After quitting my job in April 2024, I knew I wanted to start some company in sales-tech. One day in my dream, I saw the name: LeadShark, so I started the company on May 6, 2024 in Estonia, through the E-Residency card I had since 2022.

buildspace

Interviewing (talking to) many sales / lead-gen people on LinkedIn, and testing out all "competitor" tools that were out there, I quickly realized the market was already saturated with "recent incumbents". It looked like every good idea was already taken, I started pivoting away from my original idea, which was a prospecting (lead detail finding) browser extension.

Around this time (summer 24) I joined the buildspace program with the following idea:

During the 3rd week, after realizing I was unable to build what I was aiming for I dropped out of this program.

dev-team?

In late August, I was in talks with a Singapore-based, software development company; who gave me a roadmap of 6-weeks to build the MVP I had proposed in my Product-Requirements Document for the basis of what is LeadShark today.

On the last 1-2 days before we were meant to start building the MVP, I changed my mind, and decided to build it myself. Which I ended up spending roughly 2 weeks, before I had the first working version.

launch

LeadShark launched on Product Hunt on September 30th, which was a Monday. Although there were lots of encouraging comments and support from family & friends, this didn't yield any paying users or even trial users.

dm-ing

What made the difference was me DM'ing one-on-one to people who run Lead Magnet posts. There was one early-adopter I reached out to in particular, has helped improve the product tremendously (who still uses it), and referred some others.

raison d'être

So why tell all this backstory? I think we are trying to clarity the reason of existence:

Is it simply a personal project - is it an early-experiment - was it born from a real pain-point (of responding to lead magnets and not getting the resource)?

today

I truly believe that is a pain-killer product for people who are suffering from success (too many impressions, and engagement — and it's a good problem to have). It is the ManyChat of LinkedIn, and the best lead magnet automation on the market today.

Where it goes from here 🌀 we will see…

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