Our Story
We were in the middle of our 
Combinator batch, surrounded by founders building all kinds of ambitious things. Every day we sent outreach emails: intros, feedback asks, partnership pings. But inboxes were noisy. Most messages looked the same. We wanted ours to land differently.
So we ran a small experiment.
Before emailing any founder we actually read up on them. Interviews, tweets, about pages, podcasts if they had any. We paid attention to how they talked, what frustrated them, what got them excited. Then instead of starting with the usual “Hi I’m Aditya from [company]” we did something unusual.
We wrote one short sentence that sounded exactly like something they would say. Not a real quote, but one that felt true to them. We found a single photo that matched the energy: a candid from a talk, a quiet shot in their workspace, something that made you feel like you already knew the person.
We sent those emails.
The difference was instant. Open rates went way up. Replies came back fast, and they weren’t just polite. People wrote back things like “How did you know I think exactly that?” or “This actually made me pause and smile today.”
It wasn’t fancy wording. It wasn’t a trick.
It just felt like someone on the other side had really seen them.
That tiny test stuck with us long after demo day. We kept coming back to the same question: what if every founder, salesperson, or builder could create that feeling without spending hours researching? What if you could show up personal and surprising in just a few minutes?
That’s why we built Outreach.
Outreach lets you do what we did in YC, but fast. It pulls the details that actually matter about the person you’re reaching out to, helps you write a message that could only come from you to them, and pairs it with the right image to stop the scroll and start a real conversation.
In a world full of automated messages and generic templates, the strongest thing you can send is the feeling that you actually get who’s on the other end.
That’s what Outreach exists for.
Not more emails. Better human moments.
We still use it ourselves every week. And every time a reply starts with “Wow, this is different…” we remember exactly why we started building it.
We’d love for you to feel that same lift.