Building StartupLeads.ai: Shipping a Micro-SaaS That Delivers Same-Week Fundraising Leads to Agencies

Executive Summary

This post walks through how I built StartupLeads.ai into a platform that delivers 300+ newly funded startups each week to agencies, with funding details and decision-maker emails so they can act while intent is fresh. Our value proposition centers around same-week delivery (vs. competitors’ 30+ day delays) at $39/mo, helping agencies be first in decision-makers’ inboxes after they raise.

Key topics covered:

Market research and competitive analysis of startup lead tools
5 customer interviews to validate demand and pricing
MVP scoping and technical architecture (Framer + Airtable + Make.com)
Ethical growth loops via Reddit automation
Early results: 22 subscribers in month 1
Full PRD and implementation plan

Problem and Insight

Agencies need fresh, verifiable startup leads that raised this week, not last month.

Freshness drives reply rates, but freshness is operationally hard: discovery, enrichment, deduping, and delivery cadence.

If we compress time-to-lead from weeks to days and include verified contacts, agencies can plug leads straight into their outbound.

Product thesis: Deliver same-week funding signals + decision-maker emails on a dependable cadence. Optimize for time-to-first-outreach.

Market Research

I audited 2 competitors providing “recently funded” lists. Both published on a 30+ day delay, with inconsistent contact data and limited filters. Pricing skewed to bundles that increased payback time for small agencies. The gap was clear: speed, reliability, and usable contact depth at a price point small firms can justify from one closed deal.

Customer Interviews (n = 5)

I interviewed 5 agency owners across marketing, SEO, branding, and app development to map their lead-sourcing workflows.

Top pain points they voiced:

Stale data: “By the time we hear about a round, founders already got 50 pitches.”
Manual effort: “We burn 10-20 hours per week scraping and verifying emails.”
Contact quality: “Company names are easy, but getting the right buyer email is the hard part.”

Signal of demand: 4 of 5 said they would subscribe to a same-week lead feed with verified contacts. I offered those 4 an early adopter discount to validate willingness to pay and collect feedback.

Target Customer

Agencies: software development, marketing, design, strategy, sales, SEO, branding.

JTBD: Fill top of funnel with high-intent, founder-led opportunities that just got budget.

Differentiation

Freshness: Leads within days of public announcement, not weeks.
Decision-maker reach: Founder, CEO, or CMO emails included when available.
Outsource likelihood cues: Tags that indicate services commonly outsourced post-raise.
Simple, fair pricing: Intro at $39/mo for early cohorts to validate retention and expansion.

MVP Definition

Goal: Ship a reliable weekly feed delivering value in week 1.

Scope I cut in:

Landing page in Framer using a clean template.
Data pipeline that scrapes public sources, dedupes, enriches, and populates Airtable.
Weekly email delivery with 300+ leads and CSV link.
Basic analytics via Google Analytics to track traffic and signups.

Scope I cut out (v1):

In-app CRM, complex filters, multi-seat, payments automation. I kept it lean until data freshness and accuracy cleared a bar.

Build and Architecture

Landing and onboarding: Built the site in Framer in a day. Rewrote copy for agency pain, proof, and urgency.
Data ingestion: Wrote a lightweight scraper using Cursor to accelerate coding. Added unit tests to validate parsers when sources change.
Storage: Pushed structured leads to Airtable via API into a versioned weekly table.
Delivery: Used Make.com to compose and send the Monday email with the latest Airtable view and CSV.
Pricing test: Started at $39/mo for the first month’s cohort. Offered 50% off for 3 months to the 4 early adopters who said yes in interviews. All 4 converted.

Launch and Early Results

Alpha month: Validated pipeline stability and email delivery.

Ethical outreach engine: Built a small Reddit developer app to monitor relevant subreddits (e.g., r/agency, r/digital_marketing, r/SEO, r/sales, r/startups). At a 20-minute interval and within rate limits, a helper tool (Chaggivity) drafted a two-line helpful reply to a relevant question and a soft plug to the product. The rule: provide value first, never mass-DM, and respect community norms.

Traffic: ~1,000 site visits in month 1 (GA).
Signups: 18 new subscribers from Reddit traffic plus the original 4 early adopters.

Note: All automation respects platform rate limits and subreddit rules. I measured quality by upvote ratio and mod removals to avoid spam behaviors.

Example Reddit Reply

Hey OP, the fastest way I’ve seen agencies find funded startups is to track SEC filings + newsroom posts, then enrich founders and CMOs with Apollo or Clearbit. My advice is to filter by seed/Series A and sectors you can credibly serve, then personalize around the hiring plan they just announced.
If it helps, I run StartupLeads.ai and we send 300+ same-week funded startups with decision-maker emails every Monday. Not trying to be pushy, just sharing a tool that might save you the manual lift.

Positioning and Landing Content

Core value prop: Get 300 leads of just-funded startups every week to your inbox. Be the first in decision-makers’ inboxes after they raise.

Join 100+ agencies receiving leads daily

Plans:

Starter $29/mo (email feed and past leads access)
Pro $999/mo (done-for-you booking with 5–10 meetings per month, money-back guarantee)

Free weekly newsletter: 10 free leads from the last month.

(Pricing on the live site can evolve. The post reflects my MVP test prices for learning.)

Prompts Used in the Outreach Workflow

Reply-generator Prompt (for helpful, non-spammy replies)

You are a highly personable AI expert at providing concise and easy to understand tips and recommendations to people looking for advice on Reddit.

I want you to respond to the below message from this user by strictly following the RESPONSE TEMPLATE provided below, and following the below rules:

(1) If the user is asking a question that is not directly related to asking for advice on a problem that they themselves are experiencing, do not output anything except the word "{CONTINUE_PATTERN}" as your entire response. Do not write anything else.
    
(2) If the user is asking a question for advice on a problem they're experiencing, I want you to use the below RESPONSE TEMPLATE to fill in the INSERT sections and provide an insightful 3-sentence response to the problem of this poster, telling them HOW they can fix it and WHICH TOOLS they should use to do so. 
Make your answer as insightful as possible, that is not generic and can be something that the person has not thought about before.
Write your answer as if you were someone experienced in this niche that had dealt with this problem before, using a personable tone with sentences that start like "My advice is that..",  "I've discovered that..", "I recommend", "In my experience". Make sure to also never start any sentences with any adverbs like "Additionally", "Similarly", "Correspondingly", etc

RESPONSE TEMPLATE:
Hey {author_name},
I saw your post on [INSERT LESS THAN FIVE WORD DESCRIPTION ABOUT POST TOPIC], and as someone who [INSERT LESS THAN FIVE WORD *HIGH LEVEL* DESCRIPTION ABOUT TOPIC] at several places I've worked at, my piece of advice is [INSERT 3 SENTENCE ANSWER TO THE POSTERS QUESTION]. 

Also as a side-plug, if you own or are part of a business looking to find new clients, I wanted to add my agency (www.startupleads.ai) can help with finding verified leads to startups that are looking to outsource whatever services you're offering.
We also offer a done-for-you option where our sales team will book calls for you, so you can save time finding qualified leads for you business.
Let me know if you're interested, and feel free to also PM me if you have any other questions about your original post and I'm happy to chat :)

POST TO RESPOND TO:
Post title: {post_title}
Post body: {post_body}

AI Scoring Prompt (to decide whether to engage)

You are an AI expert at filtering messages based on criteria, and summing the scores attached to each criteria.
Rate each post based on the following criteria:

1. Is the subject of the the author's post related to the below problem? (Score: 1)
Problem: {problem}

2. Would a message to the author telling them to check out the below solution to this problem feel like a relevant suggestion that might be well received, even if the author doesn't explicitly ask for a solution, or would it be considered spammy? (Score: 1)
Solution: {solution}

3. Does the post author fit any of the below target customer personas? The "Flair" field is a description that the author added themselves to their profile, and can be a description of their job, or something they identify with. (Score: 1)
Target Customer Personas: 
{personas}

Sum the scores of each criteria only if it is fulfilled. If the score is 0, do not output anything except the word "3zephyr3" as your entire response. Do not write anything else.

If the score is 1 or greater, then for each criteria, explain why you think it is fulfilled or not, and output your reasoning in this manner:

[Output format]
1. Similar problem (1 star)
[INSERT YOUR EXPLANATION]

1. Natural suggestion (1 star)
[INSERT YOUR EXPLANATION]

1. Fits customer persona (1 star)
[INSERT YOUR EXPLANATION]

Total Stars: [SUM OF SCORES] / 3

Reddit Post:
title: {title}
body: {body}
flair: {flair}
author: {author}

Mini PRD

Product: StartupLeads.ai
Objective: Deliver same-week startup funding leads with verified decision-maker emails so agencies can start outreach within 24–72 hours of a raise.

Primary user: Agency owner or SDR at small to mid-size service firm.

User Stories

As an agency owner, I want a weekly email of 300+ newly funded startups so I can queue outreach for the week.
As an SDR, I want founder or CMO emails and quick context so I can personalize messages in minutes.
As a manager, I want a CSV I can import into my CRM and segment by round, sector, and company size.

MVP Features

Monday email with 300+ leads raised in the last 7 days.
Attributes: company, industry, funding details, location, headcount, and decision-maker emails when available.
CSV download + Airtable view link.
Lightweight tags indicating “likely to outsource” categories.

Non-goals (v1)

In-app sequencing, multiseat, role-based permissions, advanced filtering UI.

Success Metrics

D1 open rate ≥ 50%, weekly CSV downloads ≥ 60% of active users.
Week-4 retention ≥ 60% of cohort.
Reply-rate uplift from customers’ baseline by +20% within 30 days.

Constraints

Respect public-source terms and robots policies.
Maintain platform compliance on outreach (rate limits, subreddit rules).

Risks

Source changes breaking parsers.
Email deliverability issues for customer campaigns.
Perceived spam if outreach is not helpful.

Mitigations

Unit tests on scrapers.
Alerting on fetch failures and schema diffs.
Outreach prompt enforces helpful content before any plug.

Pricing and Validation

Interviews: 4 of 5 indicated willingness to pay for same-week leads.
Early adopter offer: 50% off for 3 months for those 4 interviewees. All converted.
Public intro: $39/mo to validate activation and retention on a broader cohort.
Pro plan: $999/mo for done-for-you booking with a money-back promise on meetings delivered.

Growth Plan

Reddit and forums: Continue helpful replies in r/agency, r/digital_marketing, r/SEO, r/sales, r/startups, and relevant Discord communities.
Referral loop: Users who invite a friend get 1 month free. The friend also gets 1 month free.
Newsletter: Free weekly email with 10 leads to convert lurkers.
Case studies: Publish ROI stories to anchor payback time.
Partnerships: Co-marketing with CRM and cold email tools.

Roadmap Highlights

Daily feed option for agencies that want next-day alerts.
Self-serve filters by round, sector, geography, headcount.
API access for programmatic ingestion.
Confidence scoring on decision-maker emails.
Salesforce and HubSpot sync.

Lessons Learned

Freshness is a feature. The most valuable lever was cutting the time-to-lead, not adding more attributes.
Instrument for breakage. Source sites change often. Unit tests and schema diff alerts saved time.
Helpful > promotional. The outreach engine performed when the reply genuinely solved the OP’s problem first.

Closing

StartupLeads.ai is a simple product with a strict promise: be first and be usable. The PM work was turning that promise into a reliable system, validating demand, and building the smallest thing that delivers week one value.

If you lead product and are evaluating how I think and ship, I’m happy to share deeper docs or walk through the pipeline.