# David Chevalier

> David Chevalier is the co-founder and CEO of Surfe, a Paris-born sales-tech company that bridges LinkedIn and the CRM. He and Romain Ginestou dreamed up the tool during an exchange at UC Berkeley after getting fed up with copy-pasting prospects into their CRM. Launched as Leadjet, the company bootstrapped to over 1,500 paying customers and 1M EUR ARR with no sales team before rebranding to Surfe and raising a 4M EUR seed round in 2022. Customers include Google, Uber, Spendesk, Mirakl and Opendoor. Chevalier is a vocal advocate for keeping the human in B2B selling, even as he builds tools to automate the busywork around it.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Surfe
- **Organizations:** Surfe, Leadjet
- **Nationality:** French
- **Education:** Master of Science, X-HEC Entrepreneurs (Deep Tech Track), HEC Paris, Bachelor of Arts, Business Administration - Banking, Cooperative State University Mannheim (DHBW), Visiting scholar, Learn2Launch Program / exchange, UC Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded and scaled Surfe (formerly Leadjet) into a widely used LinkedIn-to-CRM sales platform., Bootstrapped to over 1,500 paying customers and ~1M EUR ARR in about two years without a dedicated sales team., Raised a 4M EUR seed round led by 360 Capital in 2022.

## Career timeline

- **pre-2019** — Spent roughly five years working in M&A and leveraged finance before deciding to change paths.
- **2019-2020** — Studied at HEC Paris and went on exchange to UC Berkeley, where he and Romain Ginestou conceived the LinkedIn-to-CRM tool that became Leadjet.
- **2020** — Co-founded Leadjet to automate prospecting busywork; grew via Product Hunt during COVID-era remote selling.
- **2022** — Bootstrapped to 1,500+ paying customers and ~1M EUR ARR with no dedicated sales team; rebranded Leadjet to Surfe.
- **2022** — Raised a 4M EUR seed round led by 360 Capital with TS Ventures and angels (announced October 2022).
- **2025** — Opened a Surfe office in New York, expanding into the US market.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and scaled Surfe (formerly Leadjet) into a widely used LinkedIn-to-CRM sales platform.
- Bootstrapped to over 1,500 paying customers and ~1M EUR ARR in about two years without a dedicated sales team.
- Raised a 4M EUR seed round led by 360 Capital in 2022.
- Won customers including Google, Uber, Spendesk, Mirakl and Opendoor.
- Expanded the company internationally with a New York office.

## Latest updates

- **2025-11** — Surfe opened a New York office, marking its push into the US market.

## Links

- Website: https://surfe.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-maurice-chevalier/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/david-chevalier
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-24