Episode 9 of The New Build: Clément Llehi on bootstrapping a 300-person company without raising a cent

Announcements
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Hi everyone,

Episode 9 of The New Build is live, and this story starts in an unexpected place: with the founder cleaning offices at 5 AM.

Abhinav sat down with Clément Llehi, founder and CEO of Makko, a facility management company based in France. Clément built the platform because he saw the gap firsthand, then built the software himself when nothing on the market came close.

About our guest

Clément left a consulting career at Capgemini in 2019 to start Makko, spending his first months cleaning offices in the early hours before heading to his day job and building the platform at night.

When COVID hit shortly after he won his first major contract, he used the downtime to design the software properly. That platform now runs a 300-person operation serving over 600 B2B clients, including some of France’s largest companies — all bootstrapped, all without a co-founder or outside funding.

What to expect from this episode

The conversation covers a lot of ground, from what it felt like to go from solo cleaner to managing 300 people almost overnight, to what it takes to get major enterprise clients to trust a small, self-funded team with no track record.

Clément talks honestly about why every decision at Makko carries more weight than it would at a funded company. With low margins and no outside capital, getting things wrong isn’t really an option. That constraint has shaped how he builds, hires, and thinks about risk in ways that are worth hearing for any founder in a similar position.

You’ll also hear about how he keeps his company from becoming siloed and slow. Clément deliberately restructures Makko every six to eight months, and is upfront with every new hire that the company they join today won’t look the same in six months’ time. It’s an unusual approach, and he makes a strong case for why it works.

The episode closes on Clément’s take on micro-signals. His view is that a small complaint or a delayed reply that seems minor in the moment can be an early sign of a much bigger cultural or operational problem. It’s something he watches for constantly, and it says a lot about how he runs the business day-to-day.

Where to listen

Episode 9 is live now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts:

We launch new podcast episodes every two weeks. If you (or someone you know) built something on Bubble and want to share the story behind the build, share it in the comments or submit it here.

— Emmanuel

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