B2B startups are AI early adopters. So it's natural that they want to use an AI CRM rather than a traditional CRM. Here are the best 3 AI CRMs for Early Stage B2B Startups.

Why Early Stage B2B Startups need an AI CRM?

Early stage B2B startups have LIMITED time.

It's usually the founders who do marketing and selling. Compared to bigger orgs where the sole job of sales reps is to focus on selling and make CRM updates, founders don't have time for the updates, at all.

This is why it always end in messy Excel spreadsheets or in Notion.

An AI CRM allows startup founders to manage their leads automatically and always have a clear vision on where the leads are in a specific stage of the pipeline.

CRM #1: Breakcold, the AI Native CRM for Modern Startup Teams

Breakcold is an AI sales-focused CRM that has many early B2B startups as customers.

Pros

For early B2B startups, LinkedIn is arguably the MAIN communication channel.

Breakcold integrates with LinkedIn natively which allows you to auto-sync LinkedIn convos easily. From there, Breakcold's AI has plenty of context between your email and LinkedIn convos with leads to create automated CRM tasks and move leads in the CRM.

Basically, without any manual data entry, you'll be able to automate your CRM super easily. That's the biggest pro about Breakcold, especially if you're a pre-seed to Series A startup.

Another good thing is that Breakcold has an AI note taker built-in which is rare for a sales CRM. You can create custom prompts to help your prep for meetings as well as making customized post-call transcripts that tailor your needs.

Breakcold is also one of the few AI CRMs where you can work as a team by engaging on behalf of other team members not only via Email, but also via LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Telegram.

Finally, Breakcold integrates with modern sales tools such as Lemlist, Instantly or Smartlead.

Cons

If you're an early stage B2B startup that is doing cold calls as part of your outreach, then Breakcold is not the best fit.

Indeed, it doesn't integrate (yet) with calling solutions or doesn't have VOIP built-in.

Pricing starts at $29/mo per user but the best features for early B2B startups are more in the $59/mo which can be a lot for small companies, especially if you're not VC-backed.

Example of Breakcold use for a B2B Startup

At Breakcold we have many early stage B2B startups, they pretty much all have the same workflow.

When they get new inbound signups, they use Breakcold's stripe integration to push leads in the CRM.

Automatically, the CRM detects it and it will pull out all related email convos with the person. Depending on the interactions, it will auto-categorize the lead in the right bucket: let's say "Signups" list in the "New Free Trial Stage".

From there the startup founder might have conversations on LinkedIn with the prospects and eventually they'll book a meeting. Breakcold automatically detects it and will move leads to the "Booked A Call" stage.

After that, the meeting will be recorded with Breakcold's AI Note Taker and from what is happening during the meeting, the lead might move again to the appropriate stage (eg. bad fit or send proposal).

Finally once the prospect subscribes, Breakcold will detect it and move the lead to the closed/won stage.

Throughout the whole process, Breakcold's AI created relevant tasks for you never miss a follow up.

Demo video of Breakcold

This demo of Breakcold will show you if it's relevant for your startup.

CRM #2 Close, the AI CRM for Calling Teams

When Close was founded around 2012/2013 and that the team got into Y Combinator, they became the de-facto CRM for early stage startups.

More than 12 years later, Close has embraced the AI train perfectly and is still relevant, and arguably one of the best AI CRM for calling powered teams.

Pros

Close is a fantastic CRM for startup teams into calling.

Pre-seed companies don't do calls a lot but as they get to the Series A stage, if their product is very B2B, calling will be a must and Close then become an ideal option.

Close has its own power dialer (powered by Twilio) so you don't need to rely on a 3-rd party integration.

Close's AI is able to analyze your calls, make summaries and suggestions on the next steps of your calling process.

Thanks to its MCP server, you can also make Close communicate with other softwares like Stripe to retrieve some data and perform CRM updates.

Like Breakcold, Close also has an AI note taker built-in which is perfect to gather as much data as possible in one place.

Cons

Close's AI is still limited for early stage startups I'd say.

I think the problem is that Close has been around for so long that by design, its CRM is not AI native.

Therefore, they have some AI features but they won't help you move leads automatically which is the biggest pain point of early stage startups, as it's the most time consuming task.

Another aspect is pricing, unless you're VC-backed startup part of the Microsoft Startup plan or similar program, you won't get a discount on your 1st year of Close. Close is not cheap, it starts at $49/mo and for that you don't have all the features we talked about above. So for small startup teams, it can be a deal breaker.

Review video of Close

In this review, I explain the calling features of close that might be relevant for some B2B startups out there.

CRM #3 Attio, the AI CRM for PLG Startups

Attio is a good AI CRM for startups with some canvas.

Pros

Attio works extremely well with early stage startups, more specifically product-led-growth startups (PLG).

If you're a startup handling a large volume of data and that, as such, you're probably using Segment to centralize all your data, you can push it to Attio super easily.

Attio also has AI CRM enrichment built-in, so it will enrich your contacts not only with their emails or phone numbers but other useful data related to the revenue of your targets, employee size and more.

The cool thing about Attio is its CRM workflow feature. In it, you can add AI blocks between automated steps to build whatever you want.

For example let's say you receive many inbound leads in Attio from your Stripe signups. You can create a workflow where in step 1 you do AI ICP qualification. What it means is that AI will enrich and research each inbound leads to see if their persona match your ideal customer profile. Then step 2 will only push the qualified leads to a specific list (no AI here). That way you can prevent to push unqualified leads to the CRM using AI.

Once you know this, sky's pretty much the limit here on what you can build.

Cons

Attio is a very complex software, the learning curve can be quite steep. There's no strict rules when it comes to the CRM, it's very flexible but it can also be a curse for small startup teams that don't have the knowledge to figure out the perfect sales CRM process for them.

Unlike Breakcold for example, to build AI CRM automations you'll almost have to become a CRM expert or hire Attio CRM integrators which can be quite expensive.

Attio also has many scaling costs with their workflow credits which can increase the price of your subscription quite rapidly.

Review video of Attio

In this video, I go through the reasons on why Attio is a good fit for PLG startups by providing examples and also explaining why it's not a fit for all startups.