i analyzed 1,000+ posts from reddit. Here's the #1 reason most of our outreach setups are broken

I've spent the last few weeks doing something a bit obsessive. I tracked the posting history of over 1,000 people who posted in r/b2bmarketing. I wanted to see where you all go, what you ask, and what you eventually figure out.

The data tells a really clear, and honestly, kind of story about the founders journey on reddit.

Here is the exact path I saw in 18% of all the tracked journeys. It's like a script.

Step 1: The Problem Phase (Days 1-30)
They post in r/startups or r/Entrepreneur. 65% of titles here are questions. The most common ones?

How do I get my first 10 clients?

I launched my SaaS... now what?

Struggling to fill the pipeline.

You're excited, but clueless about distribution.

Step 2: The Tool Phase (Days 30-60)
You migrate to r/b2bmarketing or r/MarketingAutomation. Now you know you need outreach. You start asking different questions, which I found in 42% of the posts here:

What's the best tool for scraping emails?

Apollo vs Clay vs Instantly?

My outreach setup feels broken. Anyone else stuck bouncing across too many tools?

This is where the workflow gets built. You patch together 4 different tools with Zapier and hope for the best.

Step 3: The Solution Phase (Day 60+)
Finally, you end up in r/coldemail or r/SaaS. Now, 70% of the posts are statements and guides. You figured it out.
The titles change to:

Here's how I pull ~500 leads/day based on buying signals.

Shifted to intent-based outreach, reply rate went up 3x.

Here is the depressing part.

It takes the average founder 21 days to go from asking a basic question in r/startups to finding the actual tactical advice in r/coldemail. That's three weeks of wasted time, burned domains, and money spent on the wrong tools.

The biggest gap I found in the data is between tool proliferation and workflow orchestration. Everyone is trying to sell you a point solution (a scraper, a verifier, a sender). Nobody is telling you that the real informtion is in the system that connects them all seamlessly.

The most successful people I tracked arent just using tools. They built a system that automates the logic: Find a signal -> enrich the data -> write the message -> pick the channel.

I got so tired of this cycle myself that i started building my own things, to just be that one layer and stop the tool hopping :)