Clément Llehi didn't study an industry from the outside and then build a product for it. He entered it, did the work himself, and built the tool he needed once he understood exactly what was broken.
Today, Makko employs 300 people and serves over 600 B2B clients, including some of France's largest companies — all bootstrapped, without a co-founder or outside funding.
In this episode of The New Build, Clément talks through what it actually took to earn enterprise trust as a small, self-funded operation, and why he thinks most founders aren't paying close enough attention to the signals right in front of them.
About Clément Llehi
Clément Llehi is the founder and CEO of Makko, a facility management company based in France. Before starting the business he worked as a consultant at Capgemini, where a background in e-commerce and user experience gave him an edge he didn't expect to need in facility management. He spent his first months running the company alongside his day job, doing the cleaning himself before work and building the platform at night. Today, Makko serves over 600 B2B clients and employs 300 people — none of it funded by outside capital.
About Makko
Makko is a facility management company built on a hybrid model. It delivers cleaning, maintenance, and hospitality services, and runs a Bubble-built platform that lets clients manage all their office service needs in one place. The platform includes a marketplace for sourcing vendors, a QR code ticketing tool, and a centralized dashboard for budgets, contracts, and reporting. Clients include major French companies such as Leboncoin, Eurazeo, Dailymotion, and Swisslife.
What you'll learn in this episode
This conversation is for anyone building in a traditional industry, or anyone trying to figure out how to earn client trust without the backing of outside capital or a co-founder. Clément walks through the full arc from solo cleaner to 300-person operation, including the moment a major enterprise client chose Makko over established industry players and what that validated.
He also gets into why he deliberately restructures the business every six to eight months, how his consulting background shaped a product that speaks the language of enterprise clients, and why he thinks most founders aren't paying close enough attention to the small details right in front of them. Whether you're approaching your first hire or your first big client, there's something concrete in this episode worth taking away.
Episode timestamps
[00:00:00] Why the early days of building Makko felt like the best and worst time of Clément's life
[00:00:22] Introducing Clément, founder and CEO of Makko
[00:02:23] Why Clément left a consulting career at Capgemini to start a cleaning company
[00:03:38] The brutal early grind: cleaning at 5 AM, working 9-5, building the platform at night
[00:05:26] Why Clément entered the industry as an operator first rather than building a platform from the outside
[00:13:36] Discovering Bubble: How Clément found no-code and built an MVP in a month during COVID
[00:15:51] From first clients to 600+ B2B accounts: What earning enterprise trust actually looked like
[00:19:06] How a consulting background gave Makko a customer experience edge in a notoriously old-school industry
[00:21:43] Overcoming skepticism: Why some people couldn't believe a tech-forward company could also be the best at cleaning
[00:24:57] Why Makko deliberately restructures every six to eight months — and what that looks like in practice
[00:31:03] Clément's playbook for building a bootstrapped business that enterprise clients can trust
[00:33:13] Knowing when to leave your day job: Why you need both traction data and gut instinct
[00:36:13] The micro signals most entrepreneurs ignore — and how one small complaint can signal a bigger cultural problem
[00:40:16] The competitor compliment that told Clément he was building something truly different
Key insights from this episode
Do the job yourself before you build the product
Clément spent his first months cleaning offices himself because he believed understanding the work firsthand was necessary to make the right decisions as the business grew. That hands-on knowledge shaped every product and process decision that followed, from how Makko onboards clients to how the platform is structured. For founders building in industries they didn't grow up in, this is a repeatable approach because the fastest way to understand what to build is to do the job the product is supposed to replace or support.
Start small and iterate, especially when you can't afford to get it wrong
Makko is bootstrapped with low margins, which means every decision carries real weight. Rather than treating that as a disadvantage, Clément frames it as a discipline. For example, when you can't raise your way out of a bad call, you think harder before making it. His playbook is to start small, move fast, and adjust constantly, restructuring the business every six to eight months as the company grows and the market shifts. For founders in lean, capital-light businesses, the constraint itself is the training ground.
Speak your clients’ language and the product sells itself
When Makko's clients first see the platform, the most common reaction is "Why didn't I know you before?" Clément traces that directly to his consulting background where he brought process thinking, project management discipline, and a focus on user experience into an industry that still largely runs on paper contracts and unanswered emails. Clients in any established sector respond when a product operates the way they already think, and getting that right is often more valuable than any feature on the roadmap.
Pay attention to the small signals before they become big problems
Clément describes himself as almost obsessive about micro signals — the client complaint that seems minor, the delayed reply that goes unaddressed. His view is that a small issue today is often an early sign of a larger cultural or operational problem tomorrow. The habit of taking small feedback seriously rather than filtering it out is one of the more practical things you can build into how you run a company day-to-day.
Resources
- Makko — Clément's facility management platform
- Claude (Anthropic) — The tool Clément now uses for wireframing and product development, replacing his previous PowerPoint-based process
- Leboncoin — The French classifieds platform that became Makko's first major enterprise client and validated the model
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