CEO @ Conversion House 🏠 | On-demand design for small SaaS marketing teams so they can launch faster, position better and convert more.

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Joe Wheatley

The best GTM principle → Create abundance where there is scarcity

Credit goes to Santosh Sharan for this one!

Before ZoomInfo, B2B data was locked behind Dun & Bradstreet at $100K/year. Only the IBMs of the world could access it.

ZoomInfo dropped that to $5K/year and went from $10M to $100M (abundance for SMBs)

Then Apollo arrived and made B2B data available for under $100/mo (abundance for everyone)

Each time, data was scarce for a lower segment of the market
A company noticed → made it abundant → their growth exploded

The cycle repeats over and over. Scarcity becomes abundance. Winners look for new scarcity.

And when data becomes fully abundant (thanks Apollo) the old playbooks stop working (goodbye spray and pray). That's why the industry has shifted towards signals. 

Tools like:

- Clay
- Freckle.io
- BirdDog
- Signalbase (Previously LeadsOnTrees)

So the real money question: What’s scarce now, and what will be scarce next?

That’s where the opportunity lies.

Joe Wheatley 🏠

Founder @ Demand House | Intelligent outbound for B2B SaaS | Trusted by Warmly, Summize & Coefficient

4 layers of B2B outbound (and our go-to tech stack)

1 / Capture Layer
- Prospeo.io for cold leads, RB2B for website leads and Trigify.io for social listening

Note: since Prospeo's V2 launch, we've switched over from Apollo (see link in description for reasons why)

2 / Intelligence Layer
- Freckle.io as the GTM-brain (others use Clay - they do the same thing)
- HTTP APIs to find and validate emails, using the following providers:
--> Prospeo, LeadMagic and FullEnrich for waterfall enrichment
--> ZeroBounce for email validation
--> BounceBan to verify catch-alls
- Freckle credits for mobile numbers (only credits we use)
- OpenAI API for AI enrichments and classification
- Tier leads based on account-fit and engagement score
- Build email and cold call scripts using messaging frameworks + AI
- Route leads to right sequences (Apollo for Tier 1 & 2, Instantly for Tier 3)

3 / Outreach Layer
- Tier 1 is multi-channel, manual SDR outreach (with scripts to assist)
- Tier 2 is multi-channel, manual outreach (when out of Tier 1 leads)
- Tier 3 is fully-automated email outreach (using copy built in Freckle)
- Tier 3 also identifies who is in-market vs who is out-of-market. For in-market, send sales-focused messaging; for out-of-market, send marketing nurture

4 / Sales Layer
- If positive reply, add lead to CRM. Now over to SDR team to book a demo

Founder @ Demand House | Outbound systems for B2B SaaS | Trusted by Warmly, Summize & Coefficient

Proof that cold outbound isn't dead, and remains the BEST channel for building predictable pipeline

Last week we sent 1,800 emails across 3 campaigns (roughly 600 leads contacted)

Reply rates between 5.7-10.6%

5 opportunities

See for yourself.

Given we only just started running outbound for ourselves (started in 2026), with only 10 secondary inboxes, I'd say this is a damn good start

Before you say outbound is dead, think again!

You need to give the recipient a reason to reply (value).

Then you need to deliver on this value and offer more value to get the call.

But most don't offer real value, and then complain no one responds. Why would they?

Others give value to the wrong people. Your fault you've got a bad list.

Also - stop relying on marketing / content as your savior. It's a long-term play that should consume 20% of your efforts max. 80% should be on near-term pipeline aka. outbound.

If you put in the work to build the right list and offer (and you deliver on your promises), you will win.

Building Curacity's top 100 prospects in 10 minutes:

1 / What they do
Demand creation platform where hotels create content, Curacity distributes to premium publishers (Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, etc.) to drive bookings and revenue

2 / Define ICP by analyzing best customers
50% small chains (8-14 properties), 33% independent (1 property), 67% US-focused, 83% hotels

3 / Identify buyer personas
CMOs, VP Marketing, Director of Marketing, VP Revenue Management (decision makers) + Marketing Managers, Brand Managers, Revenue Managers (champions)

4 / Identify key signals
Rapid growth (headcount/revenue), hiring for marketing manager, new CMO/VP Marketing, new property launches, rebranding, recent funding/acquisition, performance issues (low direct bookings, declining occupancy)

5 / Find leads in Apollo
Filter by marketing roles, C-suite/VP/Director level, company lookalikes (Viceroy Hotels, Virgin Hotels), US location, 200-1,000 employees, hotels/hospitality industry, layer on signals

6 / Import to Freckle / Clay
Combine 4 signal lists from Apollo (lookalike + rapid growth, lookalike + hiring, rapid growth, hiring) and import to Freckle/Clay

7 / Validate emails
Zero Bounce for validation, Bounce Ban for catch-all verification

8 / Enrich with phone numbers

9 / Verify ICP + buyer persona match
Is company ICP? Is person decision-maker? Remove leads that don't match both

10 / Build messaging
Rapid growth: "Growing team = need revenue to support payroll, explore new marketing channels?" / Hiring: "What are new marketing manager's priorities? Open to exploring new channels?"

Result: 94 verified top hotel decision-makers ready for multichannel outreach to drive Curacity sales

Top 100 Prospects in 10 Minutes for Blink (Employee Engagement Platform)

- Determine ICP based on best customers
- Map TAM & signals
- Build tiering system
- Find leads in Apollo
- Enrich, validate and filter in Freckle (or Clay)
- Build messaging relevant to signal (observation), ICP and persona

Frank Sondors 🥓 is literally the 🐐 of startup sales (he books 500 demos per month and scaled Salesforge.ai 🔥 from $0-$3M in less than 1 year)

When building a team, he said to start off with 2 reps
(Do not hire from big corporate like Google - wrong mindset)

And then he talked about how to acquire customers. It's not about one channel, it's about multi-channels working together.

Get data, test & iterate.

He also spoke about why you need to track first touch and last touch attribution

And finally, how to warm-up prospects before booking the demo

Head over to Frank's profile now and follow him. The guy to watch in 2026

We're getting more positive replies than we can handle.

Here's one example:

- Reached out to someone who just joined a 7/8 figure SaaS as Head of Sales
- Asked how the role was going (be human!)
- Offered genuine value

Outbound works when you do it better than everyone else.

Step 1 - Offer value to get the reply 
Step 2 - Offer value to get the call/audit

If you offer what they actually want and deliver on it, you'll win. Simple.

Ferenc Fekete

Helping non-tech Founders transform Ideas into SaaS products @ VeryCreatives | Product Agency, SaaS & MVP Development | Startups

I've watched many startup founders fail at the same exact point: turning their validated idea into actual software.

They waste months (or even years):
→ Trying to hire the right developers
→ Burning cash on poor planning and execution
→ Second-guessing every technical decision along the way

Meanwhile, competitors move faster, investors demand traction, and the pressure to deliver keeps building more and more.

After watching this pattern destroy countless promising startups, we built VeryCreatives to fix it.

But here's what makes us different:

We don't just build your MVP and disappear. We're product people who think like founders, not just developers who code to spec.

👉 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵: We start by pressure-testing your assumptions before writing a single line of code. If the market doesn't want it, we'll tell you straight.

👉 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗲: We build like it's our own startup, obsessing over user experience, scalability, and investor readiness from the first sprint.

👉 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱: Whether you're at napkin sketch or Series B, we've been there. We've helped founders go from zero to acquisition, and we stick around for the entire journey.

For the past 14 years, we've built products for venture-backed startups, fast-growing scale-ups, and globally recognized brands like Red Bull, Nestlé, and Philips.

The startups we work with have:
✅ Launched investor-ready MVPs in under 90 days
✅ Secured funding from top-tier investors and VCs
✅ Scaled from first users to thousands of paying customers
✅ Successfully exited to strategic acquirers

Got a SaaS idea that's been sitting in your head for months? 
Let's map out your 90-day path to launch → https://verycreatives.com/book-a-call

Co-Founder

At VeryCreatives, we are a team of expert developers who create powerful SaaS apps that solve problems and drive growth for founders with initial funding. We believe in empowering our clients with innovative software that helps them achieve their goals and stand out in their industry.

Our audience consists of driven and ambitious founders who have just received initial funding for their startup. They are looking for a software development partner who understands their vision, can help bring their ideas to life, and deliver results that will help them achieve their business goals.

Founders with initial funding have a pressing need to build their product quickly and efficiently to maximize their chances of success. At VeryCreatives, we understand this need and are dedicated to creating high-quality SaaS apps that not only meet their requirements but also exceed their expectations. We are committed to delivering value and results that help our clients succeed.

VeryCreatives stands out in the market for our ability to deliver high-quality, innovative solutions that meet the needs of our clients. Our unique approach to software development, coupled with our expertise and commitment to excellence, is what drives us to provide outstanding results to our clients.

Industries our clients operate in, using the SaaS products we've built: 
- Digital marketing, Event marketing & Influencer marketing SaaS
- Foodtech & Delivery 
- Fintech, Banking & Investments
- 2-sided marketplace platforms
- Agriculture & Livestock management
- Packaging compliance & Waste

Markets we cover: UAE, EU, UK, US.

Your product isn't the problem. Your budget split is.

I've built countless SaaS products and apps over the past decade for some of the biggest brands in the world. Here's the biggest mistake I see first-time SaaS founders make that kills their product:

They map out their entire product budget... and allocate 100% of it to development.

They're planning to build the full product, launch it, then HOPE customers show up.

But the problem is, a good product is only 50% of the equation. The other half is getting it in front of the right people (which costs a lot of money too).

Especially in B2B, you'll need to spend some cash to speed up your learning curve and learn:

👉 Which channels work
👉 What messages resonate
👉 What makes your ideal customers actually convert

Some founders ignore this until it's too late. And by that time, they've burned through their development budget and launched something that MIGHT be great without anyone actually knowing it exists.

That's why whenever we work with clients, we often help them adjust the product scope before building anything out. Because we want to free up budget for marketing, user acquisition, and proper positioning so they can actually get customers and scale the business.

You could have the best product in the world. But if nobody knows it exists, it won't mean a thing.

Before you finalize your budget, ask yourself:

What's my plan to get 100 people to see this?

Helping startup founders & innovation labs validate and scale ideas into exit-ready products @ VeryCreatives | 🔥 Two decades in tech

You created your own bad developers.

I have seen this pattern too many times.

Founder says:

"My devs are slow"
"They do not get it"

Then we look closer.

And see a decision vacuum the team is trying to survive.

There are three calls only you can make as the founder.

If you dodge them, even a strong team will look useless:


👉 Decision 1: Who is our primary user right now?

One founder I worked with tried to serve agencies and tiny solo founders at the same time.

Sales promised custom features to big accounts, product built self serve onboarding for tiny ones, devs got whiplash.

Nine months of work, nobody truly happy.


👉 Decision 2: What is the next business outcome we are willing to bet on?

MRR from a segment, activation rate, expansion from existing customers.

If this is not written down, every feature feels urgent.

You ship a lot of stuff and still cannot answer why revenue or usage is flat.


👉 Decision 3: What constraints are non negotiable?

Time, budget, compliance, integrations.

If these move every week, scope will quietly double and your v1 will arrive six months late.


Which of these three have you been dodging?

Most failed software projects don't fail at the finish line.

They fail in week 2, when the team realizes the core feature can't actually be built.

That's why one of the smartest things you can do as a SaaS founder, before writing a single line of code, is build a proof of concept.

Not a full product or MVP. Just enough to answer one question: "Can we actually build this thing?"

We've gone through this exact process hundreds of times for both our clients and our own internal tools.

Here's how it works:

👉 Proof of Concept (PoC): Does this work technically?

This is where you test your riskiest assumption. Can it even be built the way you imagine? It's not going to be pretty, and it's not public-facing. But it's real.

Skip this, and you're three months into development before realizing your AI feature needs data you can't legally access.

👉 Prototype: What will it look and feel like?

Map the user flow, add just enough UI to walk someone through it, and start shaping the product experience.

Skip this, and your dev team builds something technically correct that no user can figure out how to use.

👉 MVP: Will people actually use and pay for it?

Now you're testing the market. You've built something lean and functional to prove there's demand and that your positioning makes sense.

Skip this, and you spend 18 months perfecting a product nobody asked for.

A good proof of concept helps you spot technical roadblocks early and gives stakeholders the confidence that your idea is real.

It's faster (and cheaper) to find the cracks now than to rebuild everything later.

What's the riskiest technical assumption you've had to validate before building?

Your first 10 customers are friends.

Your next 100 are stress tests.

Most MVPs crack right there.

And it's rarely the thing you're watching for.

Not because of one big bug.

Because of 4 invisible gaps almost every founder forgets:


1. Role and permission basics

A single login is fine at the very start.

Then a bigger account asks "Can my team have different access levels?"

If the answer is no, that deal quietly dies.

👉 By month 6, if you don't have this, you'll start losing deals you never knew you lost.


2. Bulk actions for power users

Clicking one by one feels fine with 10 records.

At 1,000, people hate your product.

They will export to Excel and never come back.

👉 By month 6, if you don't have bulk edit or export, your power users are already halfway out the door.


3. Password reset that does not melt support

In the early days, you just "help people manually."

At 150 accounts, your inbox turns into "I cannot log in" hell.

👉 By month 3, if you don't have a clean self-service reset flow, your support load will bury your roadmap.


4. An internal admin tool

If every tiny change needs a developer, your roadmap will stall.

You cannot build new features and play support at the same time.

👉 By month 9, if you don't have a simple internal panel, your engineers are stuck doing data cleanup instead of shipping.


Audit your stack against this list. What's missing?

I Spent 6 Months Building a Product Nobody Wanted. Then Buffer Launched for $5.

Around 2010, we worked at a media agency.

We saw the chaos every day: social media posts bouncing between marketing, legal, and clients. Approvals lost in email threads. Deadlines missed.

So we decided to build the solution ourselves.

We went all in:

• Multi-tenant account management
• Multi-platform posting (Facebook, Twitter)
• Custom approval workflows
• Notifications, previews, media library
• Analytics dashboard
• Unified posting interface

Six months of nights and weekends. Thousands of lines of code.

We never talked to a single customer.

We thought we knew exactly what agencies needed. We worked in one. We lived the problem.

That was the trap.

While we were perfecting our approval flow logic, Buffer launched with a single post scheduler and a $5 beta signup.

They validated demand before building anything else.

We validated nothing. We just built.

Here's what I learned the hard way:

👉 Working in an industry doesn't mean you understand the market

Your experience is one data point. Not a business case.

👉 Features don't prove demand

Nobody cares about your feature list if they never asked for it.

👉 Skipping customer development is not a shortcut

It's the longest, most expensive path to failure.

The product died quietly. No dramatic crash. Just silence.

If you're building something right now, ask yourself:

Have I talked to 10 people who would pay for this?

If the answer is no, close your IDE and pick up the phone.

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The Battle

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