[SaaS & AI Series] Relationship Networks as the New Pipeline With Olivier Roth

Olivier Roth is the Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at The Swarm, a go-to-network platform that helps companies and investors map, combine, and activate relationship networks for sales, recruiting, and fundraising. He helps lead the company’s growth strategy, building systems that turn relationship data into warm introductions and stronger business opportunities. Previously, Olivier founded Timelapse, a strategic creative agency that worked with high-growth startups and brands, including LinkedIn, Lyft, and Stanford Research Park. His work focuses on helping teams use authentic relationships to create more practical, scalable paths to growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:42] Olivier Roth explains how The Swarm helps companies find warm introductions
• [9:00] Early customer milestones and how startups began building on The Swarm’s API
• [13:45] Olivier discusses using relationship networks to attract and hire talent
• [16:40] Reverse engineering introductions to high-profile targets like Elon Musk
• [20:26] Using AI to map relationships while keeping human connections at the center
• [27:15] Creative agency use cases for buying committees, messaging, and intro paths
• [37:49] Best practices for asking for warm introductions through forwardable emails
• [42:39] Why relationship-driven growth still depends on trust and personalization

In this episode…

Cold outbound can create opportunities, but the strongest path to a deal often starts with a trusted relationship already inside your extended network. When teams can map those relationships, identify the right connectors, and ask for introductions with care, how can they turn relationship networks into a repeatable growth channel?

Olivier Roth, a relationship intelligence leader who has spent years helping teams uncover warm introduction paths, says the key is treating networks as structured business assets rather than loose collections of contacts. He highlights the importance of mapping relationships among employees, investors, advisors, customers, partners, and industry friends to identify the most credible path to a target account. Instead of relying on cold emails or broad LinkedIn connections, Olivier explains how teams can use relationship data to identify stronger, more actionable introduction paths. The result is a more human go-to-market motion where AI helps surface the path, but people still build trust, protect social capital, and personalize the ask.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Olivier Roth, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at The Swarm, to discuss how relationship networks can become a stronger source of pipeline. Olivier breaks down warm introductions, reverse-engineered intro paths, and connector-driven network graphs. He also shares how AI, Claude, Salesforce, and Klarna fit into relationship-led growth.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Olivier Roth on LinkedIn
• The Swarm
• Timelapse
• Monaco
• LinkedIn
• Claude 
• Salesforce
• Klarna
• The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life by John Maeda

Special mentions:

• David Connors on LinkedIn
• Sam Blond on LinkedIn
• Michal Bil on LinkedIn
• Grace McMenamin on LinkedIn
• Kevin Patrick Mahaffey on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Tips To Thrive in the SaaS Space With Sujan Patel” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series & Israel Business Series] The SaaS Growth Playbook With David Bitton of DoorLoop” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “We built a technology to essentially like find warm intros and leverage relationships to grow your business.”
• “But the truth is, people treat LinkedIn more as an audience than a network.”
• “We use AI to build something that fosters, you know, human relationships.”
• “The more connectors you have, the bigger the graph you have, the more like hits on target you get.”
• “What we do is we build a technology to accelerate the finding of the path.”

Action steps:

1. Map your extended relationship network: Identifying connections across employees, investors, advisors, customers, and partners can reveal warmer paths into target accounts.
2. Prioritize warm introductions over cold outreach: Using trusted relationships can improve response rates, protect credibility, and create more meaningful business opportunities.
3. Choose the right connectors carefully: Asking people who know, trust, and support your work increases the likelihood of successful introductions.
4. Make introduction requests easy to forward: Providing clear context and ready-to-send language reduces friction for connectors and respects their time.
5. Use AI to support, not replace, relationships: Letting technology surface the best paths while humans personalize the outreach helps preserve trust and social capital.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Olivier Roth, one of the co-founders of The Swarm. You can check him out at TheSwarm.com. Olivier, before I formally introduce you, I would like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the Top Software and AI series. Really, The Swarm is the relationship intelligence leader. It creates a rich data set of millions, hundreds of millions of profiles with job changes, fundraising data, whatever. You need to kind of create a unique relationship mapping tool.

So on that front, you know, really some of the software I had one of the co-founders of Zapier on. That was an interesting episode. One of the co-founders of Pipedrive, very interesting episode. Jotform as well. He talked about the freemium model and building the 25 million users from that. Also Mailshake and DoorLoop. And the list goes on and on. Check them out. It’s really interesting to hear. It’s not always, usually never actually upward to the right and up trajectory. There’s always ups and downs and challenges. And so people share all of those things along the journey. So check those out.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And this is why it’s going to be a fun episode with The Swarm. We do it a lot differently, but I’m interested to test out The Swarm and have an audience to test out The Swarm as well. What we do is we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution and production behind the scenes. Number two, we are an easy button for a company’s gifting. So gifting, staying top of mind to be clients, partners, prospects, even staff from a culture perspective. You give us a list of the people and we’ll do everything else. And you know, we’re typically not sending tchotchkes in the mail, Olivier. We’re sending food. I like getting food. So we send it. So think of sending someone something every 3 to 4 months for five years. And it’s just a nice touch point to say, I appreciate you. I’m thinking about you.

So that’s the number one thing in my life. It’s relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my relationships. Personally, I found no better way to profile the people I admire on the podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail. So check out Rise25.com or email [email protected].

I am really excited to introduce Olivier Roth. He is Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at The Swarm. Leading the go to market category. Generated over $10 million of pipeline, including three from warm intros. The companies they’ve helped include Clay, Whispered, Klarna, and many more. As I mentioned, the relationship intelligence leader. So Olivier, thanks for joining me.

Olivier Roth: 03:18

Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here, Jeremy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:21

You know, one of the things we’ll talk about before we hit record is how do you reverse engineer introductions? This is one of my favorite topics of all time. So we will talk about Elon Musk and Anthropic. Before we dig into that, just tell people about The Swarm and what you do, as you do that,

I’m going to pull up the website.

Olivier Roth: 03:42

Yeah. So The Swarm, we are a relationship intelligence company. We built a technology to essentially like find warm intros and leverage relationships to grow your business. So primarily use case is sales, right? Like you’re trying to get a warm intro into an account. But we also have like adjacent use cases, like recruiting, fundraising, because of course, like when you map a network and you can see relationships around your company, you can use that for many, many different ways. But the first one is like, okay, I’m going, I have a list of companies I’m trying to reach, or I have a list of people I’m trying to reach.

Instead of sending them a cold email, blasting them or cold calling them a bunch of them, there is a warm intro. There is a warm relationship that you can tap into, and we’ve built a technology for the last five years. We raised the seed round led by HubSpot ventures a couple years ago, and we’re on our path to a series A for the next few months. So, you know, early stage, I’ve gone through a few pivots and a lot of like stories to share. So yeah, excited to tell you more about all of that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:51

Talk about maybe what the idea behind it in the very beginning, and maybe start with the first pivot.

Olivier Roth: 04:58

Yeah, yeah. So the focus initially was on recruiting. The origin story is my CEO was working for Sequoia Capital and he was building data tools.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:14

This is David.

Olivier Roth: 05:15

Yeah, that’s David, our CTO and heading growth. So CTO is Chief Growth Officer on my side, but David was at Sequoia. He was building tools for Sequoia portfolio companies to kind of cross pollinate networks from the recruiting standpoint a lot. And also just like from the general like company building standpoint, like Sequoia, I’m sure everybody knows them. They’re the largest VC firms in the world. They backed like Apple and Dropbox and others, and their network is absolutely outstanding, obviously.

So he was building data tools there. And there was the idea of like The Swarm to kind of like spin off in a way this like network mapping technology that was initially pointed at recruiting. And then our first users, like our design partners or users like testing it with us on Zoom calls, like guys like I want to use this for sales. Like I can see the network of my network. I can see, you know, how to get in touch with the people that I want to talk to, I want to use this for sales. And we quickly realized there was like a big opportunity. So we focused on that.

And I was running an agency before. So I was like in a, you know, a service driven business for seven years worked with a ton of startups. And David was one of my clients actually. And so that’s how we, that’s how we kind of knew each other.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:46

What did your agency do?

Olivier Roth: 06:48

We were doing branding.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:51

This was Timelapse?

Olivier Roth: 06:52

That was Timelapse. Yeah. It started in SF, grew to a dozen employees. We were like working with startups to like, put their online presence together and like run some growth campaigns for them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:05

Because you worked with some large organizations too. I think with Rakuten, Lyft and some of those others. Right?

Olivier Roth: 07:11

Yeah, we got, you know, as the years went, went on, we went up market, started to work with like Stanford Research Park, Rakuten, Lyft, you know. For some of those clients, we were like, we had like smaller scopes, but like, for example, for Stanford Research Park, we were like running their whole social media community events, newsletters and so on. So we were, we did, we did a lot of things. And it was a fantastic learning time for me. And, and I kind of like now I’m doing, you know, the product versus the service. And I wanted to add a VC where VC backed versus bootstrapped.

So I kind of like relearn, you know, or learned like a lot of new skills where especially on the product side because we were building like, you know, product versus a service, but a lot of like my, like, you know, agency days, like really help with all of the branding and the messaging and kind of like creating that like category that we’re trying to lead now. So yeah, it’s been fun.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:28

So Olivier, it started off, it sounds like really Dave is like, this could be used for investors, right? Sequoia. And then you brought it out to different people in the market sales. It was I mean, you thought, okay, we’ll use for recruiting, but it turns out like sales teams could really use this and all other use cases. Can you think of a good, you know, first milestone, maybe interesting customer that you got from the platform that was a milestone early on?

Olivier Roth: 09:00

Yeah, early on, we got a lot of like startups and it’s great. We are, we’re very much like, you know, built for startups because they can build on top of The Swarm as well. You can use our API, you can use our MSP, you can leverage all of the data that we own. So we attract a lot of startups. And then similar to Timelapse, we started to attract like, you know, bigger companies as we went. I’d say like one of them is like Monaco.

Monaco, I mean, there is like a few hundred million dollars there. Sam Blond is the CEO is like a very successful, you know, founder of many companies. And he’s creating this new revenue orchestration tool. And they’re building, they’re building, you know, their relationship mapping technology. And instead of Monaco on top of The Swarm. So it’s one example where, you know.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:01

This is them here, right?

Olivier Roth: 10:02

Yeah, it’s one example that’s like a technology that’s, you know, aimed at like salespeople. And that is like a revenue engine with all of the signals that you can combine and think of. And we are one of the pillars of it with the relationship data. So you can see how, you know, we have like, we’ve set The Swarm up in a way that you can use it yourself right away for your internal team. And we also let other companies like build on top of it, which is one of the most exciting part in my opinion, because we get like to, you know, work with a partner, you know, with companies build up their own product. So that’s been great. Monaco is like, yeah, one of the most like, you know, successful stories there.

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