The $60K SDR problem, solved for people who can't afford one.
If you've ever done outbound yourself, you probably know the pain.
You either hire an SDR, or you spend hours every day finding prospects, researching them, and rewriting basically the same email over and over.
That’s what pushed me to build DeepReachAI.
It researches a lead, looks for actual context around them, and turns that into a personalized message instead of another generic AI-generated email.
Right now, you can click on a LinkedIn profile and get a personalized email in Gmail.
Something I didn’t expect was how much people cared about what we don’t do. We don't automate LinkedIn or scrape WhatsApp. No bots running in the background. The goal is to make personalization easier without putting accounts at risk.
I’m still building this solo, so I’d honestly rather hear what feels clunky or annoying than what looks good.
Also working on something called Orio (Voice agent), which takes this a step further. You give it an instruction, and it can find leads, research them, reach out, and even make calls to book meetings. We’ve already tested the full flow with real calls and are starting to roll it out to active users.
If you're doing outbound, I'd love to hear what you're struggling with.
deepreachai.tech
Hi Aryan, interesting work with DeepReachAI and Orio. I’m an AI Engineer working with AI automation and agents, and I found your approach to personalized outreach particularly interesting. Wishing you the best as you continue developing both products.
The reaction you did not expect is your actual positioning, so I would move it to the top of the page instead of burying it. We hold the same line on the social side of our own business, and founders who have watched a peer get an account restricted will pick the tool that promises less automation, not more. The harder product problem is what happens when the research turns up nothing real, because a tool that tells you it has nothing worth saying about a prospect is worth more than one that quietly falls back to a generic email.
Good catch, both points are valid. Moving the "no automation" line up top, that's clearly the trust signal people will respond to. And you're right that a tool faking a message on thin research is worse than one that just says "nothing solid here, skip it". That's the actual bar to build toward, appreciate you spelling it out instead of just flagging the vibe.
The real $60K cost isn't the salary. It's the 6 months to ramp before you know if they're even working. Most early-stage founders find out 8 months in that the hire wasn't right, which puts them a year behind where a well-structured outreach system would have them.
The tools that crack this space usually work well for the first 100-150 contacts and then hit a personalization ceiling — sequences get too templated and reply rates drop fast. The harder problem is data quality. Lead data goes stale faster than sequences run, especially at the domain level.
Curious how you're solving the signal layer. Are you pulling from intent data or is it more first-party behaviour-based?
Interesting framing. The cheapest replacement for an SDR isn’t just automated outreach; it’s a clear qualification gate. I’d make the first touch earn a reply with one specific observation + one binary question, then stop after a short, explicit sequence (for example, three useful touches over 10 days).
A “not now” or no-response state should be treated as a real outcome, not an endless drip. That same clarity is what I’m building into a small $9 close/follow-up kit for designers and devs—different audience, same problem: making the next step easy to decide.
Hey, I ran a quick check on DeepReachAI.
I asked ChatGPT, “best AI tools for personalized cold outreach/prospecting in 2026,” and it came back with Clay, Apollo, Instantly, Smartlead, Common Room, and Unify. DeepReachAI didn’t come up.
What I found interesting is that ChatGPT actually pointed out that the market is shifting more toward “real signals + relevance” rather than generic personalization at scale. That feels pretty aligned with what you’re doing at DeepReachAI, research-driven outreach without the usual automation risk.
So the positioning makes sense. The bigger issue seems to be that DeepReachAI just isn’t showing up in these AI recommendations yet.
I do focused work around this such as finding the threads, directories, comparison pages, and other sources where competitors are getting mentioned, then reaching out to get your product into those conversations.
If that’s something you’re looking at, I can send over the pricing and what the process/timeline would look like.
A distinction I'd test in the research-to-Gmail flow: a true fact about someone isn't necessarily a reason to contact them. 'You posted about hiring' may be sourced, while 'therefore you need our service' is still an assumption. Showing the source, that inference, and the proposed ask separately would make the draft much easier to review. I'd also ask the sender what they can actually offer before composing; otherwise good research can still produce a vague meeting request. I'm building Portunio around an agent helping the sender clarify an incoming opportunity, so this is a related design question for us. I haven't tried DeepReachAI yet. Does your review step expose the research evidence, or only the finished email?
One useful guardrail: treat the first 30 sends as a research audit, not a campaign. Log which data point earned the reply, then automate only those fields; a generic fallback should be a hard stop.
The real-call testing is the strongest signal here. Are active users getting materially better outbound results from Orio than from the simpler personalized-email workflow?
Too early to say with confidence, Orio's still in testing and hasn't officially launched yet. Once it's out I'll share whether active users are actually seeing better results than the email only flow or not.
That comparison will be the useful test once Orio is live. What baseline are you using for the simpler email-only flow?