B2B Lead Generation and AI: Interview With Andrew McLernon of Interlink

When Andrew McLernon co-founded Interlink with Jay Gorga in 2018, they wanted to fundamentally transform the outdated, transactional world of B2B lead generation by combining cutting-edge AI technology with a transparent, client-first approach, all without a single penny of external funding.

Fast forward to today and Interlink is a profitable, high-growth business with a truly global footprint with offices in London, New York, Singapore and Pune. The company’s AI-driven solutions are helping enterprise technology businesses bridge the gap between sales and marketing, delivering transparent, personalised, cost-effective and quality lead generation.

Andrew, Interlink’s CEO and an EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2025 finalist, already has a reputation for championing human-centric strategies in an AI-powered world. A belief that technological innovation should be matched with long-term relationship building has been central to Interlink’s growth.

As well as client success, Interlink is blazing a trail in workplace culture. One of the first in its sector to introduce a four-day working week, the company has seen boosts in productivity, innovation and retention. This forward-thinking approach, combined with a leadership team where 60% of roles are held by women (in a business that’s 70% female overall), has earned Interlink ‘Great Place to Work’ status three years running, named among the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women™ 2025 by Great Place To Work and winner of Best Flexible Working Policy award at the UK Company Culture Awards 2025.

Andrew’s leadership reflects a deep commitment to valuing people, employees, customers and partners alike. His focus on balancing AI innovation with ethical, people-led business practices is not just redefining lead generation; it’s setting a new standard for how modern, global businesses can thrive without sacrificing values.

 

What Does Interlink Do?

 

We specialise in AI-driven lead generation for tech companies across the globe. By bringing together cutting-edge intent-targeting technology with a people-first philosophy, we deliver quality demand generation at scale.

Our focus on innovation and transparency means we can help our clients to target customers at the optimal point in their buying journey, driving stronger engagement and increasing sales conversions. Essentially, we make sure the right prospects get the right message at the right time.

 

What Has Been The Biggest Challenge In Setting Up And Growing A B2B Business?

 

For us, the biggest challenge has been maintaining a strong company culture while scaling at 74% year-on-year growth. It’s a constant balancing act: staying true to our values while growing fast, being disruptive in our industry and doing it all without external investment.

That means carrying the weight of fiscal responsibility while still pushing forward. It’s not always easy, but protecting our culture and upholding our values is just as important as hitting our ambitious growth targets.

 

What Do People Not Consider When Setting Up And Scaling A B2B Business?

 

Often people don’t consider the patience, discipline and, ultimately, passion that’s needed when setting up and scaling a B2B business. You need to be in it for the right reasons. If you’re building a B2B business, do it for the love, not just the profit. Chasing quick wins at the expense of doing things correctly might pay off in the short term, but it’s never sustainable.

At Interlink, we’ve played the long game, for example, holding off on any major investments in our sales team until year four and five, once the foundations were rock-solid. In my experience, passion, patience and discipline are what make a business last, not cutting corners in pursuit of profits to the detriment of doing things right.

We Hear A Lot About Companies Getting Funding From Early On In Their Journey. Do You Think That Is Always Necessary?

 

We’re living proof that funding isn’t always necessary; we’ve been fully bootstrapped from day one. That said, it really depends on your goals, your vision and the industry you’re in.

In our case, we were confident we could generate a healthy profit right from the start. With both Jay and I coming from sales backgrounds, we were able to hit the ground running and start selling immediately. We knew we could meet our year 1–3 goals without external investment and we’ve grown steadily from there, remaining a bootstrapped business.

For us, maintaining autonomy was key, not just so we could disrupt the industry we’re in, but so we could create a truly disruptive business culture. We believed in the business; we rolled up our sleeves and we put in the hard work to get to where we are today.

 

What Has Been The Biggest Advantage Of Growing Interlink Organically And Without The Need For Funding?

 

The biggest advantage has been the autonomy and complete lack of constraints put in place by anyone else. From day one, our goal was to disrupt the industry, to stand out for quality, transparency and doing things the right way. Growing organically has given us the freedom to take unconventional approaches to business growth and truly set ourselves apart. It’s also what made it possible to implement such a radical initiative as the four-day working week so early in the business’s evolution, something we probably wouldn’t have been able to do if we’d had external investors on board.

It also gave us something that might sound unusual: the freedom to make mistakes. Those mistakes have been invaluable, teaching us lessons we simply wouldn’t have learned if we’d been operating under the pressure or restrictions of external funding. It’s those lessons, and the independence to act on them, that have shaped Interlink into what it is today.

 

AI Is All The Rage, But What Have You Found To Be Its Biggest Advantage For Interlink?

 

The biggest advantage of AI for Interlink is that it gives us headroom. It takes care of the heavy lifting so we can focus on the things AI can’t do; passion, judgement, creativity, innovative ideas, experience, transparency and building trust.

Our clients don’t buy us just for the smart tech we’ve built (plus, anyone can plug into AI these days). What they buy is the way we apply it with context, knowing when not to follow the data, and bringing fresh ideas that open doors competitors can’t.

We use AI to speed up the groundwork, but our edge is our people and transparent ways of working. The team challenge briefs, bring disruptive campaign angles and aren’t afraid to say when something won’t work. That honesty earns more trust than chasing quick revenue or flashing a new AI tool. In a market full of black boxes, we show our workings, share our data and make clients feel confident they’re making the right calls.

The real advantage comes from pairing AI with qualities that are too often overlooked in our industry: honesty, creativity, and a genuine passion for solving the client’s problem

 

What Is The Biggest Learning You Have Taken From Your Journey So Far?

 

Probably patience and discipline. To grow at the rate we have, we’ve had to regroup and rebuild frequently. For example, the business structure and processes we had in place three years ago wouldn’t be right for our circumstances today. That’s not to say that’s a sign of failure, it’s a measurement of success. Outgrowing certain structures means we’re evolving and moving forward. The real skill is predicting when change is needed and optimising for it.

It took us seven years to build the foundation blocks of our business, and even then, the work doesn’t stop. Once one block is secure it’s time to strengthen another. I used to think we were always just around the corner from being “done.” But there is no “done.” There’s always another corner, another area to improve, another rebuild waiting.

Accepting that the journey is also the destination completely changes how you see things. You start to appreciate the rebuilds, even the mess, because perfection would mean standing still. And standing still is the opposite of growth. That’s as true for the business as it is for us as leaders; the learning, the adapting and the deliberate investment in our own development is part of what keeps everything moving forward.

 

What Do The Next Few Years Have In Store For Interlink?

 

The next few years at Interlink will be defined by going deeper into what matters most to our clients. What challenges are keeping them up at night? Where are the opportunities we can help them unlock?

By putting client success at the centre of everything we do, we’ll continue to evolve our services and expertise around real needs, not just market trends. That means listening more, understanding pain points better and delivering solutions that make a tangible difference. It’s about becoming a trusted partner, anticipating what clients will need next and helping them get there faster.

On the technology side, the roadmap is clear: stay close to the customer and solve the problems that actually matter. Our Customer Advisory Board, which is made up of seasoned marketers, shares both today’s challenges and what’s coming next. By co-creating solutions with them, we can move fast, ship early and iterate in line with real market needs. This approach has kept us first to market with new products for more than seven years, and there’s more in development right now.

But our north star doesn’t change: lead momentum. It’s not just about generating the right lead from the right company, it’s about what happens next. We’re focused on creating movement around those leads so sales and marketing can act without the usual drop-off.

Ultimately, our technology is designed to stop lead quality and responsiveness from decaying. Instead of asking clients to spend more on net-new leads, we help them convert more of the ones they already have at greater velocity. That’s where the next wave of efficiency, quality, conversions and growth will come from.

How Has Global Expansion Impacted Your Company Culture And How Have You Adapted Without Compromising On Your Values?

 

Global expansion has reinforced the importance of our values as the foundation of our culture. We see culture as almost the byproduct of our values but definitely not an ‘out-of-the-box’ concept that can be imposed identically everywhere. By using our values as a lens for every decision, we ensure consistency while allowing for local nuances too.

We place a great deal of trust in regional leaders to champion our culture in a way that feels authentic for their teams. In some cases, we’ve seconded UK employees to overseas offices to help embed our cultural DNA from the inside. We’ve also learned that what motivates people varies from country to country. The benefits that land well in one region might not resonate in another, for example, so we adapt as necessary but without losing sight of our core principles.

What we’ve achieved is a confident, consistent culture that empowers teams to make day-to-day decisions with our values front and centre, regardless of location or time zone.

 

How Important Is Leadership Style In Shaping Culture And Has Your Approach Changed As The Company Has Scaled?

 

Leadership style has been critical in shaping and sustaining our culture as we’ve grown. From the outset, we’ve favoured an open, honest, non-hierarchical structure; we don’t sit above the business, we sit alongside it.

As we’ve scaled, the leadership team has grown in parallel, but the emphasis has remained on autonomy and trust. We’re transparent about our strengths and weaknesses, and we embrace learning from mistakes, an openness that encourages people to take ownership and bring our culture to life, wherever they are in the world.

For us, leadership isn’t about control, it’s about enabling and empowering. By staying true to our values and ensuring they guide every action, we’ve been able to scale without losing the essence of who we are as leaders and as people.

 

In A Fast-Paced, Scaling Business, How Do You Balance Performance Demands With Employee Wellbeing?

 

We see employee wellbeing as the foundation of sustained high performance, not something to be traded off against results.

We’ve deliberately introduced disruptive policies, such as a 4-day work week and flexible working, to push boundaries and keep wellbeing front and centre. The challenge is that we’ve been a different business every year (growing from £5.5m to £8.5m to £12.5m and beyond) and with that growth come ambitious performance targets that aren’t typical.

But, these ambitions make it even more important to protect and prioritise our people and that’s why we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can be best-in-class for employee wellbeing. This doesn’t just happen by magic and takes constant effort, but it’s something that we won’t compromise on as we recognise that it’s essential to achieving our growth goals while maintaining a happy, healthy team.

 

What Advice Would You Give To Founders Who Are Trying To Build A Strong Culture From Day One?

 

Culture isn’t something you can dip in and out of, it’s the by-product of your values and DNA, and you can’t retrofit that later or treat it like a slogan on a wall. You need to be confident in those values from the start, because they become the lens for every decision and how leaders operate. In many ways, culture is what happens when nobody’s watching, so it has to be genuine and consistent from the very beginning if you want something lasting to build on.

 

How Can We Find You?

 

Checkout our website https://weareinterlink.com , find us on LinkedIn, or get a peek behind the scenes on Tik Tok https.

 

Interlink Has Been Named A Great Place To Work For Three Consecutive Years Now. What Makes Interlink A Great Place To Work?

Being named a Great Place to Work for three years running comes down to one thing: our people. As we’ve grown to 146 employees globally, we’ve been very deliberate about bringing on board people who share our values and who are a great cultural fit. We’re striving to be the best company in the industry, not just for our customers, but for our employees too, our team subscribe to that.

Our people-first philosophy underpins everything we do. By fostering a positive, supportive and inclusive workplace, we create an environment where our team can thrive, develop and feel genuinely valued, which serves to strengthen our client relationships and service delivery.

We know our success is directly tied to the wellbeing and satisfaction of our team and this reinforces our commitment to making Interlink a place where everyone can do their best work, be their authentic selves and grow alongside the business.