LinkedIn outreach for founders
Notes sent from your own LinkedIn account, followed up until they answer, handed to you when they do.
LinkedIn is where the people who can put your product in front of buyers already are, and where a founder's own account outperforms any company page. It is also a channel that punishes volume harder than most, which is why the automation that exists for it has such a bad reputation.
The job to be done
Outreach on LinkedIn is four separate jobs. Work out which people actually reach your buyers. Find them. Write a note short enough to read on a phone and specific enough to answer. Then follow up, more than once, without sounding like a sequence.
The research is slow, the writing is repetitive, and the follow-up is the part that gets abandoned. Founders tend to send twenty notes in one evening, get two replies, and never send the second message to the other eighteen.
How it works, step by step
- You enter your website. It reads your product and works out who it is for.
- It sources the people who actually reach your buyers, every week.
- It writes to them on LinkedIn from your own account, and by email where that fits.
- It follows up until they answer.
- When someone replies, the conversation is handed to you.
The same lead research feeds email and LinkedIn, so you are not maintaining two lists. Which channels are available depends on the plan: LinkedIn outreach starts at Starter, and Pro runs email and LinkedIn together.
What you approve versus what runs
| Step | Who |
|---|---|
| Deciding who reaches your buyers | Runs without you |
| Sourcing the people each week | Runs without you |
| Writing the note | Runs without you |
| What sends under your name | You approve |
| Follow-ups until they answer | Runs without you |
| The conversation after a reply | You, always |
Approvals happen in the same morning briefing as your content and your drafted replies, which is how the whole thing stays at about four minutes a day.
Safety
- Your own account. Notes send from your LinkedIn, not from a pool or a burner profile.
- Human pace, everywhere. Publishing across channels goes through official APIs at human pace. Nothing in the platform is built to spray at volume, which is the behaviour that gets LinkedIn accounts restricted.
- Follow-ups stop at a reply. Nobody keeps receiving a sequence after they have answered you.
- Replies in public threads are never auto-posted. LinkedIn threads where people are asking for what you built get a draft that you paste, the same as Reddit and X replies.
- No fake engagement. No bought likes, no bot accounts, no mass connection requests dressed up as outreach.
AutoTraction versus doing it by hand
The by-hand column is the rough shape of running LinkedIn outreach yourself as one founder. Treat it as an estimate of the job rather than a measurement of your week.
| Task | By hand, per week | With AutoTraction |
|---|---|---|
| Working out who to approach | 1 to 2 hours | None |
| Finding those people | 2 to 4 hours | None |
| Writing each note | 2 to 3 hours | None |
| Tracking and sending follow-ups | 1 to 2 hours | None |
| Approving what goes out | Not applicable | Part of four minutes a day |
| Talking to people who reply | Yours | Yours |
The point is not that outreach becomes free. It is that the follow-up still happens in week three, when you are shipping and would otherwise have dropped it. The daily routine it fits into is in the four-minute marketing routine, and posting to LinkedIn as a founder is covered in where to post your side project.
Which plan includes it
LinkedIn outreach is not on the entry plan, so this is the one feature where the plan choice is real.
| Plan | Price | LinkedIn outreach | Senders | Campaigns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $19 a month | No, email only | Your own mailbox | One at a time |
| Starter | $39 a month | Yes, email or LinkedIn | One | One at a time |
| Pro | $99 a month | Yes, email and LinkedIn | One | Three at a time |
| Scale | $249 a month | Yes, email and LinkedIn | Three LinkedIn senders, three mailboxes | Unlimited |
Everything else in the platform runs on all four plans, including content, daily posting, drafted replies, press and the learning loop. Credits differ too: 250 a month on Solo up to 4,000 on Scale, with a verified lead costing 2. The full list is on the pricing page. For the email side see cold email outreach with your own mailbox, and grade the page you are sending people to with the free site grader.
Which plans include LinkedIn outreach?
Starter at $39 a month lets you pick email or LinkedIn. Pro at $99 runs both together. Scale at $249 adds three LinkedIn senders and three mailboxes. Solo at $19 is email outreach only.
Will this get my LinkedIn account restricted?
Notes send from your own account at human pace, and there is no volume dial. Replies in public threads are drafted for you to paste rather than posted by software. The behaviour that gets accounts restricted is mass sending, which is not what this does.
Does it message people after they reply?
No. Follow-ups run until someone answers, then the conversation is handed to you.
Can more than one person on my team send?
On Scale, yes: it includes three LinkedIn senders and three mailboxes. The other plans are built around a single sender.