rare - and that’s where the next great returns will come from.

I’ve seen companies with 40% of their revenue coming from one customer…

Here’s why you should avoid this at all costs 👇

1- If losing ONE customer would hurt, you're not running a company, you're running a hostage situation

2- The moment you can't say "no" to a client, you've stopped being a SaaS and became their outsourced dev team

3- Every "whale" customer transforms your product roadmap into their wishlist

4- You know that customer you're terrified of losing? They already know it. And they're using it.

5- Real business strength = being able to fire any customer and sleep well that night

Most founders celebrate landing enterprise deals. 

Smart founders celebrate customer diversity.

✌️

95% of AI agent work won't replace humans. 

It'll do work humans never did because we couldn't afford to.

(And that’s the biggest business opportunity)

Pharma Company (Before AI):
- 10 million experimental results
- Scientists review 0.01%
- Rest sits in databases forever
- Potential discoveries? Buried

Pharma Company (With AI):
- AI analyzes all 10 million results
- Finds 17 drug interaction patterns humans missed
- Identifies 3 new compound possibilities
- Saves 5 years of research time

Financial Services (Before AI):
- 100,000 past deals
- Maybe analyze top 50 for patterns
- 99,950 deals = expensive PDF storage

With AI:
- Every deal analyzed for monetization patterns
- Finds: Specific clause combinations worth $10M more
- Optimization nobody could afford to do

Law Firm:
Before: Only take cases worth $100K+ (economics don't work below that)
Now: AI handles all doc review, contract generation, filing
Result: Profitable at $5K cases
Market size: 100x bigger

The revolution isn't AI doing your job. 

It's AI doing work that was economically impossible.

Most people have valuation completely backwards.

They obsess over ARR, growth rates, and multiples.

But a company valuation should correlate to the total value it creates for its customers. 

Not what it captures. 

What it creates.

Take lemlist:
- Our ARR: $37M
- Value generated for our customers: >$1B+ in closed deals

Take OpenAI:
- Their revenue: ~$13B
- Value created: Probably $50B+ in saved hours and increased productivity

The best businesses create 10x more value than they capture.

But here's something I’ve been questioning lately

I keep meeting founders who use various no-code/AI builders…

The growth of these companies is insane. 

But when I ask users: 

"What revenue are you generating with what you built?"

Silence.

"Well, I'm still iterating..." 

"The app needs more features..." 

They're paying $200-500/month. 

Building nothing that makes money. 

And these companies’ revenue keeps climbing.

This breaks my mental model.

They're capturing value without creating it.

They’re selling the dream of building. 

Not the reality of shipping.

And VCs are eating it up because the metrics look beautiful.

Here's my prediction:

The AI tools that survive won't be the ones with the best tech.

They'll be the ones where users actually ship products that make money.

Because if your customers aren't winning, you're just running a very sophisticated subscription scam.

Even if your board doesn't see it yet.

What value are you actually creating? 

Not capturing. Creating.

That's the only metric that matters in the long run.

The one company in that space that stands out is Lovable imo.

I love how Elena shares success stories from real businesses making real money with the product.

Not only it's a great marketing approach, but it's also proof that it actually can work.

taplio

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