Former CEO (11 years)
Thibaut Vanderhofstadt
Co-founder of Sortlist · Founder of MetSaaS
I was CEO of Sortlist for 11 years.
I co-founded the company in 2014 with Nicolas Finet, Michael Valette and Charles De Groote — from a shared office in Brussels, with a first client signed at €2k and zero certainty about what came next.
Eleven years later: European leader in B2B matchmaking, active in over 140 countries, a Series B raise at €11M, and break-even reached after a full restructuring.
In between: four business model pivots, 50 hires in 5 months after a raise that nearly drowned us, a forced pricing migration that destroyed €150k in MRR in a single day — and saved the company.
Today, I put those 11 years to work for founders living exactly what I lived.
11 years in fast-forward
- 2012–2013
TeamCorner — first digital agency. 20 clients, €50k in 4 months.
- 2014
Launched Sortlist. 15 clients in 15 days. Seed round: €500k.
↗ TechCrunch - 2015
Marketplace pivot — from directory to active matchmaking. Growth ×3 in 3 months.
- 2016–2019
Three model pivots: subscription → lead gen → SaaS. European expansion. Deloitte Technology Fast 50 — +2289% growth over 4 years.
↗ La Libre - September 2017
M&A #1 — Acquired The Briefers (Madrid, Spain). Entered the Spanish market. Sortlist.es born.
↗ Tech.eu - April 2020
M&A #2 — Acquired Agenturmatching (Munich, Germany). European leadership confirmed across 5 key markets.
↗ La Libre - 2021
Series B €11M raised. 50 hires in 5 months. The biggest mistake of my CEO journey.
↗ Sortlist Blog - 2022–2023
8 months of runway. Restructuring: from ~130 people to ~75. Full pricing model pivot to Sortlist+.
↗ La Libre - 2023–2024
Forced pricing migration. −€150k MRR in one day. +40% growth. Operational profitability reached.
- 2024
Birth of my first child. The last three years had changed everything — the pressure, the pace, the priorities.
- December 2024 – April 2026
Transition out of the CEO role — progressive, over 10 months. Final role: Founder | Innovation & Business Development. Innovation Lab at Sortlist — Integration Hub + AI MCP server. Learning to code. Effective exit: April 2026.
↗ La Libre - December 2025
M&A #3 — Overloop AI acquired by Sortlist. The largest acquisition in the history of the company I co-founded. Pivot toward an AI-powered commercial acquisition engine.
- March 2026
Launched MetSaaS — fractional consulting for SaaS founders, marketplace operators & ambitious companies that want to scale like a tech company.
Why now
It's not the wins that taught me the most. It's what you don't see when everything seems to be going well.
I oversold a business plan to investors because I didn't have the courage to say the model was broken. I hired 50 people in 5 months because a raise creates the illusion that anything is possible. And I lost €150k in MRR in a single day — deliberately — because there was no other choice left.
That kind of decision isn't in any management book. You make it when your back is against the wall, when you've exhausted the alternatives, and when you know every week of inaction costs more than the pain of the decision itself.
That's what I bring: not a framework, not a methodology. The ability to recognize where you are — and to tell you what needs to happen, in what order, with what urgency.
French
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Every Wednesday: one founder problem. One tested solution.
"My churn is exploding" — "My pricing doesn't hold" — "I don't know how to value my company". That kind of problem. With the solution I wish I'd had when I was in your seat. 5-min read.