LeanScale Founding Story
Anthony Enrico, CEO and founder, shares the story of how LeanScale started and how it got to where it is today.
Anthony's Background
Before starting LeanScale, Anthony had an eclectic background of go-to-market roles — marketing, product training, sales, and a stint in strategic planning that planted some of the early seeds for what would become growth modeling.
The marquee moment came at a company called Emailage. He started as Head of Customer Success, eventually moved into Rev Ops, and found a real passion for the science and art of go-to-market. That company was product-led, sales-led, eco-led — he joined at $4M, they scaled to $40M, and exited for half a billion dollars.
After Emailage, Anthony spent time at the acquiring company, LexisNexis, and got to see what ops looks like at a Fortune 1000 level — multi-billion dollar company, thousands of sales reps, multimillion dollar marketing budgets. Then he jumped back into startups with a company called Boast AI, from $10M to $20M.
The Pattern That Started It All
Through Emailage, LexisNexis, and Boast, Anthony and his co-founder Sakai kept working together. They started to see a pattern: the best practices, the tools, everything they implemented was really repeatable. But it required so many different skillsets to pull off.
Companies were building big in-house rev ops teams to get it all done, and Anthony and Sakai felt there was a better way. So they started LeanScale in September 2021 and just went for it.
Sakai has since moved into an advisory role, but he was foundational to building what LeanScale is today — especially in how the engineering team operates.
First Contract: Involve AI
The first deal came from a company called Involve AI. Anthony had been advising them and shared the idea of LeanScale. Their response: "If you're doing that, we'll hire you and your team today."
He created an order form, sent it via DocuSign, and closed the first deal. There's even a recording of that first kickoff call — Anthony and Sakai taking their first shot at doing rev ops for another company.
The Birth of the Embedded Model
That first engagement is where the embedded model really took shape. When Anthony and Sakai were operators inside tech companies, the split was clear — Anthony handled strategy, process, and operating plan design in a VP of Rev Ops role. Sakai led go-to-market applications: Salesforce, Groove, DealHub, Marketo, HubSpot — all the technical implementation.
That division became the genesis of what a pod looks like at LeanScale today. You have the Architect who leads strategy and process, and the Engineer who has the technical ability to make the vision a reality with customers.
The First Office
LeanScale started in a pod at a coworking space called Workplicity in Chandler, Arizona. It wasn't much bigger than a closet.
A few early team members worked in pods next to each other, eventually moved into a slightly bigger office, but those in-person early days were about communicating quickly while building and serving customers at the same time. Since then, LeanScale is fully remote — with best practices, playbooks, and everything set up for distributed work.
Offsites and In-Person Culture
Even fully remote, finding time to connect in person is still core to the culture. The team does offsites and holiday parties — the first offsite is where the company came up with the flywheel.
One of LeanScale's core values is having fun. In-person time is a chance to get to know your team on a deeper, more personal level, build together, and tap into the community that's been built as a company.
Where LeanScale Is Now
LeanScale has come a long way from working in a closet at Workplicity and putting together that first contract with Involve AI. The company has now served dozens of fast-growing B2B SaaS and AI companies and has fine-tuned how it approaches go-to-market operations and the value it brings to customers.
The growth, the team, the caliber of companies — it all traces back to that founding moment.
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Anthony shared how LeanScale started — from a closet-sized coworking pod to serving dozens of B2B SaaS companies. What part of the founding story stood out to you the most?