Adam Robinson

$10M ARR is the FU MONEY of SaaS. At $10M ARR bootstrapped, you and your co-founder clear $1M+/year in salary and dividends easily. You can sell instantly for $30-40M. There are hundreds of EBITDA buyers at this level vs. a handful at $1B valuations. From here, you can do whatever you want. Hire a CEO and work 1 hour/week. Grind 100 hours if that's your thing. Raise $50M from a position of strength. Scale to $25M ARR with 25 people and pay yourself $10-15M/year. Most companies never get here because VCs show up early with decacorn dreams and money you don't need. That capital interferes with the one thing that makes you great: product-market fit. Bootstrapping to $10M ARR is easier and less risky than creating a VC-backed unicorn, with a far higher probability-weighted outcome. If you can find PMF and use customer money to get to $10M, you can do anything you want with your life.

Cold email rule #1: If the recipient cannot speak the language the email is written in, he will not book a demo.

Last month I put a newsletter out about how I cut MoltSets unlimited plan from $497 to $97/mo. A young YC Founder replied and said I was NUTS, and if I DOUBLED the price, I wouldn’t get pushback from his entire YC Cohort! I agree with him, but he was missing the big picture. I’m trying to DOMINATE the agentic use case for building and enriching lists for prospecting. The way you do that is by accumulating users, and the way you get users is by eliminating all friction, price included. $97 is throw-away price. People won’t think about it. Even at $497 you think about it, at $997 most people are REALLY thinking about it. I also believe the TAM of buyers of something $97 is at least 100x, maybe 1000x the TAM of buyers at $997. Not to mention B2B contact data is getting more commoditized by the day. Also, I’m trying to create a brand. MOLTSETS = CONTACT DATA APIS FOR AGENTS. Something like RB2B = website visitors. I need to deliver on my core value prop to as many users as humanly possible to make that brand. I think the humans that make agents want cheap tools that deliver high quality data and eliminate runaway cost loops. I also think humans (not agents) are SICK of paying super high prices for contact data, which will just add fuel to the fire. Is this a VC-investible business? HELL NO. It’s capped AF. Where it’s capped I think depends on how good our data is. Could be $5m, $10m, $20m if we become literally world class at data. Only time will tell. One last thing: I think I’m uniquely positioned to run a profitable business at $97/mo unlimited because I can get free customer acquisition through my thought leadership AND we’re already paying our data team and vendors through my other businesses - RB2B and Retention. I can present an orange among a universe of “contact data apples” and hit the market with a very disruptive, incredibly narrow value prop at an unheard of price, and run all the customer interaction with AI like RB2B. The advantage of being such a low price if you have free customer acquisition like I do is that nobody else can make a funnel work (because you’re priced below their CAC). They have to build more and charge more to pay for ads and salespeople to get it to work. So my fellow YC founder friend … THAT is why I dropped price to $97 instead of raising it to $997 for the same product. If agents are really doing 80% of GTM in 5 years and MoltSets is the perfect thing for agents, it’s game over. But I’d never get this into YC 🤷‍♂️

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The average cold email sequence gets a 1-3% reply rate. Trigger-based, multi-channel sequences get 12-20%. This Tuesday, we're going LIVE to show you how to use Claude to build a cold email system to 10x your reply rates. (And give you the Claude skills needed to do it 👇) Jesse Oulette is the founder of LeadMagic, a cold email genius and a guy who's watched hundreds of teams torch their domains blasting the same CSV with the same template. So what creates a 10x gap between two teams sending the same offer? The copy barely matters. Who you contact, WHY NOW, which channel, and what fires next when a buying signal hits does. Until recently, building that architecture required an ops team and endless manual spreadsheets. Now Claude runs the whole thing. This week on "Claude did WHAT?!?", Jesse is sharing his screen and building his full cold email and ABM system LIVE: 1. The 1-to-Many ABM Playbook — Claude dynamically segments target accounts, maps the buying committee, and isolates pain points with ZERO manual spreadsheets 2. The Cold Email Personalization Engine — the exact prompts Claude uses to research prospects, write relevant openings, and self-score its own drafts before anything sends 3. Multi-Contact Signal Routing — how to reference multiple stakeholders at the same company automatically 4. The Sequence Automation Blueprint — raw account data to a live multi-touch sequence across every channel, fully managed by AI logic 5. Protecting the Inbox — how to run this at volume without destroying your domain reputation Same two rules as every episode: Jesse is giving away the Claude Skills needed to run it for FREE, and teaching it so non-engineers can implement. Drop them into Claude and go. We'll leave time for Q&A, so bring your questions. Join us Tuesday at 12pm PT. Link in next tweet.

I have the weirdest question ever asked by a SaaS founder … HOW ARE YOU BUYING MY PRODUCT? 1/ I have no singup link on MoltSets.com 2/ We are not even in beta yet 3/ The APIs don’t work how we want them to AT ALL 4/ There are too many bugs for me to turn this loose … …YET WE ARE ALMOST AT $50k ARR!!!! I’ll ask again … to the 5 people who bought last week … HOW ARE YOU BUYING MY PRODUCT?!?! WTF.

I’m iMessaging 1,335 people simultaneously right now who signed up for MoltSets waitlist, and it’s the SINGLE BEST DISCOVERY motion I’ve ever run. Here’s how it works (and the exact tech stack): THE PRODUCT: I am collecting phone numbers on the MoltSets waitlist, and webhooking the number to 1Prompt. 1prompt is then engaging these people - AS ME - on iMessage and whatsapp. I’m gathering all relevant discovery information … Who they are, what they do, EXACTLY the workflow they are planning on doing w/ MoltSets, what contact data vendors they’re currently using, pain points, etc. As I mentioned… I’m currently having 1,335 conversations with qualified prospects, and I have people DM-ing me non-stop asking if it’s a bot or not. It’s like the movie “Her”. THE TECH STACK: - Google Forms (for waitlist) - 1prompt (interface for conversations, starring them, etc) - OpenRouter (to flow between LLMs) - GoHighLevel (the “channel” connector between iMessage/WhatsApp) - 1prompt webhook (to send the leads) THE ONBOARDING: 1. I had to drop a credit card in for everything above … I think it’s costing around $1,000/mo total, maybe less. 2. I had to answer a series of VERY BASIC questions about the intel I was gathering. 3. I gave access to the form. 4. I created some viral posts about how MoltSets is going to wreck the contact data market … …and the next thing you know, I’m courting 1,335 people at once. WHAT HAVE I LEARNED??? 1. If I can actually deliver on the Moltsets value prop, people really want this thing. 2. After reading about 100 messages, they all start to sound the same. 3. Many people have asked me how I built something that sounded so “real” and so “like me” 4. I want to use this in other ways. I’m just not sure how yet. AM I A SCUMBAG FOR iMESSAGING PEOPLE WITH AN AI BOT PRETENDING IT’S ME??? I don’t think so. But I’m not totally sure yet. Maybe I am a scumbag. But if I asked you if YOU could have a running conversation with 1,335 people pouring their hearts out, sharing their pain, all in advance of launching your next startup… Would YOU do it? P.S. Over 4,000 people have signed up for the MoltSets waitlist. Get unlimited contact data for $27/mo. Beta open soon. Join here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

FOUNDERS/SALESPEOPLE: THIS IS NOT HOW TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS Here are the 7 reasons why this cold email sucks: 1. Nobody wants you to SPAM them after they comment on Linkedin posts 2. Nobody believes your claims - you have not earned their trust yet 3. This email has further diminished their trust and annoyed them because… 4. You SPAMMED them after they commented on a Linkedin post!!! 5. Your value prop is nowhere close to MoltSets… 6. You are $99/mo for 3,000 credits, we are $27/mo unlimited, which means... 7. You have to make claims about your database being more accurate than mine… WHICH ISN’T EVEN OUT YET. =========== Dear Reachfast, Several vendors did this to me when I launched RB2B. None of them are still in the pure-play web ID market. Why? 1. This is a shitty tactic that actually ERODES trust in your brand, and 2. Poaching my engagement probably only has 1% of the impact In fact, I think it actually hurts you. I wish you a long and prosperous journey. But please… figure out a better way to get customers than this. Love, Adam

I'm starting a new weekly LIVE workshop called, "Claude did WHAT?!?". On the first episode, Alex Fine is going to show us how to use Claude + OpenClaw + MoltSets to 10x your outbound volume for near $0. You'll walk away with the pre-built Claude Skills to run this. Drop them into Claude and go. Join us on tomorrow at 3pm ET here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regist… Here's the TLDR on the new show (and what we're covering): I want to bridge the gap between the endless Claude slop that’s on LinkedIn and the useful GTM things getting done with Claude. So I'm bringing together the best GTM Engineers and AI-first operators to show you the CRAZIEST workflows and systems they're building with Claude. There are TWO RULES for every guest: 1. You must give away the Claude skills for free 2. You must teach in a way non-engineers can implement This Tuesday, Alex (founder of Understory) is wiring OpenClaw + MoltSets into a signal-to-sequence outbound engine LIVE on camera, then giving you the Claude skill files to run it yourself. You'll walk away with: - How to route unlimited contact data into automated workflows - How to fire a lead into sequence the second a buying signal hits - The exact APIs, webhooks, and Claude skill to deploy it today We'll leave time for Q&A, so come ask your questions! P.S. Tag the best Claude GTM creators you know below. If they're building something cool, I will have them on the show and promote them to our 50,000 email list and 150,000 Linkedin followers!

Why do I still do this? When it’s so fucking hard and I don’t have to anymore. I build startups because it’s the most true expression of who I am. And I believe we are in an age where AI has enabled builders to build whatever they want to give them whatever life they want, in a way that was never before possible. For me, I have a COMPULSION towards building insanely lean businesses. Maybe you don’t. But I do. In 2019 Tate, Diana, and I bootstrapped $13m ARR with six people PRE-AI. I am not bragging, I am stating that journey was one of the most fulfilling things I have ever gone through as a human being, BECAUSE it was so authentic to who I am and we created something that I believed was the most beautiful business I could imagine at the time. With RB2B, AI made even MORE insanely lean possible, and I believe one of the most amazing things I have ever seen on this planet. We’ll hit $10m before the end of the year and it’s run by 1 FTE and a handful of part time people a few hours per week. Haters would say “you had more than 1 FTE in the beginning”, “it’s about to stall”, blah blah blah and they would be correct. But when we started RB2B in 2023, people were extolling the virtues of a 10 man $10m ARR business. The idea of a 1 man $10m ARR business was completely absurd and had not yet happened. Now it’s a reality, and the growing cash flow from RB2B and Retention are funding our next venture, MoltSets, which we’re going to build in the same way as we built RB2B. So why do I do what I do? Because I am expressing my creativity by building what I consider to be extraordinarily beautiful machines, and they deliver to me (and my team) the life we want. I am so grateful for Tate, Diana, Michael and Keleigh for being so values-aligned, and supportive of the often insane ideas I have, and going along with me as we see how far we can push this pathologically lean philosophy. I hope I am lucky enough to keep building elegant, cash generating companies with a calm schedule and energized, long-term team for decades to come. But it wasn’t always this way. The only way to describe the first seven years was “terrible”. I posted a while ago a letter to myself that I wrote in 2015 when I was stuck at $3m ARR about how I wanted to get to where I am today in five years … and it’s heartbreaking imagining telling that guy who wanted it SO BADLY that he would make ZERO PROGRESS for the next three years. I never gave up, and eventually I got one thing to hit, and then another. And now, this is my art. I am so grateful for having this endless canvas to express myself. And I hope I never run out of paint.

Join waitlist: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

Last week somebody secretly bought MoltSets unlimited $997/mo plan - EVEN THOUGH THERE IS NO SIGNUP LINK YET. He enriched 200,000 leads, but yesterday I got a DM saying it was a total disaster… Customer: We enriched 200k leads with MoltSets last week. Me: How did you do that? We don’t have a signup link on the site. Customer: I’m not telling. But we found a path, and bought a $997 plan. Do you want the good news, or the bad news? Me: I’ll take the good news first. Customer: Your setup is easy and coverage is INCREDIBLE. 70-75% of the list. Me: And the bad news? Customer: We ran your emails through Zerobounce and 60% were invalid. This is a non-starter for us. But if you can increase email quality, we’ll renew. [my stomach drops, my heart starts racing] Me: WHAT?!?! But we append a “last validation” to every email. Customer: No, you do not. I will send you the file you enriched so that you can inspect it. Me: Thanks … Let me see what I can find … By the way … What’s your use case? Customer: We have 20 SDRs selling through Claude licenses and we’re trying to give them a few good APIs to help them self-source leads. ======= [I immediately call my CTO in a panic] Me (to CTO): Tate - this guy enriched a list and it’s 60% invalid. CTO: When did he do it? Me: Last Thursday. CTO: Well - I didn’t build the is_valid functionality until Friday afternoon!!! Serves him right for using it before we were even IN beta!!! ======= Me: We’ll re-run the list and it will be 100% valid. He hadn’t built the is_valid feature when you ran the list. We’re not even out yet. Customer: Great. If that is the case, we’ll renew indefinitely. Me: And I’m honored to have you as our first $997/mo customer!!! ======= Over 3,500 people have signed up for the Moltsets waitlist. Get unlimited 100% verified (yes, it's built now) contact data for $27/mo. Join waitlist in first comment. Beta starts soon.

Here are 5 insane things about my new startup MoltSets so far (the 4th has NEVER happened to me before with a startup): 1. 10/10 email accuracy 2. 66% coverage - BEFORE we even built in waterfalls 3. Somebody found the signup link and hit our APIs 3mm times on Mon/Tues on the $27 plan (that was a bug) 4. Somebody found the signup link (not on the site) and bought a $997 plan BEFORE IT WAS EVEN IN BETA 5. The 2nd piece of user feedback just came in … “IT’S LIT” I was excited about RB2B. I think I’m even more excited about MoltSets. Want unlimited contact data APIs for $27/mo? (other vendors are $99 for 5,000 credits) Join the waitlist here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

… And by the way, MoltSets is going to WRECK both of these guys by offering unlimited contact data APIs with unlimited seats. Over 3,000 people on the waitlist. Beta starts soon. Join here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

ZoomInfo: $1.25B rev, $825m mkt cap Apollo: $150m (ish) revenue, last round $1.6b valuation Somebody help me out here … WTF is Apollo supposed to do here?

Join the Moltsets Waitlist: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

I’ve bootstrapped $0-1m ARR 3 times, and I’m about to do a 4th time with my new startup MoltSets. Here’s my 5-step plan for creating a lean, mean, high-velocity growth machine: 👇 First, to set the stage... - Moltsets is unlimited contact data APIs built for Clay and Claude Code - It will be PAINFULLY simple, with a throw away price ($27/mo) - All customer inquiry (pre and post signup) will be handled by AI agents ——— Now, the 5-step playbook to get to $1m ARR for the 4th time. Step 1: Tap into the power of the “Founder Brand”. Thanks to @davegerhardt for putting me on to this. I’m going to create a huge amount of awareness for this by posting about it, doing a weekly live show, and making YT videos. Step 2: Ride an epic wave. The explosion of people posting about Claude on LinkedIn is second only to the explosion in Anthropic’s actual revenue in March ‘26. I want on the wave. Step 3: Give creators BIG visibility in exchange for UGC. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to do this but I’m going to make a Claude-first weekly live workshop show. I believe my founder brand and that topic will pull a larger audience than creators can pull themselves by orders of magnitude. I will also engage with ANY post that tags MoltSets from my personal account. (DM me if you’re interested in being a creator.) Step 4: Keep the product painfully simple We are going to obsess over high quality data with disruptive subscription pricing. The product will only ever do 5 things - people search, company search, email enrichment, phone enrichment, and email validation. Step 5: Run it all w/ AI Simplicity will allow us to run it all customer interaction through Intercom Fin, like we did w/ RB2B. Robb Clarke will once again create world-class documentation that will make it all possible. TAKEAWAY We are still VERY early with MoltSets. There’s also a a few core things I have NO IDEA if they will work or not. But here is one thing I know FOR SURE that we’re doing right… 2025 was about building WITH AI. 2026 and beyond will be about building FOR AI. DON’T GET LEFT BEHIND Join the MoltSets waitlist in next tweek. BETA starts soon!

Me: I think RB2B will stall out at around $12-13m ARR. Diana: Remember when that was the dream? Yes, I remember. There were YEARS of my career as a Founder where that seemed so out of reach. I was stuck at $3m ARR for YEARS and had no idea how we would get out of it. We would chase bad product ideas. Copy other vendors features. Go to SaaS conferences and try whatever speeches were given by people ahead of us. We were stuck for so long that I thought that if I EVER got a bootstrapped business to $13m ARR all of my dreams would come true. And now, RB2B, when it hits $13m ARR, will have ONE FTE working on it, and will be one of three businesses that we own above $10m. And I’m shrugging my shoulders, saying “eh, it’s ok. I really want MoltSets to get to $10m ARR too and be our 4th biz there.” Life is funny that way. You just have to keep building. Eventually yesterday's dreams will become today’s underwhelming reality.

I’M TIRED, TIRED, TIRED OF DATA COMPANIES BENDING STARTUPS OVER BACKWARDS TO SCREW US ON CONTACT DATA. We’ve bought every vendor under the sun, expensive, cheap, seats, no seats, and every time we switch it STILL feels too expensive. The standard price of contact data is $99 per 5,000 credits. MoltSets.com is $27/mo for UNLIMITED CONTACT DATA. Yes, MoltSets will eventually destroy ZoomInfo and Apollo. YOU: I bet your data quality is shit. ME: TEST OUR DATA COVERAGE AND ACCURACY. It will be just as good as what you’re using. We have to be good to serve RB2B. It was built by me, Tate, and the former president of Apollo/VP product and growth at ZoomInfo. Don’t believe me, test it! YOU: Why are you pricing it so cheap? How can you run a profitable business that way? ME: I’M LITERALLY SELLING SAWDUST. We are using the data team and data asset (very profitably) in 3 other business lines. YOU: Why are you yelling at me? ME: BECAUSE MOLTSETS AT $27/MO UNLIMITED IS FUCKING INSANE. YOU: Aren’t you worried about someone stealing your whole database? ME: Not really. This is a distribution play. If someone stole our database (and I’m sure they will), they will violate TOS (which they will not care about), stop paying us $27/mo (who cares), and then try to do what?!?! Go up against my founder brand, our UGC, and our internal validation engine to acquire customers how?!?!? I think 5x5 already commoditized B2B data, so I want to sell high quality data at a throwaway price and watch an explosion of vibe-coded apps like we've never seen. Imagine what you can build when contact data is (nearly) free! Join the MoltSets wait list here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI… Over 2,000 people have already signed up. Beta starts soon.

Last Wednesday I gave up on my new startup MoltSets entirely. I was devastated. Today, I think it's a $10m ARR biz because of ONE CHANGE we made to the offer. Here's what happened: First, a little background... - 7 weeks I stopped working on RB2B - To focus on MoltSets - unlimited contact data APIs - We’ll be in closed beta next week - waitlist below My original hypothesis for MoltSets is that a large number of Clay Agencies (maybe 200?) would pay $495/mo for MoltSets. That alone isn’t an attractive business. But I hoped how loud they were would pull in growth marketers and Founders at $199/mo, and individual reps who wanted to do sales in Claude at $19/mo. Then I had 3 of the biggest Clay Agencies say the same thing last week: “There’s probably 10-30 people who would pay $500/mo for that.” FACK! But then one of them suggested something WILD. What if instead of trying to get HUNDREDS of people on $497/mo… You tried to get THOUSANDS of people on a $97/mo plan that was unlimited and STILL had huge rate limits??? As I continued my conversations with GTM nerds, the enthusiasm for the $97/mo offer became palpable. So much so, that a few people said words that are music to my ears: “How can you run a profitable business with a $97/mo truly unlimited offer?” When I explained it to them, it clicked: 1. We have incredibly cheap, massive awareness through LinkedIn 2. We are already using our database and data team (profitably) to serve three other business lines 3. MoltSets piggybacks on those two “moats” for another path to monetization of both of them, and 4. We will do this without humans, like RB2B “Ah, I see.” (they said, nodding) TAKEAWAY Customer Discovery is more important than ever. I’ve never sent a cold email or made a cold call, and I’m trying to design a product for people who are the best in the world at it. Vibe-coding makes you think you should just throw a product out there and see what happens. But unless you are LITERALLY eating your own dogfood and solving a PAINFUL PROBLEM that you actually have, there’s no way your vibe-coded slop will be disruptive. Going $0-$1 quickly requires two things: 1. A disruptive product 2. Disruptive marketing If you don’t have both, you’ll get stuck. I know because I’ve been there. There’s only ONE WAY I know of to create both those things … CUSTOMER DISCOVERY. The market knows. You just have to ask. P.S. Join the MoltSets waitlist here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI… Get Unlimited Contact Data APIs for Clay and Claude Code. (We are trying something new w/ whatsapp, so if you signed up before, sign up again)

Clay ($204m raised) Apollo ($250m raised) ZoomInfo (public company) Orum ($82m raised) SalesLoft ($246m rasied) RB2B ($0 raised) WILD. This is proof you can bootstrap a “billion dollar brand” without raising a $1 of VC Keep building!