S2E27: The LLM inflection point | Nicolas Sharp (Attio)

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Nov 21, 2025

Nicolas Sharp, Co-founder and CEO of the AI-native CRM Attio, shares insights on leveraging generational tech shifts. He discusses the crucial pivot from a niche investor CRM to a platform that empowers modern sales teams. Nicolas highlights how traditional CRM systems create a false dichotomy, emphasizing the need for a flexible, user-friendly solution. He delves into the impact of LLMs, the importance of high-resolution data for automation, and Attio's innovative approach to extensibility in their marketplace.

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INSIGHT

Builders Deserve Both Power And Simplicity

Builders need platforms that are both powerful and easy to use, not a false choice between complexity and simplicity.
LLMs and no-code tools have erased prior technical trade-offs and enabled scalable, usable platforms.

INSIGHT

Timing Plus Preparation Unlocks Growth

Rapid growth needs a tectonic technology shift plus preparation and hard work to seize it.
LLMs acted as that discontinuity for Attio, making previous advantages suddenly irrelevant.

ANECDOTE

Pivot From Investor CRM To Platform

Attio began as a vertical CRM for investors and gained paying customers quickly but hit limits on scalability and extensibility.
The team decided to completely restart the product at the end of 2019 to build a platform-ready CRM.

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Manny Medina is joined by a guest who is crushing it in the world of sales technology: Nicolas Sharp, Co-founder and CEO of Attio, the AI-Native CRM. Attio's rapid growth with over 5,000 paying customers is a masterclass in strategic pivoting and catching a generational technology wave. Nicolas shares Attio's powerful growth story, which began with the difficult decision to abandon a niche CRM built for investors. They realized this strategy was a "trap" and chose to "completely start again" to capitalize on the massive technology shifts created by No-Code tools and the rise of LLMs—an inflection point that rendered old software playbooks (like the ones used by Salesforce and HubSpot) obsolete.

Attio's core thesis is that the legacy CRM industry presented a "false dichotomy" between powerful, complex systems (Salesforce) and simple, limited ones (HubSpot). Attio solves this by arming the "builders" of the modern go-to-market world—the hyper-growth, PLG-focused companies—with a CRM that scales power without sacrificing usability. Their vision is built on the belief that the traditional, linear sales process is dead. Today’s non-linear buyer’s journey requires a new, AI-native approach: Attio captures high-resolution data from every customer interaction to enable deep automation, eliminating the manual data entry that has plagued sales teams for decades.

This forward-looking strategy is evident in their new Marketplace where the biggest bet is on extensibility. Instead of getting bogged down in the "death march of long-tail features," Attio is empowering customers to configure and customize their CRM using AI-generated JavaScript code. This allows them to quickly meet highly specific business needs that are beyond any single vendor's roadmap. Nicolas also provides insight into the operational strategy of running a global competitor from London, leveraging a hybrid executive team split between the UK and the US. Their revenue model ensures growth scales with customer success by balancing an accessible seat-based entry price with consumption-based credits that unlock advanced automation.

This conversation is an essential listen for anyone who believes the old playbooks are broken and wants to understand the future of go-to-market, underscoring:

The death of the rigid, legacy sales pipeline model in the face of non-linear buying journeys.

The necessity of high-resolution data and AI-generated code to enable ultimate CRM automation and configuration.

Why a hybrid revenue model that combines seat-based and consumption-based pricing is essential for scaling with modern, efficient customers.

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