Interviewing Lennard Kooy from Lleverage: selling AI to companies that don't care about AI

Charlotte Verhamme joins the show as a new co-host, bringing an EU policy lens to the founder interviews, and we start with Lennard Kooy, CEO and co-founder of Lleverage.Lleverage is an Amsterdam startup building the autonomous back office for companies that make, move and sell physical products: quotes, order handling, production planning, invoice matching. Lennard has started somewhere around 20 companies (he lost count), sold Storyteq, and now runs an eight-developer team that ships about as much code as the hundred web developers he used to employ. We get into why Lleverage charges per agent instead of per hour, why the most interesting commercial job in AI is selling to a cheese manufacturer that does not care about AI, and which customer objections actually hold up once you are standing in a 700-person factory.Then it turns political, and the discussion moves to Europe's competitive position. Kooy weighs European versus US investors for a Series A, and whether "buy European" actually moves a sales pitch or just sounds good. That question opens onto a bigger one: As China and the US battle for AI dominance, and the right to set the rules everyone else follows, does Europe need a preference clause to hold its ground? He's not against regulation; he sees it as one of Europe's strengths, provided it's applied pragmatically.He ended with a simple principle: protect what makes us human, automate the rest.Lleverage has raised €5 million to date, a €2 million pre-seed in 2024 and a €3 million seed in 2025 led by Peak.🙋‍♂️ Guest: Lennard Kooy, CEO and co-founder, Lleverage🌐 https://www.lleverage.ai📩 Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennardkooy/Chapters00:00 Welcome + Charlotte joins as co-host02:27 Lennard's 20 companies, Storyteq, and the exit07:19 Eight developers doing the work of a hundred11:57 What the autonomous back office actually automates16:07 Charging per agent instead of per hour18:01 Selling AI to companies that don't care about AI26:57 SME objections: hallucination, security, and jobs34:51 Raising €5M and the case for European capital39:27 Europe as an open air museum48:21 The Bright Signal question: keep humans being humans