Charles Tenot

CEO @lemlist & lempire. I share what I learn as the CEO of a profitable SaaS growing to $40M to $100M+. Follow me to learn from the journey.

I love Tech, Sales, Marketing and Leadership. 

I share my learnings and thinking on LinkedIn, don't hesitate to follow & interact.

COO / General Manager

Growing lempire from 20M$ to 100M$ while generating 35%+ EBITDA

lempire products: lemlist, lemwarm, Taplio, Tweet Hunter, lemcal - more to come

I have no idea what my kids' life will look like with all this AI. 
But one thing I'm sure of: they need to understand that you can build things that other people use.

So I started vibe coding apps with them.

Last week, we built a cookie spot rating app to find the best spots in Paris.

This weekend, we made a Harry Potter sorting hat quiz (the "Sorting Hat" test).

Each one took about 30 minutes. 
And they're better than most apps you'd find online for the same thing.

I don't know what jobs will exist in 10 years. 
I don't know what skills will matter most.

But kids who grow up thinking "I can build this" will be in a better place than kids who just think "I can use this."

PS: sorry the test is in French

I just watched our PM build a complete feature in 2 hours.

No dev involved.

He used Claude Code to create a working mockup, test all the edge cases, then generated the PRD from the code.

This is how our entire Product team works now.

Here's the process:
→ They download the full codebase locally.
→ They use Claude Code with custom skills we built for coding best practices.
→ They vibe code their features.
→ Build the interface.
→ Test the flows.
→ Catch edge cases nobody thought of.
→ Then they use AI to generate the PRD from the working prototype.

What they deliver to Engineering:
→ A fully functional mockup that devs can test
→ A detailed PRD with user stories already mapped out

This reduces conception cycle by over 50%.

Better product decisions because they can interact with the actual feature.
Fewer bugs because edge cases are caught early.
Less confusion between Product and Tech.

Most Product teams are still writing specs and hoping devs understand.
We're shipping working prototypes before the first planning meeting.

This is what all Product teams will do in the future.

Curious to hear from other Product teams: how are you using AI in your process?

Help needed: if you are looking for a Senior Finance profile, my life partner, Violaine, is available now.

After spending 3 years building a network of kindergarten for children with neuro developmental disorders, she is now available for something new.

Why I recommend her, even though I'm clearly biased:

→ Worked with top Private Equity firms globally
Always recommended afterwards

→ Hybrid experience with Senior Finance roles (M&A, Reporting) and 3 years of entrepreneurship where she ran notably finance for their 50 people business.
She can be both strategic & hands-on, she's not the "ivory tower" CFO.

 → Amazing analytical skills, she notably worked on complex problems in manufacturing, much more complex than SaaS.

 → Great business sense, easy-going, high work ethics

What she's looking for:
→ CFO or Finance Director-level
→ Interim or part-time
→ Open to full time with flexible work location
→ Start date from March 9th

Don't hesitate to like or comment to help me get more reach, thanks a lot 🙏

→ Phone: +33 6 69 25 57 26
→ Email: vsaintromas@gmail.com

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CEO @ lemlist & lempire

This guy has been in Sales for 20+ years. He helped build Intercom, Lattice, and now ElevenLabs. 

Next week, he'll be sharing his tactics to book meetings in 2026, and how ElevenLabs has been growing by +300M$ ARR in 2 years.

Here are few things I can tell you as a teaser:

→ How they increased the share of outbound from 5% to 30% in 12 months, and how their around 100 reps use lemlist

→ ElevenLabs is hiring "GTM" people. No title, no hierarchy, background mostly from VC or former founders

→ They give a lot of ownership to their sales team, who act almost as local CEOs working in pairs with Product to adapt to local markets

→ They mostly rely on full-cycle Sales handling both Inbound & Outbound. 
He'll explain why they decided not to specialize

→ Jon still does a lot of outbound himself, he built a few very creative tactics notably using AI in his messages. He will share a full breakdown of those that work best

This is certainly the most exciting Webinar we've run in months for anyone on a Sales team, so don't tell me you can't find 45 mins to get all these learnings. 

Link in the comments

And big thanks Jonathan Chemouny for unpacking so much value 🙏
cc Stan Massueras 💙

Really happy to see lemlist ranked #1 software in France on G2.

Not because of the ranking itself but because of what it took to get here.

The last few months have been the strongest innovation pace we've ever had. 

And all of it comes from listening to our 20,000+ customers every single day.

Sales is still one of the hardest jobs in most companies. 
No product has made it easy yet. Including ours.

But that's exactly why we keep building.
Let's keep going.

Big up to the team ❤️

I read Cognism "Top 21 GTM Tools" blog post.

Clay wasn't in it. 
lemlist wasn't in it. 
Apollo wasn't in it. 
Salesloft wasn't in it. 
Outreach wasn't in it.
Gong wasn't in it.

The biggest names in GTM. 

All missing from a "top GTM tools" list.

That's not an accident.

When a company publishes a "best tools" list, they're not trying to help you. 

They're running a content play.

The rules are simple: 
→ Include tools that don't compete with you 
→ Include tools that make you look good by association 
→ Never mention the ones that could actually take your customers

So here's the irony.

If you're ON a competitor's "top tools" list, it means they don't see you as a threat.

If you're NOT on it, it means you're the one they're worried about.

Next time you read a "best tools" listicle, don't look at who's on it.
Look at who's missing. ✌️

Yesterday we ran a webinar about how ElevenLabs runs Go-To-Market at 330M$ ARR. 

Over 1,500 people registered. If you missed it and want the recording just drop a comment and I'll DM it.

Here's my human summary of what Jonathan Chemouny shared after 1 year there.

About ElevenLabs GTM:

→ 330M ARR, +300M in 2 years. Just valued at 11B.
→ Only 400 people. Close to 1M ARR per employee.
→ GTM team is about 100 people.
→ Org is SDR + AE but they call everyone "GTM." 
Limited titles, limited hierarchy.
→ They maximize distributed ownership per country and region. 
They hire founder-like profiles who run their region like CEOs.
→ Top performers come from Finance, even Product backgrounds (👋 Oscar Lanzendorf)
→ Their sales close an average of 20X their OTE 
(source: Carles Reina podcast at 20VC, link in comment)
→ They grew outbound from 5% to 46% of revenue in one year. 
Outbound lets them better target ideal customers and segments.
→ Average deal size ranges from 30K/year to millions for Enterprise.
→ Outbound sales cycle is slightly longer than inbound but average deal size is higher.
→ They receive thousands of inbound leads daily and built an AI agent that answers prospects 24/7.
→ Everyone does outbound, even if you're hired as a potential GM-level.

What enables their incredible success:
→ Very high hiring bar. 4 interviews, harsh panels.
→ They hire for smarts, not experience. 
They don't want people who come with playbooks. 
They want people who can build playbooks.
→ They use AI a lot but will never run things 100% AI. 
Humans think of a creative way to approach an account and craft the message. AI handles things like voice notes or AI-generated video.
→ They meet prospects and customers in-person a lot. 
Jon believes humans should do things AI can't, like building real relationships.
→ LinkedIn and WhatsApp are their primary outbound channels. Quality before quantity.
→ They don't monitor activity metrics. 
They track the number of meetings done with prospects.

And of course, they have an insanely strong product.

I hope you find this valuable. 

If you have a company or GTM person we should invite next, don't hesitate to share.

---

Bonus: we created an agent that was fed on Jon's knowledge and our webinar prep document, I'll share the link with the recording.

cc thanks Rémi Kokabi, Domitille de Saint-Exupéry Rafael Ornia Mitchell

You can beat 99% of companies by doing a few things well:

→ Set one clear vision and don't change it every 3 months 
→ Say "no" to everything that doesn't contribute to the strategy 
→ Remove low performers after weeks, not years 
→ Use your own product 
→ Talk to customers 
→ Keep reporting light 
→ Lead every meeting from the customer's standpoint

It looks simple written down like this.

But most companies don't have an execution problem. 
They just keep adding layers, processes, and distractions on top of it.

The companies that win aren't doing anything secret. 
They're just not getting in their own way.

This weekend, I built an app with my kids to find the best cookie places in Paris.

None of us can write a single line of code.
But it took us less than 30 minutes to have a functional V1 we could use.
Thanks to Claude Code. 

What's happening in software right now is really interesting.

Warren Buffett said that brand is the most important moat.

I think the next 10 years will prove this more than ever.

Because building simple apps is becoming virtually free.
(I'm still curious how this will apply to complex apps and ecosystems.)

But one thing is clear.
More value will be in understanding user problems and workflows.

Branding and distribution will be increasingly critical.

Influence will be a strong lever. 
Look at the 1 billion dollar Khaby Lame deal.

15 years ago, you'd find geeky profiles in small businesses building custom Access databases.

I wouldn't be surprised to see more and more custom applications that fit user needs better.

Apps that can evolve fast with clean UI.
Apps that are much more cost efficient overall with almost no fixed fees.

The barrier to building is disappearing.
The question now is what you build and how you get it to people.

ElevenLabs just closed a $500M round at an $11B valuation. 

They went from $0 to $330M ARR in 3 years (this number will be outdated tomorrow).

Next week, Jonathan, GTM @ElevenLabs is opening the playbook with me.

Here's what makes their approach different.

→ While most companies shifted to async everything, Jonathan gives his SDRs a travel budget to meet prospects in person.

→ While most companies hire junior SDRs to book meetings, he hires ex-AEs to do value selling.

→ While most companies stick to email and LinkedIn, his team uses WhatsApp and AI voice notes to stand out.

→ And while most companies run on gut feeling, Jonathan has an obsessive A/B testing culture where every conviction is forged on the field.

This session is going to be a gold mine on how to build efficient GTM motions in 2026.  
How often can you learn from a real systems that took a company from zero to $330M ARR, and scaled outbound from 5% to 30% of closed deals?

We'll break down:
→ How SDRs evolved from meeting bookers to revenue drivers
→ The inbound vs outbound split and why it matters
→ The key metrics Jonathan tracks daily and how he coaches his team
→ How they use their own product to increase meeting rates
→ Why context beats static lists every time
→ and of course, how they are using lemlist 😈

This is for growth leaders, sales ops, SDR managers, and founders who want to scale revenue the right way.

A 45-minute interactive session with the opportunity to ask live questions directly.
Plus the actual templates and playbooks.

---
I'm excited about this one because it's rare to get this level of access to a company moving this fast.

February 18th.
9 AM PT / 6 AM CET

Link to register in comments.

I asked someone at ElevenLabs what makes their culture different. 
Their answer helped me understand how they went from 30M to 330M ARR in less than 2 years.

Yanek Brinkmann, one of their GTM team, told me:

"It's the closest you can get to doing your own business while still being in a job."

I've always believed that someone who works like they're running their own business has 10X more impact than someone who's just doing their job.

The difference is ownership. Real accountability. 

The kind you only get from people who actually care.

You'll get more from someone less experienced with insane grit than from someone senior who's just collecting a paycheck.

ElevenLabs understood this. 

And they still operate like that at 400 people.

Imagine 100 GTM people with a founder mindset.
→ Clear ownership on their region. 
→ Working directly with Product to adapt when needed. 
→ Flat org. No titles.

Their reps close 20X their OTE. The industry average struggles to hit 5X.

But this only works if you actually distribute ownership and responsibility. 
Not just talk about it.

I'm convinced this is how world-class companies are built now. 
And they will crush big groups with pyramidal organizations.

➡️ Later today, we're sharing more about ElevenLabs's playbook with Jonathan Chemouny. 

Already 1,350 people registered. You can still take your spot, it's free value.
No recording. We want people live and contributing.

Link in comment.

Process is when average people take the power.

I've seen it happen in every scaling startup.

The best builders want to ship.

The average ones want to control.
So they create layers:

→ Approval workflows
→ Templates
→ Rules
→ Documentation requirements

Suddenly, the person who can't build becomes the person who decides what gets built.

Process is here to protect people who can't defend their value through output.

Every new "process" is someone saying: I matter because things go through me now.

The irony is that very often people think process creates quality.

It doesn't. 

Real quality comes from:
→ Hiring smart & passionate people
→ Giving them context
→ Help them think
→ Letting them own outcomes

When someone says "we need a process for this"...

What they're really saying is: I don't trust anyone here to think.

And that's your real problem. 
Not the lack of process.
The lack of great people.

I have data-backed proof that spray & pray doesn't work.

It comes from 350M+ emails and 4.5M LinkedIn messages sent with lemlist over the past months.

This chart represents our 20,000+ customers.

From pre-revenue founders to companies with 300M$+ in ARR and 100+ sales reps.

How to read it:
→ Horizontal axis: our 10 deciles of customers, from the 10% with the worst results to the 10% with the best
→ Each bar: the volume of messages sent
→ Vertical axis (line): the average reply rate

What we see:
There's a clear negative correlation between volume and reply rate.
The fewer messages teams send, the higher their reply rate.

In detail:
→ The first group shows that the bottom 10% aren't sending enough messages, or just lack adoption. They'll probably churn unless they use lemcoach.
→ Then across the other 9 deciles, each one has lower volume and a higher reply rate than the previous one.

If this doesn't show you that it's better to do less but better, I don't know what will.

Spoiler: it's not the spray & pray "AI SDR Agent" that will solve this.

The outbound agency market has a weird problem.

Our customers keep asking agencies to teach them how to do proper outbound.

But almost no agency does that.
They only offer "done for you" services.

Meaning they run outbound A to Z for their customers.

Don't get me wrong.
We have hundreds of amazing agency partners at lemlist running great campaigns.
They generate millions for our customers. And they're incredible at what they do.

But here's what we kept hearing:

→ Founders with no budget to pay $3K per month who want to build outbound skills themselves.

→ Sales teams with reps crushing it in inbound but struggling with outbound.

→  SDRs great at calling but lost when building multi channel campaigns.

They all wanted the same thing.
To learn. Not to outsource.

And the market had no solution for them.

---
So we built one with Victor Delcambre and Erwan Gauthier

We call it "lemcoach".

The concept is simple.

We select top outbound experts who train you 1:1 for 90 days.

You get 4 hours of hands on guidance.
On your actual industry, your real prospects, your specific campaigns.
100% practical training.

Handpicked experts working with you on what you're actually selling.

---

We launched a few weeks ago.
Over 50 people have been trained already, and we now receive over 65 applications/day.

If you want to master outbound by learning the craft, you should checkout lemcoach.

BTW, we don’t make any money doing this, we just consider it part of how we help more companies win with outbound.

---

Link in comments.

PS: we are thinking of a new name, any suggestion? 🙏

Most sales teams send 1000 emails and get 10 replies.

ColdIQ sends only 100 but still get 10 replies.

The difference? They wait for the right moment.

Here are the 5 signals they track before reaching out to anyone:

1- Website Visits
Someone visits your site, they're researching right now. 
That's when you reach out.

2- Company Raised Funds
Fresh capital means they're hiring, buying tools, and solving problems. 
Perfect timing to sell.

3- Company Hiring
If they're hiring for a role in your buyer persona they are likely feeling a pain you can solve.

4- Lead Engaged with a LinkedIn Profile
Reference a past conversation and build up on the topic to demonstrate your expertize.

5- Engaged with a LinkedIn Topic
A lead that engages on a relevant topic is likely interested in the problem you solve.


The average reply rate is 1% because most outbound is random.

Sales teams are usually reaching out when it's convenient for them, not when it makes sense for buyers.

Intent signals flip this.

Same effort. 10x results.

The best sales teams don't send more emails.
They send smarter ones.

Thanks to Michel Lieben 🧠 for preparing this with us, cc Alex Vacca 🧠🛠️

ColdIQ

Founder & CEO at ColdIQ | Tomorrow’s GTM Systems, Built for you 👉 coldiq.com

Co-Founder @ ColdIQ ($6M ARR) | Helped 300+ companies scale revenue with AI & Tech | #1 AI Sales Agency

5 Intents

CRMs spent 20 years collecting customer data.

Now they realized it's useless for AI.

Meeting notes matter more than contact fields.

Here's what's happening in Go-To-Market AI, in my opinion:

A year ago, OpenAI was the clear winner in AI.
Today, Claude and Gemini are better.
Soon, all models might be roughly the same.

The battle won't be about which model is the best.
It will be about which one is the cheapest to run.

So what becomes the moat in Sales Tech?

Context.

Context is the private information AI needs to give answers that actually make sense:
→ Meeting discussions with prospects
→ Email threads with customers
→ Internal notes from your team

All the Sales AI Agents coming in the next few years will only be as good as the context they have access to.

→ CRM Update Agent.
→ Deal Forecast Agent.
→ Churn Risk Agent.
→ Best Next Action Agent.
→ Or just asking AI anything about your prospects or customers.

They all need context to work.

This raises some big questions:

→ Will there be a "Context Center" category in software?

→ Will it be led by CRM players like Hubspot and Salesforce who already own most of the context?
Or by Conversation Intelligence tools like Gong and Claap?
Or by pure play Agent Builders or AI CRM?

→ Will all Context Centers be equal? Probably not.
So buyers will need a way to compare the quality of different context centers.

→ At Technology-level what will make the difference? 
IMO it will be interesting because AI logics is hidden (not like in interfaces & UI), thus companies capable to build amazing AI-agent capabilities through deep knowledge of the jobs-to-be done.

Our acquisition of Claap  was for this exact reason: Robin knew that for years.

Claap already captures all meetings and calls via transcript.
→ They're adding emails and physical meetings via recorder.
→ They already have years of experience storing content optimized for AI use cases.

But here's what I learned from working with Claap for the last 4 months:

The winners won't be those with the best context capabilities.
Because nobody will buy "context."
People buy solutions that save their team time.

Thus, winners will be those who let GTM teams build the first real use cases that bring value.

And right now, the gap is huge between what people discuss on LinkedIn and what Sales teams are actually living day to day.

Let's first have use cases that really work.

For me, the most valuable one today is the CRM Update Agent.
→ When your Sales team can finally have cold call outcomes written automatically after their call.
→ When you can capture data you never had before because Sales wasn't taking notes. Perfectly formatted for future use cases (Revenue, N° Employees)

That's already a game changer.
But less than 1% of Sales teams have this yet.

And like always, Distribution will once again be one of the big reasons for success in this new category.

---
What's your take?

Claap

Co-founder & CEO @Claap | Product Coach & Advisor

Sending a LinkedIn message in a sequence increases email reply rate by 38%. 
And no, that's not a typo. I'm talking about email replies. 

LinkedIn reply rates are averaging 15%, vs. 1-3% for emails (up to 15X higher)

But here's what we found across 35M leads:

When you add LinkedIn steps to an email sequence, your emails start getting more replies too.

The prospect sees your name on LinkedIn. 
Maybe they check your profile.
Maybe they read your message.

Then your email lands, and you're not a stranger anymore.

That familiarity is worth +38% on your email reply rate.
This data is coming from 35M leads that we analyzed at lemlist.

This is pure facts that multi-channel is the right way to do outbound today, and why we build lemlist to include as many channels as possible.

---

Slack, Figma, Notion, Dropbox, Datadog. They all started PLG. 
None of them stayed PLG. Here's why:

PLG is great for small customers. 

Low CAC, high scalability, self-serve magic. 

But as your product improves, you start attracting bigger companies. 
And enterprise buyers don't convert on PLG products. 
They need help. They need sales.

This is where PLG + Sales-Assisted comes in. 

And I'm convinced it's the ultimate state for SaaS:
→ PLG for small customers. Low CAC, fully self-serve, scales beautifully.
→ Sales-assisted for larger customers. You can segment by geo, industry, company size and organize your team around it.

This combination maximizes conversion across every customer segment.

Since we added a sales motion at lemlist, our growth has never been stronger. 

We grew +70% last year. PLG + Sales-Assisted together.

But here's the hard part:

In PLG, everything is streamlined: credit card payment, automated provisioning and payment retries.

But when sales gets involved, you start dealing with:
→ Custom quotes
→ Custom terms and legal discussions
→ Discounts and approval workflows
→ Custom billing terms and payment methods

You go from a scalable model to a non-scalable model overnight. 

And that's where most companies struggle.

The good news is that with the right tech, you can now build scalable systems even for sales-assisted motions.

On March 11, I'm co-hosting an event in Paris with Lucas Bédout (CEO at Hyperline) and the Business Operations Network to dig into exactly this. 

How to build a hybrid revenue engine that scales.

Free for BON members. 

Link to register in comments.

cc Victoria Dalleau 🙏

I have been a CRO with 150+ people and I can tell you that sales coaching is broken because of 3 things:

1/ Managers are never able to see more than 10% of calls from their reps.

2/ Managers are biased, like any human, and I have seen decent performers be treated as low performers because of a poor fit with their manager.

3/ Managers have different methods and preferences, which creates lack of consistency across sales orgs about what good looks like.

And this creates massive frustration.

Reps lose trust in leadership.

Leaders make bad decisions about who to promote or fire.

Good people leave.

And this leads to revenue loss and drop in talent density.

But today, AI can help fixing this.

At lemlist, we now record and transcript all our calls.

Every single one gets evaluated against the same criteria.

We use the SPICED methodology, so AI automatically evaluates all qualification criteria. 

All with Claap.

Things like: Did they surface the impact of the problem? Did they qualify budget properly? Did they ask about decision makers?

Every rep gets a score for each call across all these criteria, linked to actual moments in their calls they can review.

This allows us to significantly improve fairness and consistency.

Feedback is now trusted way more than before.

Because it's based on 100% of their work, not a random sample.

And managers can finally coach with data instead of gut feeling.

AI isn't replacing sales managers. It's making them way more effective.

Sales training just got an upgrade.

Nothing prevents you from sending 10 follow-ups. 
And yes, you'll get more replies.  But it's doing invisible harm to your outreach.

If you look at reply rates by number of follow-ups, the pattern is clear. 
Each follow-up increases your chance of getting a reply. Even a little.

But the incremental gain drops fast. 
After 4 follow-ups, you're barely moving the needle.

And here's what most people miss.

Every extra follow-up increases the chance your leads mark you as spam. 

Not by replying. 
By hitting that little spam button because they're annoyed.

When that happens, it hits your domain and email reputation. 
Your emails start landing in spam more often. 
Not just for that lead. For everyone.

This is the classic trap where short-term gains quietly destroy long-term results.

More follow-ups today = Fewer emails delivered tomorrow.

Mihaela Cicvaric

PMM @lemlist (lempire)

Content Marketing Manager

Sharing actionable outreach tips to help salespeople, growth marketers, entrepreneurs, and agencies to grow their businesses.

Get yours ⬇️

- 100k+ subscribers newsletter: https://www.lemlist.com/newsletter
- 10k+ people outreach community: https://community.lemlistfamily.com
- blog: https://blog.lemlist.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lemlist

Curious to find out more? Shoot me a DM

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