The episode, in writing
by Richard Lovatt · from the episode above, checked against what was said
I have created this outreach screen. Claude Code finds people on the internet mentioning anything to do with what Underway does, and it finds them and messages them. I took that a step further and I want to show you this.
It finds founders to write to. My friend said to me today that there are many other audiences, like creative people, that this would work for, not just founders, and I was like, yeah, it's actually really true. I may be pigeonholing myself, but I have to start somewhere. That's the point.
What happens is I can just click this button, Find more now, and every day it searches all four signals and adds about 20 founders. All of them go in Add our users and it prepares the best ten. Their page and note wait under Ready to send. Nothing goes out until you press Send.
The signals are these four. Went quiet: they were posting their build in public, then stopped. The habit died, which is the exact thing Underway is for. It can search for that signal online, finds someone building in public who then went quiet, and jumps in and says that's what Underway is for, we noticed.
Said it out loud: complained about the overhead of building in public, the posting, the editing, the keeping up. Those are my audience.
New chapter: just started something worth filming from the beginning, quit to build, launched, raised, first hire.
Making video by hand: already filming founder vlogs, editing them by hand, once result pays in hours.
I clicked Find more now, and we did 19 searches, 33 new people, 20 with a company site, two kept. I asked Claude why only two kept, because I want them all. It spent two cents to do that.
So this is how it comes through. First is found. It found this guy, 152 followers, location not given. He just quit his job and launched TraceRoster, an AI resume and recruiter matching tool, very early, so the start is still on camera. He put a post saying, I quit my job to build something I actually own. TraceRoster uses AI to make job hunting less painful. Upload your resume once, get discovered by recruiters, skip the endless applications. Very early, very real. Really great idea, the type of person I'd like on Underway. I'm just going to comment here, a bit of promotion, although it's not really promotion, it's just a good idea.
Then I took it a step further, because anyone can find those messages if they're clever, anyone can go and comment on that. But then I click on set up their page in note, and here's where I thought to myself, how can I personalise it more so that when I go to them about Underway it's not just a pitch. I wanted to grab information about them, their company, what they do, and send them something more personalised, where it feels like I've come straight to them because they are the person. And that's what it does.
Here's one I prepared earlier. Ryan O'Hara from PitchFire, ryan@pitchfire.com. He just launched PitchFire for startups on Product Hunt, kind of like me, watching how founders respond to the fundraising tool. He did a post about it.
So what it does now is find their perks, and then it writes an email. It's created a page, like an underway page, but for him, using his company. I set this up from pitchfire.com, so he can see what it looked like before he starts. Episode Zero is a short conversation about what you're building, and your first five episodes are free, no card. He can see Episode Zero will open with, what does PitchFire do for a venture firm, and who is PitchFire for, startups built for. Really poignant questions about what he's doing, so it means something. He can click on Start Episode Zero and he's just in, getting the experience of Underway straight away. The more people who feel that and face that, of the target audience, the better. For me, it's just feedback, and if someone does that and gives me feedback, that's very valuable to me right now.
Then it writes the email. It says, Hi Ryan, saw the Product Hunt launch for PitchFire for startups, so the timing seems right. I make Underway, a building in public series. We film a short interview on camera once a day, whenever suits you, and each one becomes an episode. The first five are free and there's no card. I've used your site to set out what your series would look like. If it's not for you, no problem. Rich. Pretty easy, straight to the point.
I am going to change it though, because I want to take links out of the first email, as I know you get better delivery that way. A Loom link can be added, and that would be added onto their page that I sent, going through their site, giving them some props to their idea, and then an offer, and I could give them a code as well. I can just click send to Ryan.
I'm still building this, there are things I need to go in and check. In the background I'm having it create sequences, so there would be four or five emails that go out, and it would stop upon a reply. I want to go omnichannel as well, so as well as emailing I'd like to send a drip sequence on LinkedIn, DM on X, and so on. For me this is super cost-effective, and all in all it should be a way of getting people to use it, and that's all I care about right now, is feedback.
I wanted to show you the signups too. We've made some progress, step by step. Twenty five signed up over the last seven days, eleven got into the app. Over the last three days, when I started ads and stuff, ten people signed in, ten people saw today, one opened the tour, started typing on the Episode Zero card, five of them pressed start Episode Zero, saved the series. This is data and metrics, and it helps me understand where people are getting to.
One thing I have to keep reminding myself is that people are going to be inquisitive. It might be perfect for them, but it doesn't mean they're just going to say, okay, I'm in, I'm going to get into it and use it all right now. It's going to take some time for people to get around to it. I've just got to be patient, get a big lead list, a big audience, keep promoting to them, keep showing them the reasons why they should use it, and also make the process of using it as easy as possible. For me, it's about progress, and as you can see, every day we're getting closer.