Jeroen Corthout
Corthout co-founded Salesflare in 2014 with Lieven Janssen after the two needed an easier way to manage leads at their previous software company. He has a Master in Biomedical Engineering from KU Leuven and a Master in General Management from Vlerick Business School, with prior experience at Across Health and the Founder Institute.
As CEO, Corthout leads strategy, growth, and product direction at Salesflare, where the platform automates contact and pipeline data from email and calendar for European SMB sales teams.
Insights & takeaways
The through-line
Across the interviews and the weekly stream of Salesflare posts, Corthout keeps returning to one idea: sales tools fail when they demand extra work from salespeople, and companies fail to reach buyers when they rely on the same paid-acquisition playbook everyone else uses. On the product side, this shows up as a case against manual data entry 17. On the marketing side, it shows up as a case against paid ads and generic SEO in a market crowded with well-funded competitors 18. Over the two-year run of LinkedIn posts, this philosophy hardens into a routine: instead of ad spend, Salesflare puts out a steady cadence of practical, specific guides covering nearly every stage of the sales process, from prospecting to forecasting to CRM selection .
On CRM adoption
Corthout treats choosing and using a CRM as a decision that deserves rigor rather than default habit, pointing readers toward "Choosing a CRM: Practical Guide with Process, Criteria & Checklist" and framing proper usage as the difference between a CRM that sits idle and one that helps "close more deals" . The same instinct drives niche buying guides, such as recommending CRMs specifically built for agency lead management and positioning Salesflare against incumbents like Pipedrive for teams looking for "smarter sales CRMs" .
On the sales pipeline
A large share of the content treats the sales pipeline as a set of discrete, masterable stages rather than one undifferentiated process: prospecting to "build your pipeline" , sales development as something to "master" , forecasting to check "whether your sales are on track" , and sales analysis as a "treasure hunt for more sales revenue" . Onboarding gets the same treatment, framed as "a game changer" for productivity and retention when done right . The throughline is that each function has its own tactics worth documenting in detail rather than folding into generic sales advice.
On integrating with new platforms
Corthout also pays close attention to where sales workflows are moving next, flagging Salesflare's arrival as "now officially live on Claude" as a milestone worth calling out on its own, separate from the usual guide-style content. It signals a habit of treating new AI and platform integrations as their own category of update rather than folding them into the CRM comparison content.
From the stage
In inter
Career
Roles
SalesflareCo-FounderApr 2014 – Present
- DocturaFounderJan 2013 – Present
XploreManaging PartnerNov 2013 – Apr 2014
- Across HealthAccount Manager / ConsultantNov 2010 – Sep 2014
- Baxter BioScienceMarketing SpecialistJan 2010 – Nov 2010
Education
- Founder Institute#230schoolFounder, Doctura2012 - 2013
Vlerick Business School#3schoolMaster, General Management2008 - 2009
- Politecnico di Milano#86schoolMaster, Engineering: Biomedical Technologies2007 - 2008
KU Leuven#1schoolMaster, Engineering: Biomedical Technologies2006 - 2008
From public career histories · 10 entries
Media & appearances
3- 16interviewR.G. Brooks, Jr. · 5y ago · 47:25 · 13 views
- 17interviewJan Kartusek · 7y ago · 39:07 · 91 views
Jeroen Corthout discusses how he and his co-founder started Salesflare in 2014 after struggling to organize leads and follow-ups using existing systems like Salesforce, which he found impractical for salespeople managing customer relationships. He explains that Salesflare's core vision is to automatically pull together customer data from multiple sources like email, calls, and calendars rather than requiring salespeople to manually input information, which he identifies as a major reason CRM systems fail in practice.
- 18podcastAnna Furmanov · 5y ago · 1:00:46 · 4 views
Jeroen Corthout discusses why Salesflare pursues podcast appearances as a core marketing strategy, explaining that competing in the crowded CRM market against well-funded competitors makes paid advertising ineffective for their startup. He details Salesflare's growth approach relying instead on word of mouth, Google search rankings, review platforms like G2, and content marketing created by people with genuine product expertise rather than generic SEO copywriting.