09 From research to a company · 10 pages · 16k words
The build plan
What to build first and why, what would make you stop, the MVP, the prices, the engine underneath, the go-to-market, and the first ninety days.
Decide
The wedge, and the conditions under which to kill it.
The wedge
Build an EU-hosted agency platform whose front door is a multi-client reply desk: sell it first as an overlay on Smartlead, Instantly and EmailBison, then move those agencies' sending onto your own engine, with a per-recipient country rule engine and a never-compete promise as the moat. Governed volume for SDR teams comes in year two.
Kill criteria
Thirteen measurable conditions, each with a threshold and a date, under which the agency reply-desk wedge should stop, pivot or re-scope: interview signal, design-partner conversion, API dependency, own-infra reply rates, CASA, Google and Microsoft enforcement, affiliate economics, competitor moves, legal exposure and runway.
Product
The MVP and its price architecture.
MVP spec
What to build first, in four tiers (must, should, later, never), each tied to a complaint, a feature gap or the feature matrix: a multi-client reply desk that becomes an agency sender with mailbox-level health and a country rule engine, plus the data model and a parity checklist against Instantly, Smartlead and EmailBison.
Pricing strategy
Meter sends, never clients, mailboxes or AI replies: a €199 desk overlay first, then three agency plans at €79, €229 and €449 (USD $89, $249, $499) with unlimited workspaces and the reply desk bundled, infra at published cost-plus, an optional per-meeting plan, and a 30% lifetime affiliate rate paid from the third month.
The engine
Sending architecture, Google/Microsoft verification, infrastructure strategy, cost to build.
Sending architecture
How a cold email sequencer works under the hood: mailbox connectors, a per-inbox scheduler, reply and bounce ingestion, tracking, warmup, and what 100k inboxes actually cost to watch.
OAuth verification and the end of basic auth
Reading Gmail via OAuth needs a restricted scope and an annual CASA assessment; Microsoft needs publisher verification; app-password SMTP survives on Google but goes default-off on Microsoft at the end of December 2026.
Infrastructure strategy: build or partner
Five ways to supply sending inboxes, from bring-your-own to running your own MTA and IP pools; for a new entrant, partner APIs first, owned infrastructure only once volume and an abuse desk exist.
Build costs and team
An MVP sequencer is 3–4 engineers and 4–6 months; Instantly parity is a 20–35 person engineering org over 2–3 years. Infrastructure and LLM costs are small; the expensive line items are people, compliance and support.
Market
How the first customers are found.
Execute
Week by week.