What Is the Best CRM, Marketing Automation and AI Platform for a Lean Startup?

If you are following the Lean Startup methodology popularised by Eric Ries, choosing a CRM probably isn’t the first thing on your mind.

And nor should it be.

One of the central ideas behind Eric Ries’s excellent book The Lean Startup is that you shouldn’t spend months, or large amounts of money, building something based purely on assumptions about what customers want.

Instead, you build, measure and learn.

You test your assumptions. You put something in front of real potential customers. You see what actually happens. You learn from the results. Then you improve, change direction or, in Lean Startup terminology, pivot.

You can read more about the principles behind Eric Ries’s Lean Startup methodology here.

So where does a CRM fit into this?

And if you also need landing pages, forms, email marketing, SMS, WhatsApp, calendars, sales pipelines, payments, marketing automation and increasingly AI, do you really want to assemble all of those from separate pieces of software?

I believe this is where HighLevel becomes particularly interesting for a Lean Startup.

Not simply because HighLevel is a CRM.

It is because HighLevel gives you a collection of tools that can help you test, measure and develop your business model, without having to build an expensive and complicated technology stack before you know what works.

And there is another interesting connection.

HighLevel itself has grown in a way that reflects many of the principles behind Lean Startup thinking.

What is the best CRM for a Lean Startup?

If you’re at the very beginning of testing a business idea, the best CRM may be no CRM at all.

Speak to potential customers first.

If your next step is talking to 20 people to discover whether the problem you think exists actually exists, a spreadsheet, notebook and telephone might be perfectly adequate.

In fact, spending three weeks configuring a sophisticated CRM before speaking to a single prospective customer would arguably be the opposite of Lean Startup thinking.

Once you need to systematically test offers, capture leads, book appointments, track opportunities, communicate with prospects and measure what converts, I believe HighLevel is one of the strongest CRM, marketing automation and AI platforms to consider for a Lean Startup.

The reason isn’t simply its CRM functionality.

HighLevel brings together CRM, marketing automation, websites, landing pages, forms, surveys, calendars, email, SMS, WhatsApp, sales pipelines, payments, advertising and AI.

You can see a broader overview of the tools and features available inside HighLevel here.

That allows a startup to introduce technology as it becomes necessary rather than assembling a large collection of separate systems before the business model has even been validated.

Eric Ries and the Build-Measure-Learn cycle

If you have read The Lean Startup, you’ll already be familiar with one of its central concepts:

BUILD → MEASURE → LEARN

Eric Ries describes the fundamental activity of a startup as turning ideas into products, measuring how customers respond and then learning whether to pivot or persevere.

The objective is to accelerate that feedback loop.

This is an important distinction.

Being “Lean” doesn’t simply mean being cheap.

The purpose is to learn what works as quickly as possible while uncertainty is still high.

Instead of spending months perfecting a product or service before exposing it to customers, you create something that enables you to test an important assumption.

This is where the concept of a Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, comes in.

The MVP isn’t necessarily a cheap or inferior version of the finished product.

Its purpose is learning.

Suppose you think owners of small accountancy practices would pay £500 per month for a particular service.

You could spend six months developing the service.

Or you could create a proposition, put it in front of 100 accountancy practices and see whether anybody wants to talk to you about it.

Better still, see whether anybody will actually buy it.

Someone giving you money is a much stronger signal than ten people telling you:

“That sounds like a great idea.”

HighLevel can become the technology behind Build-Measure-Learn

This is where I think HighLevel fits particularly well with Lean Startup methodology.

BUILD

HighLevel allows you to quickly create much of what you might need to test an idea.

You can create landing pages, websites, forms, surveys, quizzes, appointment calendars, sales pipelines, email campaigns, SMS and WhatsApp communication, automated workflows, payments, courses, advertising campaigns and AI-powered customer interactions.

But you don’t have to use all of them.

That’s actually the point.

Use the minimum required to test your current hypothesis.

If all you need today is a landing page, form and calendar, build those.

Don’t build everything else just because it’s there.

MEASURE

Once people start interacting with your experiment, HighLevel gives you somewhere to record what actually happens.

Rather than relying purely on opinions, you can start looking at behaviour.

• How many leads did you get?
• Where did they come from?
• Did they book an appointment?
• Did they turn up?
• What stage of your sales pipeline did they reach?
• How much was the opportunity worth?
• Did they buy?
• Which messages received responses?
• Where are prospects getting stuck?

Your CRM is becoming more than a database.

It is becoming part of your learning process.

LEARN

This is arguably the most important part.

The objective isn’t to congratulate yourself because 500 people visited your landing page.

The question is:

What did we learn?

Perhaps people visited but didn’t enquire.

Perhaps they enquired but wouldn’t book an appointment.

Perhaps they booked appointments but didn’t buy.

Perhaps one type of customer bought and another didn’t.

Perhaps everybody asked the same question.

Perhaps the feature you thought was incredibly important wasn’t mentioned once, while customers repeatedly talked about something you considered relatively unimportant.

That’s information.

And information gives you your next experiment.

Change the proposition.

Change the page.

Change the price.

Change the audience.

Change the follow-up.

Then:

BUILD → MEASURE → LEARN

again.

Interestingly, HighLevel itself thinks in a very similar way

There is a nice symmetry here.

You can use HighLevel to operate your own Build-Measure-Learn process, while HighLevel itself describes using a remarkably similar approach to developing its software.

HighLevel’s engineering team calls this its “Skateboard Model.”

You can read HighLevel’s own explanation of its engineering and Skateboard Model here.

Imagine somebody needs to travel from A to B.

The ultimate solution might be a car.

But building the car takes a long time.

Instead, you solve the fundamental problem first.

You build a skateboard.

People use it.

You learn from them.

You improve the solution.

The skateboard might become a bicycle.

Eventually you build the car.

But critically, the eventual car is based on what customers have actually told you they need, rather than what you originally assumed they needed.

HighLevel says its own process involves speaking with customers, researching competitors and the market, identifying core features, building an MVP, releasing it, gathering feedback and then continually improving it.

In one example described by HighLevel’s engineering team, the company identified an opportunity around online courses during 2020. It spoke with existing customers, researched the market and competitors, built an MVP in two months, launched it and then used adoption and customer feedback to guide subsequent improvements.

If you’ve studied Eric Ries’s Lean Startup methodology, that philosophy should sound very familiar.

HighLevel’s approach is essentially to build with the customer, not in isolation.

That’s also a useful lesson when implementing HighLevel for your own startup.

Don’t try to build the car on day one.

Build your skateboard.

Don’t automate something you haven’t proved works

This is an area where I see businesses make mistakes with marketing automation.

HighLevel can automate an extraordinary amount.

But just because something can be automated doesn’t mean it should be automated immediately.

Imagine you have designed what you believe is the perfect sales process.

A prospect enquires.

They receive Email A.

Two days later they receive SMS B.

They enter Workflow C.

Depending upon their response, they enter Workflow D or E.

You spend days creating an elaborate automated system.

There’s only one problem.

You haven’t sold anything yet.

You don’t actually know whether your sales process works.

For a Lean Startup, I’d usually favour:

Do it manually → learn → repeat → prove it → automate it.

Have the conversations.

Send some emails personally.

Listen to the objections.

Find out what questions people ask.

Discover what causes somebody to buy.

Then start using HighLevel to automate the repetitive parts of the process you have demonstrated actually work.

Automation should help you scale learning and success.

It shouldn’t cement your untested assumptions into a complicated workflow.

HighLevel itself provides a fascinating startup example

There is another reason I think HighLevel is particularly appropriate for someone following Eric Ries’s methodology.

Look at how HighLevel itself developed.

In a December 2018 interview, around six months after HighLevel launched, co-founder Shaun Clark described a bootstrapped software company with only 10 agency customers, two full-time people and approximately $3,000 per month in revenue.

You can read that early interview with Shaun Clark here.

More interesting than the numbers is what happened next.

HighLevel hadn’t originally discovered its eventual agency market.

According to Clark, some of its first customers came through an integration with the DrChrono medical software marketplace.

A medical spa agency discovered HighLevel and effectively helped the founders recognise that there was a much bigger opportunity selling the technology through marketing agencies.

HighLevel listened.

It changed direction.

The team started reaching out to agencies and discovered what Clark described at the time as a natural fit between what HighLevel was providing and what those agencies needed.

That is important.

The product was developing.

But so was the business model.

If you’ve read The Lean Startup, that story should sound remarkably familiar.

Put something into the market → observe what happens → learn → change direction where necessary → build the next iteration.

HighLevel didn’t start as today’s enormous CRM, marketing automation and AI platform.

It found its way there.

From 10 agency customers to millions of businesses

The contrast is extraordinary.

HighLevel’s own company history says it had more than 1,000 customers by 2019, 10,000+ by 2021 and 20,000+ by 2022.

By 2023, HighLevel says it had exceeded 60,000 customers and $1 billion in revenue.

By 2025, HighLevel said its technology was powering 2.2 million businesses.

You can see HighLevel’s company history here.

More recently, co-founder Shaun Clark has said HighLevel is now the second-largest CRM in the world by number of users, behind only Salesforce.

Those latter figures are Shaun Clark’s own claim rather than independently verified CRM market-share data.

I explain this in more detail in my article:

HighLevel Is Now the World’s Second-Largest CRM Behind Salesforce, Says Shaun Clark

Whatever league table you use, going from 10 agency customers and $3,000 a month to a platform powering millions of businesses is a remarkable startup story.

And perhaps the most interesting part for someone following Lean Startup methodology is that HighLevel hasn’t stopped thinking iteratively.

Its Skateboard Model institutionalises much of that thinking as the organisation has grown.

HighLevel grew differently too

There is another fascinating part of the HighLevel story.

Shaun Clark has spoken publicly about HighLevel growing without the kind of conventional sales organisation you might expect from a software company of its scale.

Its agencies, customers, affiliates, partners and community have played an enormous part in spreading the platform.

Interestingly, even back in that 2018 interview, when HighLevel had just 10 agency customers, Clark was already talking about the affiliate model as an important potential route to growth.

This contains another useful Lean Startup lesson.

Your assumptions about how you will acquire customers are hypotheses too.

Your product can change.

Your market can change.

Your proposition can change.

Your pricing can change.

And your route to market can change.

The objective is to discover a repeatable and sustainable business model rather than stubbornly sticking to your original plan simply because that’s what you wrote down before speaking to customers.

Avoid creating Multi-System Chaos in your Lean Startup

There is another contradiction I frequently see with supposedly “lean” businesses.

The founder tries to minimise expenditure by choosing lots of individual software tools.

They might end up with:

• WordPress for the website
• Another system for landing pages
• Mailchimp for email
• Calendly for appointments
• Typeform for forms
• Pipedrive for CRM
• Zapier to connect everything
• A separate SMS platform
• Another WhatsApp system
• Another piece of software for reviews
• Another for social media
• Another AI tool
• Stripe for payments

Individually, each decision might make sense.

Collectively, you’ve built a technology monster.

I call this Multi-System Chaos.

You now have multiple subscriptions, multiple logins, multiple databases, integrations that can fail and customer information scattered between different platforms.

I’ve written separately about how to avoid Multi-System Chaos using HighLevel.

For a Lean Startup, I think there is a strong argument for doing the opposite.

Start with very little.

Then switch on capabilities as you need them.

HighLevel gives you that option because so many of the tools are already within the same ecosystem.

What about HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio or Salesforce?

There are plenty of good CRM systems.

If your startup simply needs a straightforward CRM for contacts and sales opportunities, something such as HubSpot, Pipedrive or Attio may be perfectly appropriate.

Salesforce is enormously capable and dominates the traditional CRM market, particularly at enterprise level.

I’m not arguing that HighLevel is automatically the best CRM for every startup.

The argument for HighLevel becomes much more interesting when you look at everything surrounding the CRM.

Do you also need:

• CRM?
• Landing pages?
• Forms?
• Surveys?
• Appointment booking?
• Email marketing?
• SMS?
• WhatsApp?
• Sales pipelines?
• Automated follow-up?
• Payments?
• Reviews?
• Social media tools?
• Advertising?
• AI?

If the answer is increasingly “yes”, comparing HighLevel with a simple standalone CRM isn’t really comparing like with like.

You need to compare HighLevel with the collection of systems you would otherwise have to assemble around that CRM.

For a Lean Startup trying to minimise unnecessary complexity while retaining the ability to experiment, that’s an important distinction.

What about AI for a Lean Startup?

This has become increasingly important.

A modern startup isn’t simply choosing a CRM and email marketing platform anymore.

AI is becoming part of the technology decision too.

HighLevel increasingly incorporates AI across customer conversations, content creation, workflow automation, lead handling, chat and Voice AI.

Again, though, I would apply the Lean principle.

Don’t add AI simply because everyone is talking about AI.

Ask:

What hypothesis are we testing or what demonstrated problem are we solving?

If prospects aren’t being followed up quickly enough, AI might help.

If you’re missing telephone calls, an AI receptionist might be worth testing.

If leads repeatedly ask similar questions, conversational AI might help.

If your team spends considerable time doing a repetitive task, AI and automation might reduce it.

But technology comes after the problem.

Not the other way around.

Is HighLevel the cheapest CRM for a Lean Startup?

Not necessarily.

And if all you require is somewhere to record 50 contacts, I wouldn’t choose HighLevel simply because it has hundreds of additional features.

There are simpler CRMs.

There are free CRMs.

There is Excel.

There are spreadsheets.

The argument for HighLevel becomes much stronger when you start needing several of the things surrounding the CRM.

CRM + website + landing pages + forms + calendars + email + SMS + WhatsApp + sales pipeline + payments + automation + AI.

At that point, comparing HighLevel’s price with a basic CRM isn’t really comparing like with like.

You need to compare it with the collection of software you would otherwise need.

A Lean technology stack should grow with the experiment

This may be the biggest reason I like HighLevel for this particular use case.

At the beginning you might need:

Landing page → Form → CRM

Your experiment works.

So you add:

Calendar → Pipeline → Email follow-up

You make some sales.

Now you add:

Payments → Automated onboarding

You discover prospects aren’t answering the telephone.

So you test:

SMS → WhatsApp → AI

Then you find an acquisition channel that works and begin scaling it.

You haven’t had to replace the underlying system every time your business reaches another stage.

You’ve added capabilities as your validated business model requires them.

That feels very Lean to me.

So, is HighLevel the best CRM for a Lean Startup?

There isn’t one CRM that is automatically best for every startup.

And sometimes the best CRM at the very beginning is no CRM at all.

But if you are following Eric Ries’s Lean Startup methodology and have reached the point where you need to start systematically testing propositions, capturing leads, communicating with prospects, booking appointments, tracking sales and gradually automating what works, I think HighLevel deserves serious consideration.

Not because it has the longest feature list.

Because it gives you the freedom to start small, measure what happens and add capabilities as you learn.

There is also something rather appropriate about using HighLevel for this purpose.

The platform you’re using to test and develop your Lean Startup has itself grown from a tiny bootstrapped operation by getting in front of customers, listening, iterating, discovering the right market and continually developing both its product and its business model.

HighLevel calls its own product-development philosophy the Skateboard Model.

I think that’s a useful philosophy for anyone starting a business with HighLevel too.

Don’t build the car.

Build the skateboard.

Put it in front of customers.

Measure what happens.

Learn.

Improve it.

And only then build the next version.

That’s not just a sensible way to implement a CRM.

It’s a pretty good way to build a business.

Want to explore whether HighLevel is right for your Lean Startup?

I’m Julian Mills, a UK-based HighLevel Consultant and marketing automation specialist. I’ve been working with CRM and marketing automation since 2009 and with HighLevel since 2023.

I don’t believe the starting point should be installing as much software and automation as possible.

The starting point is understanding what you’re trying to achieve, what needs testing and what technology you actually need at this stage of the business.

If you’d like to talk through your business idea, existing startup or how HighLevel could fit into your plans, you can book a 20-minute Discovery Call with me.

Book a 20-Minute Discovery Call