How Lime Reached $76M Revenue and 7,000 Customers with 25% EBITDA Margin and Zero Outside Capital (Interview with CEO Tommas DeVu)

Guest Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

0:01Hey folks, my guest today is Thomas DeVu. He became CEO and managing director of Lyme Technologies on January 1st, 2026, succeeding 20-year veteran Nils Olsen. He joined the company in 2017 and most recently ran Lyme CRM, its largest business area, about 70% of operations, and holds a Lund University engineering and management degree. I got to meet him in person at an event called Sassiest. I was really impressed with what he's building, so excited to him on. Thomas, ready to take us to the top?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

0:26Re really nice to meet you, nice to be here, Nathan.

What Lime Sells: The Swedish Salesforce of Europe

Nathan Latka

0:29Yeah, good to see you again. For folks that don't know what you're selling, let's start there. Walk us through just high level the product. What are people paying you for?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

0:36Alright, so ⁓ quickly and for most people in the US, I would say that we are like a Swedish Salesforce, but but of course of course only better. So, I mean if you have our biggest competitors, you know, Salesforce, Microsoft, HubSpot, they are kind of glow global, big, a little bit slow because they are so big. We are you know very small, very local, we are really fast-paced, so that's a big difference. They sell through an indirect channel, meaning they have partners for everything that they do. especially you know consultancy and all implementations. We have done it in a direct model, meaning we have everything under one roof: development, sales, consultancy and implementation and support. And of course then they are from the US, we are the biggest CRM player in Europe.

1:26And I l obviously focused on AI, right? You want your customers to connect as much data so that their brain online gets smarter. You then help them automate, then elevate with agents. We'll get to that in second. I don't want to bury the lead. Your stuff is public. So I wanna I want people to listen to this episode to see your success first, then we can jump into the tactics. But this is right off the stock home exchange. I mean, you guys have nice revenue growth here, right? What did you guys finish last year at here?

1:47Yeah, so as it's saying we're around ⁓ seven hundred and forty million sec ⁓ that's for for last year as you have. ⁓ so I mean we've had a steady growth if to take the past twenty five years, we've had an average yearly growth of eighteen percent and at the same time we've had an average EBT margin of twenty five percent. So we've always believed in like long-term profitable growth. We've never taken in external capital and always always built it with our own capital and by ourselves. And yeah, well, we've we've not you know expanded super rapidly, but we've taken it step by step and had a steady growth.

Two Revenue Streams: Software and Services

Nathan Latka

2:26Yep. And just to convert all of you US listeners, right, when we go sec to USD here, maybe you can do the conversion for us, Thomas. It's about seventy six million of ARR. All right. Now you guys know you should listen to Thomas. So Thomas, take us into your strategy. How are you growing today? You've grown 18% consistently for over 20 years, profitably. That's really hard to do. What are your growth channels today?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

2:31Yeah, so basically one to ten, yeah. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well so basically we have two different revenue streams. ⁓ one is the the software and the other one is the services. And if you take them, around two thirds of our revenue comes from the software and everything we do ⁓ in that. ⁓ and then the other third is connected to the services. And for us, I mean we are not just a supplier handing over a software to our customers. We are really trying to be a partner to them, saying, you know, we are not only, you know. helping you to to be better with with sales through that through that software. But we actually want to say okay how can we help you increase your revenue through ⁓ selling better or maybe your ticketing through having faster management of the tickets. And that's ⁓ how we help them with both the software and the services.

Why Lime Sells Services Alongside Software

Nathan Latka

3:35And are you did you start off as a services firm or as a software firm?

3:39Software firm. So it's always come from a product point of view, but we've always had ⁓ it's not an off the shelf product, ⁓ the biggest part of Lyme. It's a kind of complex software. So the services has been kind of in integrated into that as a very obvious part because our customers have needed it. They want us to hold their hand through the the different projects and develop the the the software over time.

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

4:05Why do so many people in the States say software founders do not sell services? The margins are too low.

4:11Yeah, but I I I mean we talked about this at Sausy's, but I I honestly think that if you ha if there is an off the s the shelf product and and it's it's it doesn't need that much time to actually be successful with it. You just understand everything intuitively, well then maybe you shouldn't go into services. But quite many softwares out there, they are complex, they are not that easy to understand, ⁓ because they are, you know, big and they need someone who can help them. how to use them in a good way, how to make s just reach success with them, then I do think that software is a really, really good complement.

4:48So walk us through today, right? You're growing. how many paying customers today, or what can you share?

Customer Count, Users, and Geographic Footprint

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

4:54Yeah, so if we we take us quickly, we actually have four different business units, ⁓ around seven thousand customers, over one million users in in those ones. ⁓ so quite big. We exist in the Nordics, started in Sweden but now also taking a step down Europe so also have offices ⁓ in the Netherlands and Germany.

Lime CRM: On-Prem, Cloud, and Data Sovereignty

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

5:15And what what is to like today I see Lime C RM, Lime Go, ⁓ one is industry tailored CRM, one is plug and play. Is Lime CRM are those on prem installations? So are you selling to folks that care a lot about security?

5:28⁓ yeah, so Lime CRM as you say that's the biggest unit, that's ⁓ over seventy percent of our revenue and and it comes from on-prem, definitely. It also comes from desktop early on, but most of our customers have kind of you know together with us grown into having a web solution, into having cloud solutions. ⁓ there are still ⁓ you know customers who do want to stay on-prem and But definitely security is a big topic, and and of course then many also nowadays think that it's important to have their data you know in Europe and and also attached to Europe. And and that's of course something that we we are one of the few and can provide in a good way.

6:14Can you look at your cohort data and directly say anyone that pays us more for our services also ends up with higher net dollar retention on the recurring SAS?

Services Correlation with Lower Churn

Nathan Latka

6:25Yeah, so if you look at, for example, the churn, we see different correlations with with the churn in different ways. One of them is like the more hours our customers spend together with us and our consultants, the less churn we have on those customers. So there is a direct correlation between the two. And of course, it's not that strange because we develop our solutions and software. Together with the customer because their processes develop all the time. They don't look the same as they did before COVID, right? I mean now they're looking different.

Largest Customer and Average Contract Value

Nathan Latka

6:58And you guys have large enterprise accounts. You know, people think CRM, they think, it's you $100 a month on average. I mean, can you share w don't name them, but what's the largest customer pay you per year?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

7:06⁓ all right, so what could it be? Maybe three hundred thousand dollars or around there. I mean it's but it I mean an average an average customer for us is not not that big, maybe fifteen, twenty thousand euros. that would be an average customer if you look into Line CRM.

Nathan Latka

7:21What caused the largest one to pay you guys so much? Is that a lot of professional services, a lot of usage, a lot of contacts? How are you selling?

Vertical Specialization and Usage-Based Pricing

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

7:28And so a little bit different. I mean of course seat-based is one thing that we still have, you know, use by the whole company. It's more of a a big firm so to say, a company, and that's one thing. But if we look at into different verticals where we also are the best, you could say, where we have you know specific solutions to different verticals, then you also start to to address the payment in a different way. So if you take the real estate customers. They could look at the amount of square meters that they hold as a as a real estate company, and then we could actually get paid that way instead of the number of seats. So we're looking into that, of course, now with all development that is happening. And that could be mentioned. I mean, if we take the verticals, we actually have 70% of our revenue comes from only four verticals. So we are also really built up that way. That it's it's not a generic solution. We have you know, specific solution with our expertise built up both in the software and then we have teams, you know, connected directly to these verticals, which of course then we can be again someone who can be a partner to our customers.

AI Agents, Workflows, and AI Assist Launch

Nathan Latka

8:40There's lot of legacy software companies trying to figure out how do they use the data that their customers have put on their platform to build a smart brain and then build agents to actually get work done for their customers. My research team told me, quote, Nathan, you gotta ask Thomas about this. They said, quote, the Ford story is that DeVoe is inheriting is an AI and continued verticalization play. The site is now heavily oriented around AI tools for sales, marketing, customer services, plus workflows with a thousand app integrations, no code automation. And built-in AI agents, how are you doing this? How are you building agents for your customers to help them get work done?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

9:16Yeah, so we actually launched ⁓ this just a couple of weeks ago. It's we call it workflows, but basically, as you're saying, what it it does is help with integrations in a very easy way. It also built you can build your AI agents in that layer. And and basically what it does is it it makes all the CRM processes better and quicker than what is done before. Maybe more steps have to be done manually. Now you can make them more automated. You get in a lead, and instead of getting that lead and you qualify it yourself, you actually ask your AI agent to help you qualify it. You go search for the information you have in CRM system, you search on the web, and you you have a recommendation. This is what you can do. This is even you know the person you could contact and here's a suggestion of an email. That's a very very easy example of what you can do. But but then again, I mean it's we are there, we are offering this. But many of our customers are not there yet. And we we're not selling to the latest tech customers as it as well. I mean we have just released another feature which is AI Assist, which is basically like a Clodochat GPT but within your CRM system. So you can ask anything on your own data and you you get nice questions, insights, data in a very easy format. That's very appreciated. That's something that is really, you know, you can touch on as a customer. It's easy to understand because you know how to use Chat GPT. And we see higher interest for that than the AI agents so far, even though we're we're of course selling

Nathan Latka

10:57A lot of software founders listening right now that have launched embedded chat in their interface. But when they then go look at the usage data, they're disappointed because they don't see their users actually using the tool or their users are asking stupid questions. Like the users don't know how powerful the chat is. So it's like something that can do so many things is actually negative because you don't know how to onboard new users. So the question to you is: what usage metric do you care about for the new AI chat? And how are you tweaking the product to drive more value through that usage for your customers.

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

11:28Yeah, but excellent question, and it also takes us back to you know the expert services department. I mean, historically, what have we done? We've hold their hands so they actually know how to use the product. And what you're saying here is true as well. Well, if you don't know how to prompt in a good way, you don't know how to ask questions in a good way, of course you cannot get the full value out. So we have our expert services department who are helping our customers of actually using AI assists and and AI agent tools. in a better way so they can get the full value out. So that's how we try to help our customers also now in in this new area.

12:05So speaking simply, are you putting together, you know, complex MD files on how to attack churn and then putting a sexy cover on that, calling it a churn alarm agent, so that when your customers say, Well, Thomas, how do I use the chat? instead of having to teach them how to talk to it organically, you can say, Look, just use our churn alarm agent. And it's basically a pre a master prompt. They can just click and get value.

Nathan Latka

12:26I'm not sure I've fully got it, but if you are saying that we are trying to ⁓ simplify things ⁓ that could be complex, ⁓ through through giving you know yeah advice and holding their hands, yes. I mean what at least our users, they they could be between you know twenty five and seventy years old. And of course it's different how you know used they are to using technique. As as a per as sorry, as a person, I mean but

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

12:48As a business or as a person, their human life? Their age, yeah.

12:53The person's working in the business, the person's sitting with a software. So as you're saying, they're very different of how mature they are in how they use software, how they use AI and so on, which is understandable. And of course then it's helpful if we can help them along the way of actually, you know, getting value out of the software.

13:14So we're watching Java journeys here. I guessing this is a tutorial sort of on how it works. I guess while this is going, what what I was really getting at is what's the tech stack you have behind one of these agents? Is it just a master MD file with about a bunch of instructions, or is it something more complex?

13:29Alright, so I I hear you. So basically what we built is an agnostic way of doing this. So at the moment we have Anthropic as the main as the main LLM in the end, but we can change it. We have European alternatives for the ones who prefer that. And of course looking at what is actually better at any point in time. So that's how we do it. And then when it comes to the workflows, we also have a cooperation with a third party. to ⁓ to use some of those parts

Nathan Latka

14:02Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So what are you measuring in terms of adoption? You launched the product, like what your internal management dashboards. What are you looking at every Monday?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

14:09⁓ so from our point of view to see in a from a customer, like what what are they how do they use it, so to say?

14:16How do you know if all the work you put into engineering to launch these things was a good investment or not?

14:21Okay, yeah. Well of course we we revenue is one thing to see w what we're actually selling and and how we get that in. As you're seeing the other one is adoption. So how much are our users actually ⁓ using the new products, the new features that we that we let out? So ⁓ yeah looking into that in you know both on the actual customer ⁓ point of view but also lifting it up to more elevated, you know, ⁓ verticals or parts of of different ⁓ customer segments and so on. Yeah, so so just looking into that.

14:56Interesting. One of the challenges founders are having is they they launch a bunch of integrations for their customers to connect. And then they either can't get the customer connect to connect the integration, or when the customer does connect the integration, they can't ingest enough of the metadata from the integration partner to then add value back to their customer. You guys have 54 live integrations here, it looks like. Just walk me through managing these integrations, managing the data ingestion and cleaning the data so you can add value back to your customers.

15:25I think again one advantage of having the everything in under one roof is that we can own this. So we have built all integrations ourselves and we we built them, we maintain them ourselves and we make sure that they are up to date and and we we get the if something is not working they'll contact us directly, we can fix it. So again coming back to having both the software and the services has really helped us. Then now with with the workflows ⁓ it becomes easier to make these integrations. It becomes f less time to actually do it, higher quality ⁓ to maintain it. And so we're looking forward to see how that will play out as well.

Leadership Transition and Culture

Nathan Latka

16:14Interesting. Well, hey, what do you you know, wha what you took over obviously for someone that was at building the business for a long period of time. What was that like coming in? Did people open you with welcome arms? Were people jealous? Like how do you manage the culture and the team?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

16:27I mean I've been lucky enough to be on board for 10 years at Lyme. Niels, my my the one before he was at Lyme for 20 years. But we worked together for those 10 years. I've been part of the management team since 2020, so six, seven, six years or so before I actually got the CEO role. So I really feel that we we've you know in many ways done this together. and so it's not big changes that that is happening now with it. But of course we have a different ways.

Stock Market Perception and Analyst Views

Nathan Latka

16:59What what's the market getting wrong about you guys, right? The stock price is basically flat since twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, despite the fact that you guys have almost doubled revenue and EBITDA continues to grow, right? You're up from four hundred to seven thirty to seven fifty one. And again, profits continue to climb. What are the analysts getting wrong?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

17:06Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm not sure the analysts actually get it wrong. All of them has ⁓ a buy recommendation for us. so so but but what what the people buying it. Yeah, no but it's a good question. I mean one thing is the stock market and the only thing I I've learned is that we cannot really affect that. We the only thing we can do is, you know, make sure to keep producing good results quarter after quarter, and that's what we actually try to do. And and I think we keep doing. So I think over time we just need to prove that, you know, AI is more of an opportunity for us than anything else.

17:23Yeah.

17:48And of course, I mean we're not the only one who've got a you know big blow out of the the SAS Mageddon now. ⁓ so many SAS companies hadn't had that blow. But yeah, we've definitely been part of it as well.

Nathan Latka

18:01Do you just if you're generating more revenue, one way to get the market to price like value properly is just to increase your dividends, right? That that's one way to do it. You guys have a dividend yield here. Are you actively involved in those discussions or is that more a board level thing that's setting that?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

18:13⁓ well so i i it's more of more of a board level question than than than for me. Of course I'm I'm there in the room ⁓ in the boardroom but it's more of a board

Nathan Latka

18:24Yeah, yeah, okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Great. Well Thomas, this has been super enlightening. I think the takeaways I want my folks to learn is listen, there's another way to build great in the age of AI, which is software plus services. In fact, it's potentially an edge because you're closer to the customers' problems enabling you to build better agents. So Thomas, on that note, if people want to learn more about you and what you built, where can they find you online?

Tommas DeVu, CEO and Managing Director

18:44Yeah, yeah so my my name is pretty weird, so Thomas with two M's and Davo as you said, ⁓ you'll probably write it here somewhere. So you'll find me on LinkedIn very easily. ⁓ happy to connect.

18:55Guys, there you have it. Launched in 1990. Think of them like the Salesforce of Europe. They've grown consistently for 20 years at about 18%. That's an 80% Kager breaking caught, about 78 million of USD ARR ⁓ recently, again, up about 18% your year. They're also extremely profitable, never raised outside capital. ⁓ trading, you know, publicly in Sweden on the stock exchange there under STO Lyme. Thomas is now coming in trying to continue to drive growth of the business across, you know, more. Let's double from a million users to two million users and seven thousand customers to fourteen thousand customers with more vertical integrations. Most of their customers today are just in four verticals as they look to continue to scale. Tomas, thank you for taking us to the top.

Nathan Latka

19:36Thank you very much.