The Purpose-Built Bridge Between LinkedIn and Your CRM

Guillaume is building Groovin, a tool that bridges the gap between Linkedin and CRMs for modern Deal teams (Affinity & Attio today). The idea: eliminate manual entry and sync Linkedin interactions straight into the CRM for full context and smooth coordination. They’re looking at WhatsApp next.

Before Groovin, Guillaume led product squads at PhantomBuster (great tool), Qonto, and Getaround. Perfect training for a product-minded founder.

We had some questions; luckily he had some answers.

Q&A - Guillaume Bruère, Co-founder @ Groovin

What’s the exact moment you knew “CRM ↔ LinkedIn” needed a purpose-built bridge?

When I was working at PhantomBuster. I was spending my days talking with Sales teams and founders relying on Linkedin as their primary sales channel. But none of their Linkedin prospecting efforts were actually visible in their CRM. They simply didn’t have time for constant manual updates, thus leading to lost context and internal chaos.

Witnessing so many teams spending weeks on duct-tape workflows made with Zapier/Make trying to fix this issue, I knew there was an opportunity for a SaaS doing it right.

What changed (APIs, privacy expectations, deal velocity) to make Groovin viable in 2025 and not 2018?

Tech-wise, in 2018, CRMs like Affinity (and later Attio) had young, limited APIs. Linkedin’s API was still a black box for most developers. Stitching those would have been hard. There’s also a cultural change. It seems to me that VC firms are shifting to a more sales‑driven, efficiency-obsessed mindset, measuring every click and killing waste.

Where does Groovin end and Affinity/Attio begin? What do you do better than their native extensions?

Groovin acts as a gateway between Linkedin and the CRMs. It’s not a redundant data layer on top or Affinity/Attio, nor a tool that substitutes itself to Linkedin/Sales Navigator. Instead we seamlessly connect both in the background. Compared to Attio/Affinity’s native extensions, Groovin does a better job at creating/updating contacts with thorough details, and provides more context while you’re browsing Linkedin/Sales Navigator’s inbox or CRM records.

How do you attribute threads (who contacted whom, when) across a team without flooding the CRM?

First, we’re not syncing all your LinkedIn conversations with your CRM automatically. You need to activate the sync on the specific threads you want to track.

Second, those synced messages are saved either in a single Note per thread (Attio) or conveniently as “chat interactions” (Affinity), thus making it easy to see the context without flooding your activity timeline. In both cases, additional CRM record attributes like “Last Linkedin invite accepted” date or “Last Linkedin message sent” date let you build reporting dashboards or workflows based on Linkedin events.

LinkedIn ToS, GDPR/DPAs, data residency; what’s your posture?

Our posture is to augment individual, human‑initiated work, not to replace it with unattended automations. From day one we chose to remain 100% compliant with LinkedIn’s ToS: no mass scraping, no headless browsing, no bulk invites or messages, and no page alteration. Moreover, we’re not storing any profile data or messages in our database.

You claim ~4h saved per user/week; what’s the before/after metric you show in pilots to make that undeniable?

We provide a report highlighting statistics such as the number of contacts or companies created or updated, the number of invites or messages logged, and profiles viewed via the extension. This helps users recognize how all those extra manual tasks (clicking, switching tabs, copying and pasting, etc.) add up to hours of effort each week. For instance, if you’re adding 30 contacts per week to your CRM, each with a dozen mandatory fields to complete, and sending around 5 messages per LinkedIn conversation, it’s safe to say you could save several hours of work.

Bottoms-up team plans at €29/user vs. enterprise; where’s the wedge, and who signs the check?

We’re PLG‑first, and with a plan starting at €29/user, we’re typically within investment teams’ discretionary budgets. Our wedge is Associates/Analysts grinding on LinkedIn ; they feel the pain and immediately see quick wins. Once they see the ROI, tighter coordination, and cleaner data, the investment team lead (principal/partner) then signs the check.

WhatsApp, Telegram are “coming soon”; what unlocks when messaging apps land inside the CRM graph?

Deals happen everywhere, not just over email and calls. Beyond LinkedIn, we’re planning to close more CRM blind spots, like WhatsApp and Telegram. Once they’re synced, the CRM finally acts as the true source of truth, unlocking real productivity gains, AI‑assisted workflows, and meaningful analytics. And for Groovin, it also de‑risks platform dependence on LinkedIn.

What moats are you building (identity graph, workflow IP, distro)?

Our moat is twofold. On tech, we go deep on APIs and mapping algorithms. Our retro engineering work on undocumented APIs makes it impossible to copy with vibe coding. Contrary to competitors on HubSpot/Salesforce, we built Groovin to respect LinkedIn’s ToS from day one, so it’s reliable at scale and hard to copy. On distribution, we’re winning a VC beachhead where the pain is acute, then expanding outward with a repeatable playbook.

Where do you use ML/LLMs today (entity extraction, auto-notes, suggested next actions) and how do you prevent hallucinations?

We obviously didn't choose the “.ai” domain extension just because it's fancy! We have plans to further increase our users’ productivity with AI-generated digests, tasks and suggested messages. That’s coming soon!

PE, corp dev, enterprise sales/recruiting; who’s adopting next and what must you adapt?

Beyond VC, we’re targeting B2B sales teams. To win them, we’ll support more CRMs, starting with Pipedrive and HubSpot, to fit existing stacks and speed adoption.

You’re crafting this “amid the French peaks”; what have you learned about shipping fast as a lean, remote team?

Lucien (my cofounder) and I share a love for the mountains. I’m in the French Alps, he’s in the Pyrénées, and we already had strong remote work habits from our previous company. With Groovin, we’ve learned to leverage AI at all levels to optimize our speed. This allows us to iterate on customer feedback in 1-2 days, while keeping our stack and processes lightweight.

Favorite CRM feature most teams underuse? One LinkedIn change you’d make? The most surprising pilot insight so far?

Two underused CRM features stand out: interaction attributes and workflows. I personally run on Attio and I paired them to auto-update deals, surface stalled threads, and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. If I was working at Attio or Affinity, I’d quickly introduce AI agents to remove the friction of deciding what to automate and how to build it.