Building the universal integration layer for modern products and raising a Series A from GV with Romain Sestier & Guillaume Lebedel, Co-Founders @ StackOne
StackOne co-founders Romain Sestier and Guillaume Lebedel share hard-won lessons from building their universal integration layer startup and securing $20M in Series A funding from GV. Their contrarian approach—deliberately turning down revenue from wrong-fit customers and embracing unglamorous sales work like cold outreach and customer visits—challenges conventional startup wisdom about growth at all costs.
Key takeaways
- •Saying no to revenue from wrong customers is often more valuable than chasing any available dollar, especially in early-stage product development.
- •The best sales leads frequently come after the fourth unanswered follow-up, making persistence in outreach a crucial competitive advantage.
- •Co-founder relationship quality should be prioritized above product-market fit or fundraising strategy when starting a company.
- •Embrace the unglamorous sales work others avoid—webinars, travel, customer visits—as these create defensible competitive moats.
- •Venture funding fundamentally changes execution pressure, transforming every decision into a billion-dollar validation exercise.
Two episodes. Free. Clips before your next meeting.
No card. No setup call. Paste your episode and see what Clypt surfaces.