Revolutionizing CRM Solutions with Folk: Insights from Forbes 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur, Simo Lemhandez

I had the pleasure of interviewing Simo Lemhandez, a Moroccan entrepreneur who co-founded Folk in April 2020 with Jean-Yves Poilleux and Thibaud Elziere. Earlier this year, he was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe as one of the top 300 young leaders across Europe.

What motivated you to launch your startup?

We wanted to take away the pain of effectively managing contacts. Traditional CRMs are so clunky — they eat up a lot of time that busy teams and entrepreneurs don’t have. So we wanted to build a platform that would allow people to effectively collaborate, manage, and leverage their network.

What is it that excites you about what you’re building?

Folk isn’t simply a better CRM; it’s a better way to sell. We believe salespeople are spending too much time on administrative tasks, like building lists, updating CRMs, and switching between tools. We’ve made a tool so easy and connected that it makes things much smoother for them. This way, we give them back their time. We’re committed to letting them focus on what they are uniquely good at: selling.

What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?

It’s inevitable for challenges to pop up, especially as we went from zero to 100,000 users in just four years. The most memorable challenge was having to manually onboard hundreds of customers that came through our inaugural Product Hunt launch. The team and I personally onboarded every single person, going through the onboarding and discovery process with new customers. This turned out to be a great opportunity for us to get direct feedback, understand common pain points, and provide solutions. The hard work paid off and got us Product of the Month and a nomination for Product of the Year on Product Hunt.

What are your future plans for your startup?

This year, we’ve introduced new extensions of Folk to help our users with their social sales strategy, such as a LinkedIn listening tool and a LinkedIn comment exporter to help our busy Folk users export engagement and turn it into warm leads. We want to continue iterating on new features and improving Folk.

If you had to share “words of wisdom” with a founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?

Don’t be afraid to fail fast — give yourself and your team the space to learn from mistakes and grow together. And most importantly, make sure you celebrate little wins together. It’s always a team effort.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Please connect with me on LinkedIn and don’t forget to check out the folk website.