Instantly

The story of Instantly.ai starts where many great company stories do: with a problem. Co-founder Raul Kaevand was running his own lead generation agency, but the tools for cold email outreach were expensive, charging per seat or per email account. This meant costs ballooned as his agency scaled. The solution was to build a simple internal tool to manage the process more efficiently. That internal tool was the seed that would grow into Instantly. Launched in 2021 by a team including Kaevand, Nils Schneider, Reio Suun, and Sumit Kumar, Instantly entered the market with a disruptive proposition. Instead of the per-seat pricing that dominated the industry, they offered a flat monthly fee for unlimited email accounts. This was a game-changer for their target market of agencies and sales teams who needed to scale outreach without unpredictable costs. The platform's core function is to automate and scale cold email campaigns, bundling features like a B2B lead database, automated email warm-ups to improve deliverability, and a unified inbox to manage replies. The founders famously used their own product to grow the company, sending thousands of cold emails daily to attract their first customers. In a significant strategic move, the founders shut down their profitable agency to focus entirely on the SaaS product. This bet paid off. With no outside funding, the bootstrapped company grew rapidly, hitting a reported $20 million in annual recurring revenue within just two years, proving the power of solving a problem you know firsthand.