In this episode, Wouter Teunissen sits down with Nicolas Sharp to talk about his bold mission to reinvent how companies fundamentally operate. CRMs have been around for years—bloated, slow, and not built for makers. Nick saw the pain firsthand.After working in VC and starting a vertical CRM , he knew the tools meant to drive growth were actually slowing teams down. Most people tolerated them out of necessity, not love.Instead of accepting that status quo, Nick went back to first principles.
What if a CRM wasn’t just a database but a living system—fast, flexible, and designed like the best consumer apps?
In this episode, Wouter Teunissen sits down with Nicolas Sharp to talk about his bold mission to reinvent how companies fundamentally operate. CRMs have been around for years—bloated, slow, and not built for makers. Nick saw the pain firsthand.After working in VC and starting a vertical CRM , he knew the tools meant to drive growth were actually slowing teams down. Most people tolerated them out of necessity, not love.Instead of accepting that status quo, Nick went back to first principles.
What if a CRM wasn’t just a database but a living system—fast, flexible, and designed like the best consumer apps?
What if teams could collaborate in real time, building workflows as easily as spreadsheets, but with the power of a true system of record?With that vision, he founded Attio. It wasn’t an easy sell. Reinventing a category dominated by billion-dollar incumbents meant years of skeptical investors and complex engineering problems.Today, Attio has raised over $116 Million and is proving that the CRM doesn’t have to be a graveyard of contacts and forgotten notes. It can be a living, breathing hub for building relationships as a company scales.
Follow:
Nick - https://x.com/nicolasosharp?lang=en
Attio - http://attio.com/
Wouter - https://x.com/WouterTeunissen
Biography Newsletter - https://biography.beehiiv.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:39 Why Attio spent 3 years building their product before launch
5:05 The Power of Building Systems, Not a Box of Features
9:05 How to know when it’s time to launch
13:30 Nick’s Playbook For a Killer Product Launch
18:09 How To Go From an Investor to a Founder
23:05 How Failure Led to Attio's Big Break
28:07 Why startups need to hire "Hidden Gems,"
34:05 Fundraising
49:36 Why Attio Invests In Inexperienced Talent
55:07 The Case For Not Hiring Software Engineers (& Who You Should Hire Instead)
1:02:46 The 8 Persona Hiring Framework1:09:05 How Attio doesn’t use OKR's
1:27:11 Where does Nick's Ambition and Grit come from?
1:36:59 How Attio is Building CRM from First Principles for the AI era
1:45:29 How to Successfully Market In A Crowded Industry
1:51:10 Breaking Down Attio’s Viral Marketing Strategies
2:02:15 The Change That Had The Biggest Impact on Customer Conversion
2:05:04 Why Attio created A “Reverse Trial”
2:10:16 Why Nick is building from London, not Silicon Valley
2:22:48 The 10-Year Vision for Attio
