People often ask me how I knew to create Kamina's integrated tech approach. The answer is simple: I learned it the hard way while building Cantoo from zero to €400k ARR, making every possible mistake with technology choices along the way.
Today, I'm sharing the complete behind-the-scenes story of that journey – including the painful tech decisions that nearly killed our growth and the breakthrough moment that changed everything.
The Beginning: A Telecom Engineer's First Startup
In 2018, fresh out of my role as lead architect for a telecom operator in Paris, I co-founded Cantoo with a simple mission: make business telecommunications simpler for SMEs. The telecom industry was notorious for complex, overpriced solutions, and we saw an opportunity to change that.
What I didn't realize was that while I understood telecommunications infrastructure inside and out, I was about to learn some hard lessons about building scalable business operations.
Early Success, Hidden Problems
Cantoo started strong. Within our first six months, we had:
- 25 paying customers
- €15k monthly recurring revenue
- Strong product-market fit
- Growing demand from our target market
But beneath the surface, our operations were chaotic. Like most early-stage founders, we'd built our business on a patchwork of disconnected tools:
Our Franken-Stack (2018-2019)
- CRM: HubSpot (€45/month)
- Project Management: Asana (€24/month)
- Communications: Slack + WhatsApp Business
- Customer Support: Intercom (€39/month)
- Invoicing: QuickBooks (€25/month)
- Calendar: Calendly (€15/month)
- Documentation: Google Workspace (€12/month)
- File Storage: Dropbox Business (€15/month)
- Analytics: Multiple tools (€30/month combined)
Total monthly cost: €205
More importantly, none of these tools talked to each other.
The Growth Plateau: When Tools Became Obstacles
By mid-2019, we hit our first major growth wall. We were spending 60+ hours per week just on administrative work:
The Daily Nightmare
Every morning started the same way:
- Check HubSpot for new leads
- Manually create projects in Asana for each new customer
- Set up Slack channels for customer communications
- Create invoices in QuickBooks
- Update customer status across multiple platforms
- Compile daily reports from 5+ different tools
My co-founder and I were working 80-hour weeks, but only 20 hours were spent on actual product development or customer success.
The Breaking Point
The wake-up call came in September 2019. We'd just signed our largest customer – a €50k annual contract that should have been a celebration. Instead, it took us three full days to properly onboard them because we had to manually set up their information in nine different systems.
I remember thinking: "We're telecommunications experts who can architect networks for thousands of users, but we can't efficiently manage 40 customers?"
That's when I realized our tools weren't helping us scale – they were actively preventing it.
The Integration Experiment
As a telecom engineer, my instinct was to solve this with APIs and middleware. I spent two months building custom integrations between our tools:
Phase 1: HubSpot ↔ Asana Integration
- Development time: 40 hours
- Result: Automatically created projects when deals closed
- Problems: Data sync issues, frequent API changes, rate limiting
Phase 2: Multi-Tool Dashboard
- Development time: 60 hours
- Result: Single view of customer data from multiple sources
- Problems: Slow performance, frequent crashes, maintenance nightmare
Phase 3: Zapier Automation
- Setup time: 30 hours
- Monthly cost: Additional €49
- Result: Basic workflow automation
- Problems: Limited customization, frequent failures, expensive scaling
After three months of integration work, we had a slightly better system, but I was spending 10+ hours weekly just maintaining our "integrations."
The Unified Platform Decision
In early 2020, I made a controversial decision: instead of continuing to integrate separate tools, we would move to a unified platform approach.
The criteria were simple:
- Single source of truth for all customer data
- Native integrations (not third-party)
- Scalable without linear cost increases
- Developer-friendly for customizations
The Migration
We consolidated our entire operation into a custom-built platform using:
- Core Platform: Supabase for database and auth
- Frontend: Next.js for all customer-facing interfaces
- Communication: Integrated messaging within the platform
- Automation: Native workflows, not external tools
- Analytics: Built-in reporting and dashboards
Migration Statistics
- Timeline: 6 weeks full migration
- Development cost: €15k (freelancer help)
- Tool consolidation: 9 tools → 1 platform
- Monthly savings: €150+ immediately
The Results: Operational Transformation
The impact was immediate and dramatic:
Q2 2020 (Post-Migration)
- Administrative time: Reduced from 60 to 15 hours/week
- Customer onboarding: 3 days → 30 minutes
- Data accuracy: 95%+ (previously ~60% due to sync issues)
- Team focus: 75% time on product/customers vs. 25% before
The Growth Acceleration
With operational efficiency solved, we could finally focus on what mattered:
2020 Results:
- Revenue: €15k → €45k MRR
- Customers: 40 → 120
- Team: 2 → 4 people
- Customer satisfaction: 87% → 96%
2021 Results:
- Revenue: €45k → €75k MRR
- Customers: 120 → 200
- Team: 4 → 6 people
- Churn rate: Reduced by 40%
2022 Results (Acquisition Year):
- Revenue: €75k → €95k MRR
- Customers: 200 → 250
- ARR at acquisition: €400k+
- Operational efficiency: Industry-leading
The Technology Lessons
Building Cantoo taught me five critical lessons about startup technology:
1. Tools Don't Scale, Systems Do
Individual tools optimize for their own use case, not your business workflow. As you grow, the friction between tools becomes exponentially more expensive.
2. Integration Tax is Real
Every tool integration has a hidden cost:
- Initial development time
- Ongoing maintenance overhead
- Data consistency challenges
- Performance degradation
- Security vulnerabilities
3. Context Switching Kills Productivity
Research shows it takes 23 minutes to regain focus after switching tasks. When your team switches between 10+ tools daily, productivity plummets.
4. Data Silos Create Blind Spots
When customer information lives in multiple places, you lose the ability to see patterns, identify opportunities, and make data-driven decisions.
5. Custom ≠ Complex
A custom integrated solution isn't necessarily more complex than managing multiple third-party integrations. Often, it's simpler and more reliable.
The Cantoo Tech Stack That Scaled
By acquisition, our final tech architecture was elegant in its simplicity:
Core Infrastructure
- Database: Single Supabase instance
- Frontend: Next.js with TypeScript
- Authentication: Built-in Supabase auth
- File Storage: Integrated storage buckets
- Analytics: Custom dashboards
Key Features
- Customer Management: Full lifecycle in one interface
- Project Tracking: Native project management
- Communications: Integrated messaging and notifications
- Invoicing: Automated billing with Stripe
- Reporting: Real-time dashboards and analytics
The Numbers
- Total monthly tool cost: €47 (vs. €205+ before)
- Maintenance overhead: 2 hours/week (vs. 10+ before)
- System reliability: 99.8% uptime
- Team onboarding: 1 day (vs. 1 week before)
From Cantoo to Kamina: The Insight
The Cantoo experience taught me that most founders face the same challenge: they need integrated business operations, but they're forced to build them from disconnected pieces.
This insight became the foundation for Kamina. Instead of forcing every founder to rebuild what we built for Cantoo, why not provide it as a service?
The Kamina Vision
- Pre-integrated business stack
- No custom development required
- Proven workflows from successful companies
- Managed infrastructure and maintenance
- Focus on business growth, not tool management
Practical Takeaways for Founders
If you're building a startup today, here's what I'd do differently from day one:
Start with Integration in Mind
Before adding any new tool, ask:
- How will this integrate with existing systems?
- Who will maintain the integrations?
- What happens when APIs change?
- Is there a unified alternative?
Measure the True Cost
Calculate tool costs including:
- Monthly subscriptions
- Integration development time
- Ongoing maintenance overhead
- Context switching productivity loss
- Training and onboarding time
Plan for Scale
Choose tools that grow with you:
- Linear cost scaling (not exponential)
- API stability and reliability
- Enterprise-grade security and compliance
- Team collaboration features
Consider Unified Platforms
Sometimes one integrated platform is better than best-of-breed point solutions, especially when:
- Your team is small
- Integration overhead is high
- You need consistent data flow
- Maintenance resources are limited
The Bigger Picture
Cantoo's success wasn't just about having better tools – it was about having a technology foundation that enabled us to focus on what really mattered: solving customer problems and building a sustainable business.
The same principles that helped us scale to €400k ARR are now built into Kamina's Founder Stack. Every workflow, integration, and automation has been battle-tested in a real, growing business.
Building a successful startup is hard enough without fighting your own tools. Learn from our journey: invest in integrated technology from the beginning, and let your tools accelerate your growth instead of holding it back.
Ready to build on a foundation that scales? Explore the Founder Stack that incorporates everything we learned scaling Cantoo, or schedule a consultation to discuss your specific growth challenges.