“Everything should start with an Excel sheet and a Word document.”

Not exactly Silicon Valley gospel. But Boris Toledano’s unglamorous advice built the world’s #1 web search API for AI agents and attracted €3M from Seedcamp and other top VCs.

His path from aerospace engineer to AI infrastructure founder demolishes every myth about overnight success. Instead, it’s pure tactical gold: follow curiosity, talk to customers from day one, and do everything manually until you’re ready to scale.

From Aerospace to AI

Boris never planned to build AI infrastructure. “I’m an aerospace engineer by training. I did a master’s in business school, so I switched from wanting to be an engineer to being a consultant.”

That path led him to McKinsey, and later to leading innovation at Carrefour. “I worked on innovation topics: robotics, computer vision in stores, autonomous vehicle deliveries, amazing stuff.”

Perfect timing. Boris spent 2021-2024 at Carrefour as ChatGPT exploded. “I lived through the GPT wave, the wave the public now knows.”

His corporate gig delivered something priceless:

“I had total liberty to do whatever I wanted with the budget and trust. It gave me the confidence I wanted to start my company.”

But big companies have ceilings. “If you want to do whatever you want, you need your own venture.”

When Everything Clicked

Linkup started with a zero business plan. Just “casual chats” with a friend who’d returned from the US.

“We were curious about how LLMs collect content over the internet, the protocols, and the bots. These things were intriguing.”

Their rabbit hole led to human behavior insight: “We spend two to four hours daily gathering everything online. If we do that today, agents will also need to browse the web.”

The problem? “Current infrastructure isn’t adapted. Google wasn’t made for agents and AI.”

Everything clicked. “We said, this is it. This is our bet.”

Customer #1: Tell a Friend (And Listen)

Boris’s first customer acquisition was beautiful in its simplicity.

“We told a friend what we were building. He said, ‘This is exactly what I need because I could achieve what you’re offering, but it would cost me 60K, 100K. I don’t have the budget.'”

His friend revealed the value: an alternative to expensive consulting solutions, delivered programmatically and cheaply.

Customer acquired. Validation confirmed.

Customer #2: The Reddit Stranger Who Changed Everything

Customer two came from pure hustle. “We shared our work on Reddit. One guy we didn’t know said, ‘Where’s the website? Where’s the API? Where’s the documentation? I want to test.'”

That Reddit stranger became their second paying customer. “He’s still with us today.”

The lesson: Sometimes the best growth strategy is putting your work out there.

Why Product-Led Growth Hit Different

Once Boris saw what worked, he doubled down. “We quickly figured out we were product-led. Sharing content on Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter had way more impact than Google ads.”

Their secret? Know your audience.

“We’re building something close to a developer tool. Being close to the community – meetups, hackathons – had more impact than everything else.”

Boris learned to post personally, not hide behind the company. “Me being involved personally works better.”

The results: from two customers to serious scale-ups and SMBs, with enterprise deals brewing.

Building the Best Product (And Proving It)

What excites Boris most isn’t growth metrics, it’s the product. “We can compare different solutions that do the same thing. We rank number one on the benchmark for Web Retrievers or Web Search APIs.”

Number one. Not good. The best.

That technical dominance attracted their €3M pre-seed. Led by Seedcamp, with Kima Ventures, Axeleo Capital, and Motier Ventures participating. For pre-seed, that’s exceptional validation.

The Philosophy That Actually Works

Boris admits his core advice isn’t flashy: “Do things that don’t scale.”

“We all fall into the trap of trying to optimize, to automate. But that comes at the end. You need to start doing things manually.”

Linkup lived this philosophy. Manual customer outreach. Personal Reddit posts. Direct founder engagement. The unglamorous work that built their foundation.

What Happens Next

Boris is building infrastructure for tomorrow’s workforce. “Think about jobs where people spend their whole day online gathering data to do something else afterward. This is for them.”

As AI agents become the norm, someone needs to build the roads they’ll travel on. With the world’s best technology and backing from top investors, Linkup is laying that groundwork today.

But the bigger lesson isn’t about AI or infrastructure. It’s about the power of starting small, staying curious, and talking to real people about real problems.

Your next breakthrough might be one conversation away.