Outreach360

Context

Off-page SEO and link building had a spam problem. Most outreach was untargeted, irrelevant, and annoying — bad for recipients and ineffective for customers. We wanted to automate outreach in a way that actually helped both sides: find sites that rank for the same keywords, match content fit, and reach out with something relevant instead of noise.

What I built

We didn't try to build the perfect solution from day one. We started part-time, focused on product-market fit first, and built only what the current stage required:

• Excel add-on → Python executable → server app → separate front end and backend → full product → self-serve SaaS

Each transition happened when we outgrew the previous setup. We weren't afraid to pivot the tech stack as the situation changed. The result was a system that handled large-scale domain/keyword/ranking/contact datasets and ran targeted outreach campaigns at scale.

Outcome

The product served about 30 concurrent enterprise customers and processed more than 5 million records per month across domains, keywords, rankings, and contact data. The core differentiator was outreach quality: contextually relevant and tailored to recipients, not mass spam. Customers stayed for years. Revenue reached well into six figures annually — profitable from day one with margins well above 50%. I later exited in mid-2024; my co-founder still runs the company today.

Key Insights

• Build for the stage you're in, not the stage you imagine. Premature optimization kills traction.
• Hire earlier than you think. I hit a deadlock: needed help with workload, but didn't have capacity to onboard anyone without the system breaking. Don't wait until you're burned out.
• SaaS is different from internal tools. You don't know your users, can't always talk to them directly, and still need to make the product usable and supportable. That changes everything.
• Problem-space fit matters for the long haul. This was a good business, but not a problem I found personally meaningful — part of why I eventually moved on.

What I would do differently

I would hire earlier, formalize onboarding sooner, and invest in operational handoffs before team bandwidth became the bottleneck. We solved this eventually, but doing it earlier would have reduced stress and unlocked growth sooner.

Proof: Product website. Screenshot above: customer reporting and offer pipeline. Additional business and technical details available on request.