I help B2B companies generate leads.

I've generated over $20M+ in pipeline and $2M+ in revenue for clients. 

Recently helped Alex Hormozi secure 11K leads for his $100M Series book launch, which was a fun project!

How do I do it?

I use data from over 100+ sources to create smart strategies that find the right prospects. 
This helps your sales team connect with people who are already looking for your solution.

I manage the full process: 
➡️ Building targeted lead lists 
➡️ Setting up & warming up inboxes 
➡️ Writing personalized emails and DMs 
➡️ Running and managing the entire campaign

We're constantly testing to find your sweet spot: 
➡️ OFFER-MARKET-FIT 
➡️ TARGET TESTING 
➡️ MESSAGE-MARKET-FIT
➡️ PRODUCT-UNTAPPED MARKET FIT

If you're a B2B company that wants more demos and sales calls, head over to https://www.c17.ai/ 
To see how it works.

Utkarsh Singh Rana

SmartAgents just killed “outbound ops” as a job description.
But not the people behind it.

It killed the manual part 
the repetitive work that slows down creativity and deal flow.

SmartAgents live inside Smartlead as trained AI operators that:
✅ Execute campaigns across email, LinkedIn, CRM, and analytics
✅ Optimize performance in real time
✅ Follow up intelligently and flag replies
✅ Enrich leads and sync data
✅ Learn and improve based on your patterns

They automate what no one loves doing
so humans can focus on strategy, messaging, and closing.

💡 Why this matters
Most GTM teams spend 70% of their time keeping systems running.
SmartAgents turn that effort into leverage.

Build agents using simple prompts - no-code, just “commands.”
Deploy across your team instantly.
Integrate with Hubspot, Pipedrive, HeyReach, Slack, Calendly, Airtable, and more.
Layer multiple agents like a modular workforce - each owning a distinct piece of your outbound engine.

I use one that spots underperforming campaigns.
It tracks reply rates over 30 days and pings me on Slack when something dips
so I can jump in before a problem becomes a pipeline issue.

Utkarsh  Rana 🧲

Head of GTMs @C17 Lab | GTM Systems for B2B Companies

My client research used to stop at “smart enough to present.”
Now it goes so deep my clients ask:
.
.

“Wait… how did you get inside our buyer’s head like this?”

When I do research for enterprise clients, I’ve always had this nagging feeling:
“This is good… but it’s not the full picture.”

I’d pull:
Site + content
ICP docs
Sales conversations
A few internal surveys


Useful. But still two inches deep on a problem that’s ten feet psychological.
So I changed how I work.

Instead of doing another round of manual digging, I messaged my 24/7 AI worker (FlashLabs SuperAgent) and sent it:

 My client’s onboarding form
 Context about their offer & buyer
 A couple rounds of feedback

Then I asked it for one thing:
“Give me an enterprise psychographic profile of their multifamily decision-makers - fears, desires, status games, and real decision triggers.”


The updated research it returned was an 
actual
 deep dive:
Role-specific psyche maps for Regional Managers, Directors, COOs, and Asset Managers
Their unconscious fears (job risk, reputation risk, being seen as outdated)
Their unspoken desires (status, career-defining wins, peer validation, genuine peace of mind)
The exact decision triggers that move them from “this is another vendor” to “I can defend this to the board”
Messaging do’s/don’ts based on loss aversion, social proof, and FOMO


This isn’t a persona slide.
It’s a psychological operating manual for how they actually buy.

The shift for me:

 “Do some research and hope it’s enough.”
 
 “Delegate a full psychographic research & briefing workflow to an AI worker, then refine.”

Same input (onboarding form).
But now my output for the client is:
Sharper positioning
Emotionally accurate messaging
Sales narratives that line up with how their buyers really think


If your work relies on understanding B2B buyers at a deep level, this is where things are heading:

 You message an AI worker.
 It does the deep research.
You focus on strategy and creativity.

I’m using FlashIntel’s SuperAgent for this:
https://lnkd.in/gnSG-ZW4

🚨 Multichannel outreach used to be a mess.

Not because LinkedIn + Email doesn’t work…
But because running both channels at the same time was basically a full-time job.

If you’ve ever tried scaling outbound across LinkedIn + email, you know the workflow:

Too many tabs.
Too many tools.
Too many automations held together with duct tape.

And the worst part?

Leads fall through the cracks every day.

Someone doesn’t reply on LinkedIn?
They never get the email follow-up.

Someone replies in email?
Your LinkedIn flow keeps running like nothing happened.

Your outreach becomes chaotic instead of consistent.

And suddenly your day looks like this:

→ “Did they accept my request?”
→ “Did we already email them?”
→ “Did Aimfox log this?”
→ “Did Smartlead send follow-up #2?”
→ “Did Zapier break again?”

Outbound wasn’t hard.

The workflow was.

That’s why Smartlead's new integration with Aimfox is a big deal.

Because now…

🚀 LinkedIn + Email is one single sequence inside Smartlead.

Powered by SmartAgents.

No switching tools.
No messy zaps.
No manual routing.

Just one continuous multichannel flow.

Here’s what’s insane:

✅ You can build LinkedIn + email touchpoints inside one campaign
✅ If someone doesn’t respond on LinkedIn → they automatically get routed into email follow-ups
✅ Everything stays aligned across both channels
✅ Your team runs outreach from one system, not five

This is what multichannel outreach was always supposed to feel like:

Clean.
Reliable.
Automated.
Scalable.

The real win?

No lead ever slips through the cracks.

Every prospect gets followed up.
Every touchpoint happens on time.
Every campaign runs like a machine.

Multichannel outreach isn’t “more tools.”

It’s one workflow.

And now Smartlead + Aimfox makes that real.

LinkedIn + Email without switching tools? Yes.
And it might be the easiest pipeline unlock I’ve seen in a while.

🔥 Multichannel outreach just became simple.

You can scrape 100+ signals, but only recent pain gets replies.

Most teams still miss this.

They pull role, industry, company size.
Then push the same template to everyone.
Then say "outbound is dead."

I saw the same thing in my own numbers.

Here is C17 Lab's January 2026 cold email stats for clients:

Emails sent: 425,327 (First week of Jan was complete holiday)
Leads (active + inactive): 231,448

Replied: 4,152
Reply rate: 1.79%

Positive reply: 870
Positive reply rate: 20.95%

Bounced: 4,592
Bounce rate: 1.98%

Zero opens.
Still 4,152 replies.
870 positive.

On paper that looks crazy.
In practice it is simple.

I do not chase vanity signals.
I chase fresh pain.

Here is how I think about every list now:

“The ideal prospect shows evidence of [specific behavior/change/problem] because it means they feel [pain] right now.”

Some real plays I use:

→ For outbound tools
“The ideal prospect shows evidence of SDR or BDR hiring or manual research mentions because they scale outbound and feel pipeline pressure.”

→ For product video offers
“The ideal prospect shows evidence of pricing tiers with upgrade paths because they push revenue expansion and need more upgrades.”

→ For reputation offers
“The ideal prospect shows evidence of negative Google reviews because they lose deals from bad online perception.”

I do not care if someone is “VP Sales at 200+ headcount SaaS.”
I care if something changed in the last 30–90 days that hurts today.

Here is my 10 minute research stack for each new campaign:

1️⃣ 3 minutes: Case studies

→ Go to company or customers page
→ Pull who they help, what result, in what time
→ Note language they use to describe wins and pain

2️⃣ 6 minutes: One custom signal

→ Claygent, BuiltWith, job page, review sites
→ Only signals that show change in last 30–90 days
→ One strong signal beats 10 weak firmographics

3️⃣ 1 minute: Backup basics

→ Role
→ Tenure
→ One recent LinkedIn post

If I cannot prove fresh pain with that signal, I do not add them.
I change the list or I change the offer.

The list is not “everyone with a title.”
The list is “people with a live problem my offer solves.”

That is how you get replies even when open tracking says 0.00%.

I was dead wrong about AI personalization in cold email. The real game changer is something else entirely.  

For a long time, I thought the end goal was this:  

“By 2026, AI will write a cold email that feels like I spent 10 minutes researching each prospect.”  

That email is good.  
I now see it as an A tier email.  

The real S tier is different.  

It drops a lot of fluffy personalization.  
It leads with value the prospect can touch without talking to you.  
At scale.  

That is where AI-generated lead magnets come in.  

Across campaigns, the replies with highest intent come from emails that are easy to say yes to.  

Not:  
“Can you jump on a quick call?”  

More:  
“Can I send you X that helps you today?”  

AI makes X very powerful. I see 3 main buckets:  

1) Knowledge lead magnets  
Custom reports, market maps, account intel.  
Example: scrape signals for a prospect, turn it into a short “intel report,” send it as a one-click yes in the email.  
No call ask. Pure value.  

2) Micro apps / micro SaaS  
Tiny tools that solve one clear problem.  
Score their pipeline.  
Audit their site.  
Estimate missed revenue.  
You build once with agents / code, then give it away in every email.  

3) Agentic service trials  
“Let us run a free mini-campaign for you.”  
AI handles list building, enrichment, messaging tests.  
Prospect gets real leads before they pay you.  

The shift I see:  

From “personalize the sentence”  
To “personalize the asset you deliver.”  

I keep testing this with C17 Lab and I am all-in on AI lead magnets now.  

Curious what kind of AI lead magnet you would say yes to in one click.

No alternative text description for this image

Your offer is hot.
But you’re a cold provider. That’s why nobody buys.

Read that again.

You do all the “right” things:

- You change the price
- You change the copy
- You change the funnel

Sales still flat.

You think
“I need a new offer”

I thought the same.

Fast forward a few years…
I saw a pattern.

The offer was not dead.
I was invisible.

Here is what I mean in simple words:

Offer awareness
= people know the solution you sell

Provider awareness
= people know you and trust you

Need both.

Miss one → no sale.

Look at these 3 states:

Cold offer + cold provider
- They do not know the problem
- They do not know you
- No replies, no calls, no cash

Hot offer + cold provider
- Market knows the solution already
- You feel new, risky, “who are you?”
- They buy from the “safe” name instead

Hot offer + hot provider
- They know the problem
- They see you talk about it for weeks
- You feel safe, clear, proven

Then sales start to look “easy”
(from the outside)

The truth is
Most of us skip the warm-up.

We try to close people who:
- Never saw our face
- Never heard our name
- Never read one word from us

Then we blame the offer.

Here is the real work from cold to hot
(this is where people stop reading, but you should not):

1) Show up where buyers already are
LinkedIn, niche groups, events, email.
Same places again and again.

2) Say the same clear thing
Who you help
What problem you solve
What life looks like after

3) Share proof that feels real
Screenshots
Short stories
Before / after moments
Names and numbers when you can

4) Stay long enough
Week after week
Month after month
Till people think
“You again?”
Yes. You again.

You can also speed the warm-up if you:

- Join the conversations your buyers already read
- Comment with smart, simple takes
- Show your work in public
- Help without a pitch first

You stop being a stranger.

One day a DM comes:
“I feel I know you already
We should talk.”

Nothing magic.
Only awareness.

Next time you see no sales, pause:

Before you burn the offer ask:
Do people know the solution?
Do people know me as the safe choice?

Short version:
You do not need ten new offers.
You need one clear offer
plus a warm name.

Curious to hear
Where do you feel colder right now
Your offer or you as the provider?

Our client spends $100k+ on ads every month, 
But cold email brings in 2x ROI. 
Why do they keep buying ads?

Because channels change. Frameworks do not.

Their numbers right now:

→ Cold email ROI: 2x ad spend
→ Cost per meeting: 25% of their other channels
→ Pipeline from cold email: growing every single month

Cold email is not “the hero.”

The real hero is how you think about acquisition:

1️⃣ Start with the market
We map the full TAM
We ask: who should we talk to, in what order, and why now
No random lists
Only accounts that line up with the pain we solve

2️⃣ Build systems, not blasts
We set infra once, then let it run:
→ Multiple warmed inboxes
→ Clean domains and sending limits
→ Smart cadences that touch 100% of the market every 30–60 days
No spam storms
Only steady passes over the same market

3️⃣ Lead with relevance
We write copy for one person with one clear problem
Short, direct, easy to read in 10 seconds
No hard pitch on email one
We focus on “useful and interesting,” not “buy now”

4️⃣ Layer channels later
Cold email proves the offer
Then we add paid, retargeting, LinkedIn, content
Ads sit on top of a working outbound engine
That is why they keep buying ads even when email outperforms them

The exact playbook today will change in a month
The way you think about TAM, infra, and relevance will not

If you are a B2B company and want to test a cold email GTM without burning 6 months,

We can set you live in 1–3 weeks and give you a full no-cost test campaign to see the numbers yourself.

Free campaigns that actually deliver leads-no catch, no BS.

Here is what we do at C17 Lab 

We run your first outbound campaign for free.
One full campaign.
No fee.

You see real leads.
If you get no results, you do not spend money or time on us.

Simple deal.

Here is how the free test works:

• We do strategy call with you
• We study your offer and ICP
• We build the lead list
• We write all emails
• We use pre-warmed inboxes
• We run the campaign like any paid client

No hacks.
No “lite” version.
No automation tricks behind the scenes.

We do the work end to end:

• Prospecting from 100+ data sources
• Copywriting for all touch points
• Inbox setup and warmup already done on our side
• Daily checks on replies and performance

You see the full flow.
You see the leads.
You see how your offer lands in the market.

Here is the message we love to send you during the test:

“Hey, we got you a lead.
Here is what we said.
Here is what they replied.
I am connecting you now.”

If you want this every week, then we talk about a paid plan.
If not, you walk away with data, scripts, and no bill.

Who can get the free campaign?

If you fit that, we can run your no-cost test campaign.

You keep the leads.
You keep the learnings.
You only stay if it prints pipeline.

Curious if your B2B offer would hit with a test like this?
You can see how we run it at https://www.c17.ai/

Most founders ask “email or video?”
They should ask “high-ticket or low-ticket?” first.

If your offer is $10k+
You are not selling to everyone.
You are hunting whales.

For high-ticket, cold outreach prints money when done right.

You can:
→ Build a tiny list of exact buyers
→ Personalize hard
→ Start real 1:1 conversations

You do not need 100,000 views.
You need 10 right people.

If your offer is low-ticket ($20 product, $200 course, etc.)
Cold outreach turns into a grind.

You need to:
→ Hit thousands of people
→ Fight low response rates
→ Do a lot of manual work for very low deal value

For low-ticket, content + ads win.
They reach more people.
The math starts to work.

But even when outreach is the core play, you still need one thing: minimum viable organic.

Because when someone gets your cold email, they click your profile.

If they see:
→ Zero posts
→ No proof
→ No point of view

You look like spam.

If they see:
→ Simple posts with insights
→ A few client wins
→ Clear offer

You look real. You look safe.

Those posts then become sales assets.
Your team can drop them in threads:

→ To answer objections
→ To show how you think
→ To prove you get the problem

My mental model:

Cold outreach → starts the chat
Organic content → builds trust
“Greatest hits” posts → help close

Hunt whales with a harpoon, but make sure they see your campfire burning too.

If you are a B2B company and want a cold outreach system that matches your ticket size, I am happy to walk you through how we build it at C17 Lab .

Cold email never works? 
CEOs reply more than anyone. 
Here’s why:


Most people write to the person with the job title on the website.
I write to the person who feels the pain.

Biggest surprise for many founders:
CEOs reply more than heads of HR, RevOps, IT, or middle managers.

They carry the real weight.

Every single day they think about:
payroll
cash in bank
missed targets
angry customers
legal risk
hiring gaps
pipeline

They do not care about “nice tools”.
They care about “does this fix a real problem fast”.
When I build a campaign, I do three simple things.

1️⃣ I build the list from the outcome back
I start with one clear win.

Example:
save tax
cut SaaS cost
fix billing gaps
get more meetings

Then I go into Clay.

I search for the small group with that exact problem.
Not “all SaaS companies”.
More “US SaaS with 30–300 staff, many remote, 3+ states, hiring finance”.

I use:
➡️ filters
➡️ signals
➡️ niche words
➡️ weird industries

I stop when the list feels like “these 500 people wake up with the same headache”.

2️⃣ I make the pain the first line
I do not write:
“We help companies optimize and streamline…”

I write:
“Saw you hire in 5+ states. Are you dealing with sales tax mess in any of them?”

Short.
Clear.
Easy “yes” or “no”.

For a sales tax firm, this works well.

Every CEO in that group already knows the problem.

They have a folder in their mind called “tax risk I hope does not explode”.

My email walks right into that folder.

3️⃣ I give a tiny, safe next step
I think “what can we do in 15–30 minutes that feels safe and clear”.
Example offer I use:
“Bring three contracts you think you overpay for.
We compare with our data.
You pay only if we find savings.”

No long call.
No deck.
No “discovery”.

The CEO sees:
low risk
clear start
clear end
hard dollars

Now an email from a stranger looks like a small bet, not a big project.

Cold email fails when you:

talk about your stack
tell your life story
try to sell the full platform

Cold email works when you:

pick one pain
talk to the owner of that pain
give one clear, small step

If you are a B2B company and want to test a cold email GTM without burning 6 months,

We can set you live in 1–3 weeks and give you a full no-cost test campaign to see the numbers yourself at C17 Lab

Follow Utkarsh Rana 🧲 for more content around B2B Sales, Outbound, GTMs !

You're reading this because you're curious about LinkedIn Automation.

You might have tried some LinkedIn Automation tools, maybe an Expandi or a Heyreach or something else.

Loads of those out there.

But nothing really seems to work.

LinkedIn Accounts get banned.

You can't seem to scale up the LinkedIn Outreach channel.

Meanwhile cold email is harder than ever.

Email deliverability feels knottier than the wires on your table.

Well, that is where we come in.

We've helped 3700+ users from lead gen agencies (including Clay agencies) and sales teams escape this LinkedIn nightmare.

Our clients go from ignored messages to booking 5-10 meetings monthly per LinkedIn Account using LinkedIn Outreach that actually gets you meetings

How?
↳ Safe LinkedIn Automation software with zero ban rate
↳ Partnerships with LinkedIn Account providers that actually work
↳ Advanced capabilities like AI voice note personalization and AI video message personalization
↳ AI Appointment Setter that nutures the replies and gets them into your calendar

We're like Instantly/Smartlead, but for LinkedIn

Try SalesRobot free for 14 days: salesrobot.co

Saurav G.

I respect HeyReach.

They beat us by doing one thing we couldn't do: focus.

While we were "LinkedIn automation for everyone," they were "built for agencies."

While we were debating feature priority across 5 segments, they were shipping exactly what agencies needed.

Multi-sender campaigns. Better UX. Agency-specific workflows.

They didn't have better engineers. They had better clarity.

Every product decision had a filter: "Will agencies pay for this?"

We didn't have a filter. We had a debate.

The result:

They grew 10x faster. They closed the top agencies in the world. They built relationships we couldn't touch.

Not because their product was 10x better. Because their message was 10x clearer.

When you know exactly who you're for, execution becomes obvious.

When you're for everyone, every decision is a negotiation.

Here's what I learned watching them:

Competitive advantage isn't about being better. It's about being clear.

They knew who they served. We didn't.

That clarity compounded into:
- Faster product decisions
- Clearer marketing
- Better customer relationships
- Higher retention
- Faster growth

All from one decision: pick a lane.

We're finally in the same lane. 4 years late.

The gap is closeable. But the head start is real.

Clarity isn't a nice-to-have. It's the only real moat most startups will ever have.

Book 10-30 B2B meetings every month just via LinkedIn messaging | Chief Social Selling Evangelist at SalesRobot ($1 mln ARR)

We launched at $179/month.

Dripify was $59/month. Better product. Better focus.

I told myself: "We're premium. We're worth more. Price signals quality."

The market told me: "You're losing."

I should've lowered prices in year 2. I waited until year 4.

Why?

Pride. Ego. The fear that lowering prices meant admitting we weren't as good.

June 2024: We dropped to $99/month.

Growth exploded. Double-digit month-over-month since then.

That's 2 years of lost revenue. 2 years of slower growth. 2 years of customers choosing competitors because we were "too expensive."

All because I couldn't hold two truths at once:

1. Our product is good
2. Our pricing is wrong

Those aren't contradictory. But my ego made them feel that way.

Lowering price felt like losing. It was actually winning.

Price isn't a signal of value. It's a test of market reality.

The market was screaming: "You're overpriced for what you deliver."

I was responding: "You don't understand our value."

Classic founder delusion.

The moment we aligned price with reality, everything changed. Not because the product got better. Because the friction disappeared.

If I restarted, I'd price low and raise prices as we earned it.

Not because low is always right. Because market feedback is always faster than your assumptions.

We've been called assholes.

Scammers. Thieves. Incompetent. Frauds.

All in support tickets.

Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're not. It doesn't matter.

Here's what I learned:

You can't control how customers react to problems. You can only control how you respond.

Early on, I'd spend hours trying to convince angry customers we weren't scammers.

Long explanations. Detailed justifications. Emotional responses.

It never worked.

Because their task wasn't to understand us. Their task was to feel what they felt.

My task was to solve the problem or make it right. That's it.

Now when someone calls us assholes:

1. Is there a real problem? → Fix it
2. Is there a refund needed? → Issue it
3. Is this just venting? → Acknowledge and move on

I don't cross the line into managing their emotions anymore.

It's freeing.

Not because I don't care. Because I care about the right things.

I care about building a product that works. I care about treating customers fairly. I care about solving real problems.

I don't care about convincing someone to like us when they've decided not to.

That shift changed everything.

Support got faster. My stress went down. The team stopped burning out on angry tickets.

We still get called names. We probably always will.

But we stay on our side of the line now.

If I restarted SalesRobot with $0 today, here's what I'd do differently:

1. Multi-product from day 1

Tools like Cursor and Bolt make building fast. I'd launch 3 products simultaneously.

LinkedIn automation. Email automation. Cold calling automation.

See which one gets traction. Kill the others. Move fast.

2. Pick the smallest viable segment

Not "agencies." "Lead Gen agencies who also implement with GoHighLevel"

Specific enough that I can find 100 of them in a week.

3. Don't hire for 12 months

Solo founder until product-channel fit is obvious.

We hired too early. Team became overhead before we had conviction.

4. Price low, raise fast

Start at $49/month. Raise to $99 when you add more features.

Let the market pull you up, not your ego.

5. No remote

In-person until we're at $500K ARR. Speed matters more than cost savings early.

6. Ship broken things

We waited for polish. The market wanted speed.

Half-built feature that works beats perfect feature that ships 3 months late.

7. Talk to customers, but don't listen to all of them

Early customers will pull you in 10 directions.

Find the ones willing to pay 2x. Build only for them.

The lesson from 5 years:

Ideas are easy. Fast, focused execution is rare.

I spent 4 years being thoughtful. I should've spent 4 years being fast.

We grew 15% in November. 10% in January.

Not because we did more. Because we did less.

For 4 years, we tried to serve everyone. We finally picked one group and went all-in on agencies.

The playbook was simple:
→ AI appointment setter. 
→ AI video messages.
→ AI voice notes. 
→ Multiple LinkedIn senders per campaign.


All for agencies running outbound for clients.

Here's the part that felt wrong:
We kept saying the same thing. Over and over. LinkedIn post after LinkedIn post.

→ "Built for lead gen agencies."
→ "Agencies close more deals with AI appointment setting."
→ "Stop losing clients to poor inbox management."

Internally, it felt irresponsible. Like we were stuck. Like we'd run out of things to say.

Our marketing team: "Should we talk about other use cases?"
 Me: "No. Agencies. Again."

5 million LinkedIn impressions in 2025. Same message. Same audience. Same problem.

It worked.

30% of our MRR is now agencies. In 6 months.

Here's what I learned:

When you're broad, every customer is a new learning curve. Every feature request pulls you in a different direction. Every win is an isolated event.

When you're deep, every customer teaches you something you can use tomorrow. Every feature compounds. Every conversation clarifies.

We thought AI voice notes would be huge. Usage is low. Turns out, agencies don't need it that much.

But it was a great hook. It got them in the door. They stayed for the fundamentals.

That only works when you know who you're talking to.

The irony: the narrower we got, the faster we grew.

I spent years afraid of niching down. Afraid of limiting upside. Afraid of being "just" a tool for agencies.

The market doesn't reward breadth. It rewards depth.

Here's the truth I was avoiding:
$1M ARR in 5 years sounds slow. It is slow.
I have startup dysmorphia. I see everyone hitting $1M in 18 months and wonder what I did wrong.

But here's the real mistake: I took 4 years to pick a lane.
If I'd focused on agencies from day 1, we'd be at $5M by now.
The growth rate isn't the problem. The diffusion was.

We're still not at great PMF. Great PMF to me is:
→ Double-digit month-over-month growth (we're there)
→ 50%+ win rate in our segment 

But we're finally moving in one direction instead of five.

The lesson:

Going wide is a tax on everything. Your product. Your messaging. Your team's attention.

Going deep feels like a limitation. It's actually leverage.

You don't win by being everything to everyone. You win by being irreplaceable to someone.

We're not there yet. But for the first time in 5 years, I know who we're trying to be irreplaceable to.

That clarity is worth more than any feature we shipped trying to serve "everyone."

If you're early and broad, you're not being ambitious. You're being vague.

Pick the smallest group you can serve better than anyone. Then repeat yourself until it feels irresponsible.

The market doesn't need another option. It needs a clear answer to a specific question.

Be the answer.

We had a customer with 200 LinkedIn accounts.

Running all of them manually across 200 campaigns. Nightmare workflow. Burning hours daily.

They asked: "Can I run all 200 accounts in one campaign?"

Us: "Not yet. It's on the roadmap."

Reality contradicted us immediately.

They left. Switched to a competitor who had multi-sender campaigns.

That hurt. But it taught us something critical:

We weren't losing to better marketing or lower prices.

We were losing because our architecture couldn't support what agencies actually needed.

One customer. One question. One lost deal.

That created more information than 100 customer interviews.

Because it wasn't theoretical. It was real. It cost us real revenue.

Here's the trap we fell into:

We talked to customers. We knew they wanted multi-sender campaigns.

But we also knew it would require rebuilding our entire data model.

So we kept it "on the roadmap" and hoped the problem would go away.

It didn't go away. The customers did.

Reality doesn't care about your roadmap. It only cares about whether you solve the problem.

We finally rebuilt with multi-sender campaigns as the foundation.

It's taken 4 months. We've lost more deals in the meantime.

But now when a customer asks "Can I run 200 accounts?" the answer is yes.

Reality forced us to build what conversations couldn't.

I check Phantom Buster's growth every month.

I check HeyReach's new features every week.

I track who they're hiring on LinkedIn.

It's not research. It's a sickness.

Comparison is supposed to drive you. It mostly just drains you.

Here's what I've learned:

They made different bets. Earlier. Better.

Phantom Buster went API first and multi-platform from day 1. They weren't locked into LinkedIn.

HeyReach went agency-first from early on. They weren't confused about who they served.

We went broad and hoped it would work.

The gap isn't talent. It's decisions.

They decided faster. We debated longer.

Every month I spend checking their progress is a month I'm not focused on ours.

But I can't stop. Because the comparison feels like diligence.

"I'm staying aware of the market."
"I'm learning from competitors."
"I'm being strategic."

Lies. All of it.

I'm just avoiding the harder work of building our own path.

Here's the shift I'm trying to make:

Stop benchmarking against them. Start benchmarking against ourselves.

Did we grow faster than last month? Yes.
Did we ship what we said we'd ship? Yes.
Did we move toward our ICP (lead gen agencies)? Yes.

That's all that matters.

Their story is their story. Our story is ours.

The comparison trap is comfortable because it gives you permission to feel behind.

But feeling behind doesn't help you catch up.

Executing does.

Our biggest bottleneck right now?

Turning the ship.

We're a 5-year-old company trying to act like a 1-year-old startup.

Legacy customers who need broad features. New customers who need agency-specific depth.

Technical debt that blocks agency features. A team used to building for "everyone."

Marketing that still talks to multiple segments. SEO that ranks for generic keywords.

Turning the ship means:

Stop serving legacy customers as well. They'll churn or they won't. We can't build for them anymore.

Rebuild the architecture. Even if it means slower feature velocity.

Rewrite the marketing. Even if traffic dips temporarily.

Retrain the team. Even if it creates short-term confusion.

It's painful.

But staying broad is slower death.

The market moved. We're late to move with it.

Every day we delay is another day competitors get further ahead.

Here's what I'm learning:

You can't turn a ship without someone falling off.

Some customers will leave. Some team members won't adapt. Some channels will break.

That's the cost of being late.

But the alternative is worse.

A ship pointing the wrong direction doesn't get better with time.

It just goes further off course.

Our SEO strategy is simple:

Bottom-of-funnel or nothing.

No thought leadership. No top-of-funnel awareness. No "10 tips for better LinkedIn outreach."

Just: "Dripify/heyreach/expandi alternatives"

Why?

Because we're not a brand. We don't have distribution. We don't have a marketing budget.

What we have: a product that solves a problem for people actively searching for a solution.

Everything else was a waste of time.

We tried broad content. "Future of sales." "Outbound trends." "Building a sales team."

Traffic was decent. Conversions were terrible.

Because people reading "future of sales" aren't ready to buy. They're browsing.

People searching "how to automate LinkedIn messages" are ready right now.

The shift:

Stop trying to educate the market. Start capturing the people already looking.

Our traffic is smaller than competitors. Our conversion rate is higher.

I'd rather have 1,000 visitors at 5% conversion than 10,000 visitors at 0.5%.

Same revenue. Less wasted effort.

Bottom-of-funnel content is boring to write. It's repetitive. It's not viral.

It also pays the bills.

If you're early and don't have a brand, stop trying to build one with content.

Capture demand that already exists. Build the brand later.

I burned out in year 3.

I don't think I've fully recovered.

It wasn't dramatic. No breakdown. No hospital visit.

Just a slow erosion of caring.

I'd wake up and the idea of opening Slack made me want to go back to sleep.

Customer problems felt heavy instead of interesting.

Product decisions felt exhausting instead of energizing.

I was moving. But I wasn't engaged.

Here's what caused it:

We were stuck. I knew we needed to change. I couldn't get us to change fast enough.

Technical debt blocked everything. Our product architecture couldn't support what agencies needed.

So every customer conversation was the same:

"Can you do X?"
"Not yet. It's on the roadmap."

Every product meeting was the same:

"Should we build this feature?"
"We can't until we rebuild the foundation."

Every growth conversation was the same:

"Why are we flat?"
"Because we're not solving the right problems."

I was a broken record. And I hated it.

The burnout wasn't from working too hard. It was from working hard on the wrong things.

I haven't fully recovered because we're still carrying that debt.

But we're finally fixing it.

Campaign-first architecture. Multi-account support. Agency-specific features.

It's slow. But it's real progress.

Burnout taught me something:

Energy comes from momentum. Momentum comes from solving real problems.

If you're burning out, you're probably stuck.

Fix what's stuck. The energy follows.

We're product thinkers.

That was our weakness for 4 years. It's becoming our strength now.

Here's why:

We're not married to "LinkedIn automation for agencies."

We're married to solving problems for people who need outbound.

If agencies stop being the best segment, we'll find the next one.

If LinkedIn becomes unusable, we'll move to email or cold calling or whatever channel opens up.

HeyReach and Expandi have more Word of Mouth in agencies right now. They have the relationships. The focus. The momentum.

But they're locked in. Their entire brand is "for agencies."

We're not locked in. We're just focused.

The difference matters.

We can build a killer product for a different segment tomorrow if the evidence points there.

We've done it before (badly). We can do it again (better).

That optionality is our unfair advantage.

Not because we're smarter. Because we're willing to be wrong and move.

Most companies optimize for consistency. We're optimizing for adaptation.

It's slower at first. But it compounds differently.

The market changes. Channels die. Segments mature.

The companies that win aren't the ones with the best first position. They're the ones who can find the next position fastest.

We're still learning this.

But for the first time in 5 years, I'm not scared of being wrong about our focus.

Because being wrong and moving is better than being right and stuck.

We built SalesGPT.

An AI campaign builder that writes your entire outbound sequence. Smart. Automated. The future.

Retail users loved it. Low LTV users. The segment we shouldn't have been serving.

Agencies barely touched it.

Why?

Because agencies don't need AI to write campaigns. They have copywriters. They have processes. They have templates that convert.

What they needed: multi-sender campaigns. Voice notes and Videos. AI appointment setting.

We built what was exciting to build. Not what they were willing to pay for.

This is the tax of not having a tight ICP.

When you serve "everyone," every feature idea sounds reasonable. You can't kill anything because someone might use it.

SalesGPT took 3 months to build. It's a good onboarding tool. It's terrible ROI.

The agencies who stay don't use it. The users who love it churn within 90 days.

If we'd been focused on agencies from day 1, we never would've built it.

The filter would've been: "Will agencies pay more for this?"

Answer: No.

But we didn't have that filter. So we built it anyway.

AI makes this worse, not better.

It's never been easier to build features. The cost of execution has collapsed.

Which means the cost of building the wrong thing has also collapsed.

You used to need 3 engineers and 2 months. Now you need 1 engineer and a weekend.

Bad ideas ship faster. The market still doesn't care.

The discipline isn't building. It's deciding what not to build.

We're still learning that lesson.

The next 6 months for us is simple:

Agencies. Agencies. Agencies.

Nothing else matters.

We're at 30% agency MRR. Goal: 60%.

That means:

- Stop building features for legacy customers
- Ship multi-sender campaigns fully
- Rebuild workflows for high-volume senders
- Rewrite marketing to agencies only
- Build agency-specific integrations (Clay, GHL, HubSpot)

If it doesn't move us closer to agencies, we're not doing it.

No new segments. No new products. No "interesting ideas."

Just depth.

Here's why I'm confident:

Not because I think we'll succeed. Because I finally know what success looks like.

For 4 years, success was fuzzy:

"Grow MRR"
"Get more customers"
"Build cool features"

All true. None actionable.

Now success is clear:

Win 50% of deals with lead gen agencies running LinkedIn outbound.

That's it. That's the goal.

Every decision gets easier when the goal is specific.

"Should we build this feature?" → Does it help us win agency deals? No? Then no.

"Should we write this content?" → Will agencies share it? No? Then no.

"Should we hire this person?" → Do they know agencies? No? Then no.

Clarity isn't a plan. It's a filter.

The next 6 months won't be easy. But they'll be clear.

And clear is faster than smart.

We're fully remote.

It's cheaper. It's flexible. 

And It sucks.

Not because remote can't work. Because we're not good at it.

When you're unclear about strategy, remote becomes quicksand.

You can't pivot on a whim. You can't read the room. You can't course-correct mid-conversation.

Everything that should take 5 minutes takes a Slack thread, a meeting, a follow-up, and a doc no one reads.

The problem isn't remote. The problem is me.

When I was unclear about our focus (everyone vs agencies), every conversation expanded uncertainty instead of compressing it.

→ "Should we build this feature?"
→ "Well, it depends on who we're building for..."
→ "Right, but we serve multiple segments..."

Dead end. Every time.

Remote punishes vagueness. In-person, you can muscle through with energy and presence.

Remote exposes the gaps instantly.

Now that we're focused on agencies, remote is easier. Not easy. Easier.

→ "Should we build this feature?"
→ "Will agencies pay for it?"
→ "Probably not."
→ "Then no."

Clarity doesn't fix remote. But remote without clarity is just expensive confusion at scale.

If I restarted, I'd still be remote. But I'd be violently clear about strategy from day 1.

Because remote doesn't slow you down. 

Being unclear does.

We grew 10% in January.

I still feel like a fraud.

Why?

Because competitors are growing faster. Because we took 5 years to hit $1M ARR. Because I see founders hitting that in 18 months.

The comparison trap is real.

Here's the thing:

I can explain exactly what we did wrong. I can teach it. I can write about it.

But explaining the mistakes doesn't erase them.

We were too broad for too long. We ignored evidence. We built the wrong things. We waited for consensus.

All preventable. All obvious in hindsight.

So why do I still feel like an imposter?

Because thinking clearly about the past doesn't mean I'm making the right decisions now.

I know we should focus on agencies. But are we focused enough?

I know we need to fix technical debt. But are we moving fast enough?

I know we need to grow faster. But are we building the right things?

Clarity doesn't remove uncertainty. It just makes it more obvious.

The bottleneck is still decisions. Even when you know what to do.

Because knowing and doing are different muscles.

I'm getting better at making decisions without perfect information.

But I'm not good yet.

And watching people who are better makes the gap feel bigger.

That's the trap.

You can see where you need to go. And still feel like you don't belong on the path.

The only way through is to keep walking anyway.

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Utkarsh Singh Rana's LinkedIn Performance

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