Jay Thornton

I’ve spent most of my career building SaaS products around a simple question:

Does this actually make someone’s work clearer and easier?

Over time, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of software that promises transformation but delivers more complexity. This is especially true in the CRM space. Most CRMs today are very good at collecting data and very bad at helping people understand what to do with it.

They track activity, store contacts, and generate reports. But when you ask the questions that matter in the moment, the answers are usually buried.

That gap isn’t a data problem. It’s a clarity problem.

That gap is why I built LeadMachine.

LeadMachine is an AI-enriched CRM designed around decision-making, not record keeping. The goal isn’t to add more dashboards or automate everything in sight. It’s to reduce noise, surface signal, and help teams understand what actually matters right now.

You can see the product and its thinking at https://leadmachine.fyi.

Functional AI, Applied Where It Matters

I’ve written before about my skepticism toward AI for AI’s sake. The same rule applies here as it does everywhere else I build software:

If AI doesn’t make something clearer, faster, or genuinely more useful, it doesn’t belong in the product.

LeadMachine uses AI in a functional way. It analyzes patterns across leads, companies, and user activity and turns that information into summaries, priorities, and context. Instead of forcing users to interpret raw data, the system helps interpret it for them.

This isn’t about replacing human judgment. It’s about supporting it.

When applied thoughtfully, AI becomes a compression tool. It shortens the distance between data and understanding. That’s the role it plays inside LeadMachine.

A CRM That Respects Attention

One of the things that frustrates me most about modern SaaS is how little respect it shows for user attention. More features, more alerts, more tabs, more noise.

LeadMachine is intentionally opinionated in the opposite direction.

It focuses on:

• What’s changing
• What’s stalled
• What needs attention today
• What activity is actually moving the needle

Not everything needs to be visible all the time. Not every data point needs equal weight. Good software makes tradeoffs on behalf of the user.

That philosophy runs through every part of LeadMachine.

Why This Matters Now

CRMs were built for a different era. An era where manual follow-up was expected and insight came from end-of-month reports. That world doesn’t exist anymore.

AI changes the expectations. Teams no longer need more data. They need better understanding.

LeadMachine is my attempt to build a CRM that reflects that shift. A system that acts less like a database and more like a thinking partner.

If you’re interested in where CRMs are headed, how AI can be applied responsibly, or what it looks like to build modern SaaS with clarity as a first principle, you can explore more at https://leadmachine.fyi.

I’ll continue writing here about the ideas, decisions, and lessons behind the product. Not as announcements, but as an ongoing exploration of how software should work when it’s built with intent.