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.
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Best moment
Sales isn't a mythical beast - it's just human relationships done right
relationships that really is sales. It's not some, like, mythical beast necessarily. You know, some companies do have really, like, crazy sales organizations. But Mhmm. Generally, it's about reaching out to the right customers, talking to them like a human, educating them on, you know, what this product can do for them, and then and building relationships and some trust towards a commercial model that work makes sense for both parties. So, yeah, can you just share a little bit of insight into, like,
“Like, most people think you're cold calling someone who's never heard of you or, like, never seen you before.”
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