$1K MRRin 3 months

Acquired

Sold to LeadFuzefor (price undisclosed)as of July 2018Source

HeadReach acquired by LeadFuze July 2018. Kalo Yankulov later co-founded Encharge.

De idea a exit: Cómo lancé, crecí y vendí mi primer micro SaaS

Founder

Kalo Yankulov

Co-Fundadores•Technical•Bulgaria

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

Experienced

Product

HeadReach

Una herramienta de ventas para generación de leads que te ayuda a encontrar emails de personas a las que quieres vender.

Type

SaaS

Industry

Marketing

Model

Suscripción

Marketing Strategy

How Kalo acquired customers

Growth Channel

Comunidades

Also Used

Cold Outreach

Tech Stack

Tools used to build HeadReach

Ruby on RailsPostgreSQLIntercomStripeAutopilot

The Full Story

A finales de 2016, lanzamos HeadReach, una herramienta de ventas para generación de leads. Es un SaaS que te ayuda a encontrar emails de personas a las que quieres vender. Piénsalo como LinkedIn más emails menos el precio alto.

Validando la Idea

En lugar de construir un prototipo de aplicación, decidí enfocarse en interacciones con clientes como la forma más corta de ganar conocimiento y validar la hipótesis más arriesgada. Un piece de software funcionando no es un MVP: es un prototipo. La forma más corta de validar una idea es la ruta que genera el mayor aprendizaje.

El MVP de Conserje

Hice manualmente una lista de outreach para un post de blog de un amigo. A cambio, recibí el primer testimonio. Para el MVP de HeadReach, acordamos que 20 clientes pagos en 2 semanas es un gran resultado de validación.

Resultados Iniciales

Tasa de conversión de 7% en la landing page
15 clientes pagos
20 listas compradas
Alrededor de $400 en ingresos

Crecimiento y Exit

En 3 meses crecimos el producto a poco menos de $2,000 de MRR y algunos miles de usuarios. Después de dificultades técnicas con nuestra fuente de datos, eventualmente vendimos la base de usuarios de HeadReach y activos de marketing a LeadFuze.

Ingresos totales generados: $18,453
Clientes totales: 230
Trial a tasa de conversión de cliente: 3.15%

Key Takeaways

Valida con un MVP de conserje antes de construir software

Define métricas de éxito cuantificables antes de lanzar

Los grupos de Facebook y los DMs de influencers funcionan para tracción temprana

Prepárate para vender si las barreras técnicas se vuelven insuperables

Originally published onEncharge Blog

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Kalo's HeadReach playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

$1K MRR

Channel

Comunidades

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Kalo's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Comunidades
A risk check before copying the HeadReach playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Kalo's journey? Generate a business idea in the Marketing space using AI and real founder data.

Kalo's Path to $1K MRRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Kalo actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Kalo's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Personal painPivot from An automated tool for generating 1-click content-promotion/outreach opportunities for any content piece (the original 2016 idea), before pivoting into a manual outreach-list concierge service, then a lead-generation prospecting SaaS, and later again into a horizontal sales-audience tool in January 2017.

As a content marketer himself, Kalo felt there should be a tool that automatically surfaced marketing/promotion opportunities for each content piece; that vague idea, not the eventual lead-generation product, is what he started validating the next day.

“Being a content marketer, one day I said to myself that there should be a tool that generates marketing opportunities for each of your content pieces.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Validation

Validated before building

MvpValidated

Instead of building software, Kalo manually built the first outreach list by hand for a friend (Karl, a marketing blogger) in exchange for HeadReach's first testimonial, the concierge-service version of the MVP.

The founder frames the manual, no-software version of the product explicitly as the MVP, built to test willingness to pay before any automation existed.

“We took off everything unnecessary for our MVP and created the 1st ever version of HeadReach – a concierge service for outreach/promotion lists.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

PresalesValidated15 manual customers

Set an explicit, quantified success bar (20 paying customers in 2 weeks) for the concierge MVP, then marketed it hard for 24 hours across 3 channels and got real payments.

In the first 24 hours of marketing the manual MVP, HeadReach hit a 7% landing-page conversion rate and 15 paying customers across 20 purchased lists.

“In the first 24 hours of marketing the MVP we achieved: 7% CR on the landing page 15 paying customers”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

First test users

Personal network~1 usersFree testers

The very first outreach list HeadReach ever produced was made for free for a friend, a marketing blogger named Karl, in exchange for a testimonial rather than payment.

“suggested that I should make an outreach list for one of his posts. In exchange, I would receive the first testimonial for HeadReach.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

First paying customer

Existing audiencePaywall from launch

Real paying customers for the manual concierge MVP came within the first 24 hours of marketing it across Kalo's previous 500-person email list, Facebook groups, and cold DMs to influencers; the first-listed and likely dominant channel was his existing email list.

“In the first 24 hours of marketing the MVP we achieved: 7% CR on the landing page 15 paying customers”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Communities · Facebook groups (personal videos + long messages)Pre-launchWorked

Kalo used long, personalized messages and personal videos when pitching HeadReach inside Facebook groups, rather than short generic pitches.

“Long messages and personalized videos work great with Facebook groups.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Communities · Reddit + Medium republishing (blitz marketing)Pre-launchWorked

On Reddit, Kalo avoided deep-linking friends straight to his post to dodge shadow-banning, sending them to the subreddit to find and upvote it instead, and spread the same post across only 3-4 subreddits gradually.

“do not send them to the exact post URL (deep-linking) as you risk getting shadow-banned.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Twitter / XPre-launchAbandoned

550 organic Twitter followers were built pre-launch via the lead-gen eBook funnel, but the channel was never actually put to work for HeadReach.

Kalo explicitly says the pre-launch Twitter/social following was never leveraged for HeadReach, even though it existed and other pre-launch subscribers did drive early traction.

“we never really got to leverage social media subscribers at HeadReach, but the pre-launch subscribers were an early driving force for HeadReach.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Product Hunt · Product launch (Jan 2017)LaunchWorked

Roughly a dozen paying customers in the first week after the Product Hunt submission; PH remained a major ongoing traffic and lead source afterward.

The Product Hunt launch converted directly into a meaningful batch of paying customers within its first week.

“We managed to acquire about a dozen paying customers in the first week or so after our PH submission.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

SEO / Content · Guest posting / broken-link outreachScalingWorked

Kalo used the Backlink Watch tool to find live pages linking to a shut-down competitor, then pitched those site owners on swapping the dead link for a HeadReach link.

“I used the Backlink Watch tool to find pages that contain active links to the now-closed Emailbreaker software.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

The broken-link pitch to Yesware converted into a live backlink that became HeadReach's single largest traffic source.

“This email helped us acquire a link in the Yesware article which became our number 1 traffic source.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Word of MouthScalingWorked

Coincided with reaching about $2K MRR around February 2017, with $0 spend on marketing or CAC.

By early 2017, people started organically mentioning HeadReach when discussing sales prospecting and automation tools, without paid promotion.

“We also saw some word-of-mouth organic growth. More and more people started mentioning the HeadReach tool when talking about automating sales and prospecting.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Cold Outreach · Personalized video outreach to pre-launch subscribersFirst customersWorked

Kalo recorded personalized screen-recorded videos for pre-launch subscribers using the September segmentation survey data, tailoring the pitch to each recipient's use case.

“I was reaching out with personal video messages to some of our pre-launch subscribers.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

The combination of personalized outreach and an early-adopter discount was explicitly credited with helping convert the first 10 customers.

“This in combination with the early adopter discount was a factor in acquiring our first 10 customers.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

What didn't work

FundraisingPre-launchCost: time

In June 2016 the founders spent the month pursuing VC and angel funding to speed up development, and were turned down across the board.

“We got rejected by 10 different accelerators.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

In hindsight Kalo concluded outside investors weren't even the right fit for the business, and the month spent fundraising was effectively wasted.

“investors weren't a good match for us anyway.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

What they did instead: Continued self-funding the build with the $10,000 carried over from their previous startup instead of raising outside capital.

Product scopePre-launchCost: both

In August 2016 the team had to sharply cut HeadReach's planned feature set because they couldn't build the ambitious automated data product they'd envisioned.

“we had to dramatically limit the feature set of HeadReach to only finding contacts of prospects.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Scraping data at scale from locked-down sources like LinkedIn was, in Kalo's own assessment, only realistic for much better-resourced companies than his two-person bootstrapped team.

“Scrapping large volumes of data from locked-in sources like LinkedIn is reserved only for the savviest and most financially favored companies.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

What they did instead: Narrowed the product to just contact-finding, then found a workable technical path in October 2016 using the Google Site Search API.

PositioningPre-launchCost: both

The October 2016 closed beta converted zero of the 1,500+ pre-launch leads into paying subscribers.

“Our closed beta was a fail. No one became a paying subscriber.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Feedback split into two equally bad camps: the software was buggy, and separately, the pivoted product didn't match what the pre-launch marketing campaign had promised.

“disappointed that the product is not what we've promised in the pre-launch campaign.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

What they did instead: Found the Google Site Search API breakthrough shortly after and spent the next 2 months rebuilding the product before the public November 2016 launch.

Tech choiceScalingCost: both

In February 2017, right as HeadReach was approaching $2K MRR, Google notified the team it was shutting down the Site Search API that HeadReach's entire lead-finding engine depended on.

“in February 2017 Google emailed us that they're closing the Site Search API”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Over roughly 5 months (March-July 2017) the team tried to build a proprietary web scraper to replace the lost API, but couldn't scrape data at the volume needed without the costs becoming unsustainable.

“we never really managed to get our crawler to be able to scrape such large volumes of protected data without breaking the bank.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

What they did instead: Sunset the product in August 2017 rather than keep fighting the tech debt, then approached competitor LeadFuze and sold HeadReach's user base and marketing assets to them in 2018.

How it changed as they grew

At launch: 2 people (2 co-founders: Kalo Yankulov (marketing, business, design) and Dany/Daniel (technical, development), plus one paid development contractor brought on in April-May 2016.)

Bootstrapped · $10,000

Pricing decrease

Kalo offered a steep lifetime discount to early public-launch subscribers as a deliberate short-term conversion booster, while acknowledging it wasn't great for long-term unit economics.

“we were offering a bulky 50% lifetime discount. It's not an amazing long-term strategy, especially when you have marginal costs”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

What broke as they grew

HeadReach's core lead-finding capability depended entirely on a single third-party API (Google Site Search). When Google shut that API down in February 2017, the founders' own retrospective framing is that this single-vendor dependency was the structural flaw that ultimately forced the pivot, sunset, and sale of the business.

“It's not a sustainable business strategy to put all your eggs in one basket by relying on a single 3rd party API.”

From an Idea to Exit: How I Launched, Marketed and Sold My First SaaS - HeadReach (Encharge blog, authored by Kalo Yankulov)

Sources (1 in the founder's own words)

Launch Strategy

How they introduced the product to the world

Ventas Directas

Initial go-to-market approach

Validation

How they tested demand before building

Pre-ventas

Method used to confirm market interest

Starting Audience

Whether they had followers before launch

Existing Audience

Leveraged existing followers

Having an audience accelerates early growth

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Frequently asked questions

Who acquired HeadReach?

HeadReach was acquired by LeadFuze for an undisclosed price on July 2018. HeadReach acquired by LeadFuze July 2018. Kalo Yankulov later co-founded Encharge.

What is HeadReach?

Una herramienta de ventas para generación de leads que te ayuda a encontrar emails de personas a las que quieres vender. It operates in Marketing.

How long did it take HeadReach to reach $1k mrr?

Kalo Yankulov took 3 months to reach $1k mrr with HeadReach.

Was Kalo Yankulov a solo founder?

No. Kalo Yankulov built HeadReach with co-founders.

What marketing channel did HeadReach use to grow?

HeadReach grew primarily through Comunidades.

What industry is HeadReach in?

HeadReach operates in Marketing.

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