Guillaume Moubeche

I’ve invested in a few funds, and earlier this year, I received an email from one of the investors.

It said we’d only get 20 cents on a dollar on an investment they made a few years ago.

Apparently, the company got acquired but at a much lower valuation than the initial investment…

A few weeks after that email, I saw an article celebrating that exit…

Then the same investor posted on LinkedIn to congratulate the founder and the team on the achievement

The founder even changed his tagline to “Exit SaaS founder”…

So I decided to email back the investor with two questions (as I believed there was a potential typo on his email 😅)
1- Did the founder actually get any money on that deal?
2- Are we (as investors) making any money on that deal?

His answer was simple and clear…

NO, and..... NO...

So I guess, cheers to another “successful“ VC-backed “exit founder“ 🥂

I got hit by a car going at 40km/h while I was cycling this Saturday…

7 days before my first Ironman race…

1 day before my birthday…

I was probably in the best physical shape of my life, and in a couple of seconds, I got crushed (literally).

My bike was totally smashed…

And all of the sacrifices I made for the last 6 months to be able to train almost every single day vanished with my dream to complete that race…

I stayed 30 minutes lying down in the middle of the road before an ambulance came to take me to the emergency room.

A few broken ribs and an Acromioclavicular Joint fracture later - I got sent home…

In moments like this - you truly put everything in perspective…

it felt sooo unfair… Why me? Why now?

But as my best friend Arthur told me, « Hakol letova » which means « whatever happens, it’s for the best »

So even if life feels truly unfair, here’s some positive thoughts:

- when the ambulance came, and they saw my bike and the car, they thought I would be paralyzed so I can consider myself « lucky »

- The moment I posted about the accident on Instagram, I had people making appointments for me with the best doctors (special thanks to Raphael 🙏❤️) so I could get the best treatment as fast as possible

- My friend Valentin came straight away to help me pack and come back to Paris

- I received 100s of support messages from all around the world

- I won’t be able to use my right arm for at least 6 weeks, so I’ve decided to become ambidextrous 💪

In moments like this, it’s much easier to stay negative…

Especially when I forgot to mention that when I came home, some thieves had ripped apart entirely my other bike in Paris #HappyBirthdayToMe

But I want to do the opposite.

Thank you to everyone who sent me messages 🙏❤️

I’m truly grateful for your support, and I feel blessed to be alive and surrounded by such an amazing community ❤️❤️❤️

Stay safe 💫

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.

Big news 🚀

We just acquired Claap in an 8-figure deal to accelerate the future of AI-powered sales 🎉

Over the past few months, we’ve been looking at one big question:

How do we help millions of sales teams go beyond the traditional “sales prospecting”- and truly connect with their prospects?

The answer became obvious when we met the Claap team.

They’ve spent the last 15 months doing something extraordinary:

12x growth, reaching profitability, and building a product that turns customer conversations into structured intelligence that AI can actually use.

That’s exactly the missing piece to take lemlist to a whole new level.

So, why does this change everything?

Until now, sales tools have been great at automation.

But not understanding.

With Claap’s AI engine, we’ll be able to:
- Capture and structure every customer conversation (calls, videos, feedback)
- Turn it into actionable insights for your next outreach
- Create hyper-personalized sequences, powered by real context, not random data

Imagine sending emails written not just for your ICP…

but from your ICP’s actual voice.

That’s the future of outbound, and we’re building it.

Now you’re probably wondering why we chose Claap?

First, we’ve been paying customers for a year now, and we LOVE the product.

Then, I’ve always believed the best companies don’t just acquire products, they join forces with people who think the same way.

Claap is remote-first. Product-led. Ambitious.

When Charles started to talk with their team, it felt like we’d known each other for years.

They’re builders.

They care about craft, not hype.

And they share our vision of building a global champion in sales tech.

This is a massive step forward for our mission:

--> Helping 1M+ sales teams all around the world build more authentic, more human relationships - at scale.

Welcome aboard, Claap team ❤️

Let’s go make sales feel personal again.

We crossed $100M in total net revenue with lemlist (it took us 8 years)

Here are 7 things that helped us scaled:

1) Build an amazing team
Hire obsessively for talent.
Don't settle. One exceptional person can move mountains. One mediocre person will drag you down.
Then be ruthless about it - fire people who don't meet expectations.
Keeping someone who's not pulling their weight isn't kind, it's a betrayal of your high performers.
—> Invest in your people like your business depends on it, because it does.

2) Talk to customers every week
The world we live in evolves at the speed of light, so if you lose touch with your customers, you WILL become irrelevant…
Don't talk about your product only, it should also be informal and casual to gather as many insights and ideas for later.

3) Cultivate the side hustle spirit
Focus is key for growth.
But sometimes, being too focused makes you miss the big picture.
If you can have 15% of your time that is allocated to moonshot projects - you’ll be surprised how much focused and efficient you can become on other main projects.

4) Read customer support chat
Customer support is where the REAL problems are solved.
This is where you understand the true pains your customers are facing.
It’s a goldmine, and too often, I see founders delegating it too early and never coming back to it, which is a shame.

5) Use your own product
That might sound obvious, but it’s super important.
No matter if you’re the target audience or not.
You gotta truly understand what your product does, especially when you scale, so you don’t become totally irrelevant.

6) Listening to sales calls/demos
Sales is all about helping people solve a problem.
Sales calls are the gold mines that sit at the top of your funnel right before the conversion.

7) Reaching out to churn users and understand why they left
It’s always easier to focus on the NEW than on the existing…
But if you don’t understand why people stop using your product, you will hit a wall eventually.
Growing a SaaS with a high churn is extremely difficult as the more you grow, the higher the “new revenue” should be.
—> Understand why people leave, try to segment better your ICP, and triple down on the ones that stick with your product for the longest 💪

Hope that helps ✌️

If I had to start over…

I wouldn’t start with an idea.

Or a market.

Or a product.

I’d start with these 7 questions.

Not to play it safe, but to build something that actually compounds.

👇

1. Would I be excited to work on this for 5+ years… even if it only made me $100K/year?
→ Most founders chase scale.
→ But if it’s not meaningful at a small size, you’ll never survive the early days.

2. Do I already have distribution, or do I need to build it from scratch?
→ When I acquired Taplio and TweetHunter, the distribution was already there.
→ That changed the speed of everything.

3. Is there a compounding edge or is it a grind forever?
→ Audience, data, SEO, brand, product loops...
→ If nothing compounds, you’re trading time for growth forever.

4. Would I personally use this and pay for it?
→ I’ve tried to build things I wouldn’t use.
→ It always ends the same way: marketing is hard, conviction is low, and feedback is fuzzy.

5. Do I know exactly how this makes money?
→ Monetization shouldn’t be an afterthought.
→ Your business model is your leverage model.

6. What would kill this in 12 months?
→ Competition? Churn? Burnout? Founder misalignment?
→ If I can name the risk, I can plan around it. If I can’t, I’m flying blind.

7. Does this give me optionality or trap me?
→ Every business either creates freedom or takes it.
→ I ask: can this run without me? Can I sell it? Can I step away?
If the answer’s no…
It’s not the right business for me.

Most people ask:

“Will this work?”

I ask:

“Is this worth it, even if it does?”

That’s how you build things you don’t want to escape from.

If you’re about to start something: pause.

Ask better questions.

Your future self will thank you.

Startups don’t die because they fail.

They die because founders quit.

I’ve seen so many decent startups go under for one reason: the founder was exhausted.

Not burned out from work.

Burned out from trying to live on nothing for years.

We tell founders to grind. Delay everything. Put the business first...

They must reinvest every money they make into the business for more growth.

Then we’re surprised when they break.

Here’s a thought: as a founder, you should pay yourself first.

You can’t build long-term if you can’t survive short-term.

It's the same thing with oxygen masks in airplanes... Put yours first so you can help others...

Remember, you can't pour from an empty cup...

Take care ❤️

I recently saw an “influencer” saying that the “top” CEOs were working on average 115 hours a week 🤦‍♂️

On top of being completely inaccurate (latest studies from Harvard show that it’s around 62.5 hours per week) - we should stop glorifying the “grind” for the sake of it…

Instead, let’s glorify:
- 8 hours of sleep
- Working on something meaningful
- Being part of a team you love
- Being challenged and learning new things
- Going on a vacation
- Turning work off when it’s done
- Being Healthy
- Spending time with your loved ones

Happy new year ✌️

The biggest growth unlock for lemlist hasn’t been a hire, a strategy, or a product feature.

It’s been asking better questions.

The uncomfortable kind.

The kind that challenge how we work, not just what we’re working on.

The kind that don’t protect your ego, but protect your business.

In the early days of lemlist, I was asking safe questions:
– “How can we ship faster?”
– “What do we need to hit our goals?”
– “Who’s blocked?”

They sound productive.

But they kept us stuck in output mode, not clarity, not leverage.

What changed everything was learning to ask sharper questions.

Here are some that changed everything:


1) “If this project launched tomorrow, would anyone actually care?”
We once spent 3 weeks on a new feature that no one used.
Not because the execution was bad but because no one needed it in the first place.
Now we ask this before we build.

2) “Who feels unheard right now?”
Most of our best growth ideas came from people who weren’t in the room when strategy was made.

3) “Which meetings would we cancel if they cost $1,000 per person?”
Do this and you’ll cancel 80% of internal calls.

4) “If I disappeared for 30 days, what would fall apart?”
That question showed me where I was still the bottleneck.
Delegating the CEO role wasn’t easy.
But it became obvious when I realized how many decisions still needed me to move forward.

5) “Where are we overdelivering with no return?”
Sometimes, it’s feature requests from your least valuable accounts.
Sometimes, it’s free advice that’s not helping anyone.
High effort doesn’t always mean high impact.

6) “What have we decided, but not acted on?”
I see this in every company I invest in:
Clear decisions... with zero follow-through.
Strategy is useless if it’s not implemented.
Execution lag kills more growth than bad ideas.

You don’t need more answers.

You need better questions.

The ones that cut through noise.

Reveal leverage.

Expose the gaps you’ve been too busy to see.

If you’re leading a team right now:

Pick one question from above.

Ask it this week.

Then actually act on the answer.

That’s where real momentum starts.

Decisions that can change your startup:

1) Talking to customers daily for an entire year (not weekly, DAILY)

2) Ignoring every new AI/crypto/trend that isn't your core

3) Letting go of your first hire who can't scale

4) Stop reading TechCrunch and start reading customer support tickets

5) Ship at 70% perfect instead of 95%

6) Focusing on one channel until it breaks instead of trying seven

Real growth rarely comes from doing new things.

It’s about doing more and better of what already works.

And less of what feels productive but doesn’t move the needle.

3 things you won’t necessarily agree with but that I find true:

1- Crowded markets are the best for launching a business.
If the market is crowded, that means product-market fit already exists.
You don’t need to be “unique” to succeed.
You need to be better than the competition.

2- Your killer feature isn’t what sells.
Most customers won’t buy for the reason you expect.
Many founders fail because they fall in love with their vision of the "perfect product" and ignore early feedback that shows what users truly value.
That’s why you must launch as fast as possible and find your unique selling point.
Build what people need, not what you think they want.

3- Fear of sales is the #1 startup killer.
Founders would rather say that their product is still "not ready yet" than put themselves out there and start prospecting.

I’ve invested millions of dollars in 25+ startups.

I’ve also grown a bootstrapped business to $45M in ARR and $15M in EBITDA.

Here are 5 reasons why bootstrapping a business is extremely hard 👇

1- It can be really slow and lonely
I know that we all love the “overnight” success story - but the bootstrapping route takes time.

It takes time because when you don’t have money, you have to do everything yourself.

It’s a blessing because you’ll learn everything about the ins and outs of your business.

But you gotta be patient.

2- There’s no shortcut
You can’t throw money at problems because you simply don’t have money.

So no Press articles saying that you’re the next BIG thing.

No live show on TV that will make your granny proud.

No “losing money” when acquiring customers because your unit economics need to work from the start…

3- Creativity is your only path to success
If you’re not creative, you won’t succeed.

The biggest competitors we had with lemlist had raised 100s of millions.

How were we supposed to compete on SEO? Ads? etc…

We simply couldn’t, and we had to be creative 👇

I would answer all support tickets within 5 minutes for the first 18 months

I built a community with people who wanted to crush it at outbound sales

I documented everything from day 1

4- PLG is a myth (at least in the beginning)
”Build a great product, and they will come” is the biggest mistake I see people make

Best-known products will beat the best products in most cases.

That’s why in the early days you must do sales as a founder.

I know that getting rejected doesn’t feel nice - especially when we have a fancy title like “CEO” 🤣

But that’s the best way to learn.

5- It will feel unfair
When we started getting huge traction with lemlist, every single day people will send me photos of the number of people “on top” of us on Google search simply because they paid Adwords.

We had competitors cutting their prices in half to win deals simply because they had raised VC money.

We had competitors trying to hack us.

We had competitors making their employees leave negative reviews…

Some people play dirty…

And it felt unfair.

But if you stay long enough in the game I can tell you one thing 👉 it’s all worth it!

Remember, you cannot lose if you do not quit 💪

“I remember him when he first started and I was one of the first to support him”

When you become “successful” everyone who’s met you once in their life will say something like that,

but here’s the truth 👇

That person probably never supported you in the first place…

And most people will not support you along the way.

Even people who you call “friends”.

Let me tell you a story 👇

When I launched lemlist I remember a friend asking me how did our launch on Product Hunt go?

I told him the whole story and then I asked him how did he know about it?

He told me that he saw my post on LinkedIn

After checking my post, I realized that he didn’t like or comment the post…

And that happened to me a few times…

Should I change friends?

Probably… 🤣

But after talking to other of my entrepreneur friends, I realized that they don’t get too much support from their friends as well.

It seems that it’s much easier for people to like a video of a cute puppy on instagram than supporting a friend who’s launching their business.

In my opinion, people don’t do it for the following reasons:

1) Seeing you taking risks is a reminder that they’re not taking any

2) Supporting you means vouching for you when they might not understand exactly what you do

3) Seing you succeed is a reminder that they might have taken the wrong route

In any case if you need support from your friends —> ask for it.

And if your friends are launching or growing their business, like and comment their posts.

It will take you 20s of your time but it will mean the world to them.

✌️

I’ve talked to 50+ VC-backed startup founders, and you’d be amazed at how many people “didn’t know the rules of the game” when they raised their first round…

I’ve also invested money as a LP (Limited Partner) in a few VC funds to better understand the ins and outs.

So, here’s a quick recap of the “golden rules” for everyone who’s thinking about raising.

VC or Venture Capital is a form of private equity and a type of financing for startup companies with long-term growth potential.

VCs usually manage the money of their LPs, promising to return 3 to 5 times the investment over 7 years.

To make it simple: If you give them $100k, they will give you back $300k in 7 years (or at least that’s what you hope for when investing).

To invest in companies, VCs have to raise funds from their LPs.

But how exactly do they raise funds?

Well, exactly like entrepreneurs, they need to convince investors.

And the best way to do so is to have an impressive track record (this is important for later), either because they’ve worked in other funds before or thanks to their network.

Once they’ve raised a fund, they usually invest it over 18 to 24 months.

This is where it becomes interesting…

Remember, LPs will only get a return on their investment in 5 to 7 years.

But one fund is usually invested over 18 months.

So what’s happening during that gap time?

Well, VCs usually raise another fund.

And another one every 18 months…

But how can they build a track record if they usually want to exit after 5 to 7 years (as they promised their LPs?)

Well, they usually give a "valuation" to their portfolio.

And for them to show that their portfolio value is growing, they need two things:

1- They need startups to raise another round at a higher valuation

2- They need a liquidity event to exit (startup is getting acquired - an IPO or selling to other investors)

And that’s where most founders get confused…

There’s a simple reason why VCs pressure founders to spend the money they’ve raised “fast” OR raise another round…

VCs play a “portfolio” game where their portfolio must be growing so they can raise another round.

When founders play an “all-in” game.

VCs want you to take the maximum risks possible because they are fine losing 7 times out of 10.

But as a founder, are you fine taking that level of risk knowing that you could be in control and have a lot more chance to succeed if you decide to take a bit more time to achieve your ambitious goals?

Having invested millions in startups directly, I usually advise founders to have a clear path to profitability before you run out of cash, no matter what investors might tell you.

This means you can take risks with the money you raised while still knowing you're in control.

That gives you both optionality, unlimited lifetime and leverage for your next (potential) round.

P.S: I have nothing against the VC-backed route. I just feel like it’s important to know which game you’re playing 💪

At 30, Thibaud Elziere was selling his company for €800M to Adobe…

Then he built a machine that creates unicorns.

30 companies created, 6 exit, 3 unicorns (Aircall, Front, Spends)

I asked him what people are usually too afraid to ask:
- How much do you actually get when you sell your company for €800M?
- What investment will make him even more money than his Adobe exit?
- How much equity does he keep in the companies he creates?
- What happens when a Hexa company takes off — like Front or Aircall? Do they sell? Dilute? Hold long-term?

What I love about Thibaud is that he’s done way more than a lot of "famous" entrepreneurs, but he’s probably one of the most humble people I’ve met.

350+ investments.

30+ companies built.

Zero chase for fame.

Just the results.

If you want to understand how billion-dollar companies actually get built from the inside - I’ll put the link to our full conversation in the comments.

Happy holiday ✌️

Gong paid $500 to look like a billion-dollar company.

Then they paid 90% less than you think for a Super Bowl ad.

And built the most iconic B2B brand of the last decade.

I just sat down with Udi Ledergor, for episode 1 of BILLIONS.

Here's what we get into:

How do you rent credibility when you have none?

How to pay 10% of a Super Bowl ad worth $7M; and still hit 70% of your market?

How did 1.5 people build a content machine that moved an entire industry?

What's the one type of content that gets shared, cited, and invited on stage, without paying for distribution?

And what was the most controversial post that broke LinkedIn and made Gong's sales explode?

Bold marketing doesn't cost more.

Playing it safe does.

First episode of BILLIONS is live. Link in comments.

Happy Sunday ☀️