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Zhen Han

What's after Product Hunt for self-funded startups?

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Vokal
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Vokal got #2 product of the day and #7 of the week, and we now have 100+ signups from startups and teams. In general, people seem excited to try it out to up-level their teams to agent native.

Now I’m trying to figure out the next step: how do we scale this beyond manual founder-led work?

I’ve been writing posts, sharing content, and doing outreach manually, but it’s starting to feel like a constant drain and a bottleneck. I’ve been looking into tools like HubSpot, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo, and Clay.

For people who have used any of these: what has your experience been? Which ones are actually worth it at an early stage?

Or, as a software engineer, am I better off building my own lightweight marketing/sales pipeline first instead of adopting a full GTM tool stack?

I don’t have much domain expertise in sales or marketing yet, so I’d really appreciate practical advice from people who have gone through this.

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Theron Elric

At this stage, I'd optimize for learning, not tooling. Don't build your own GTM stack yet—talk to users, refine the messaging, and keep the process simple. The bottleneck is usually distribution, not software.

Zhen Han
@elrictheron I found users are pretty busy and it’s quite hard to do a few calls.
Ivan Stakhov

Clay has been the game-changer for early-stage outreach in my experience - you can enrich contacts from dozens of sources and write genuinely personalized messages at scale without a full sales team. I'd hold off on HubSpot until you have pipeline volume that actually justifies it, and just pair Clay with something lightweight like Notion or a simple CRM to start.

Zhen Han
@ivan_stakhov Thanks for sharing! Does clay provide clients’ contacts? For example, my ICP is startup founders, right now I basically manually outreach on LinkedIn, but it’s eating a lot of my time, so I am looking for a more scalable way.
Hossein Yazdi

Congrats on the launch results 🎉

Personally, I'd avoid building your own marketing/sales stack at this stage. As we often underestimate how much time that can consume.

I'd focus on talking to those first 100+ signups, understanding where they came from, why they signed up, and what makes them stick around. Usually the next growth channel becomes much clearer after that.

Zhen Han
@hosseinyazdi Thank you this is super helpful!
Sinem Ugurdag

Product Hunt is not the finish line — it's just the first spike of attention.

I've seen a lot of founders spend months optimizing for launches when the real challenge starts the day after.

If you're getting 100+ signups, I wouldn't rush into HubSpot, Clay, Apollo, or a full GTM stack yet. First, I'd focus on talking to every early user possible and understanding who is getting value, why they signed up, and what makes them come back.

The biggest risk at this stage isn't lack of automation — it's automating a process that hasn't been proven yet.

Once you have a repeatable acquisition channel and a clearer ICP, tools become force multipliers. Before that, founder-led sales is usually the fastest way to learn.

I'd optimize for learning, not scaling, for a little longer.

Syed Noor

Two things you actually asked that nobody's answered yet:

1) "Users are too busy for calls" → then don't ask for calls. Send your 100 signups a 2-line async message: "what made

you sign up, and what almost stopped you?" You'll get 20–30 replies and most of the insight a call gives you, minus

the scheduling pain. Pair it with a free session-recording tool (MS Clarity) to see where they get stuck.

2) "Does Clay give contacts / how do I scale LinkedIn founder outreach?" → Clay enriches and can pull emails through its data providers, so yes. For a founder ICP the workflow that works; build the list in Sales Navigator → enrich

emails with Clay/Apollo → send a personalized email, not automated LinkedIn DMs (those get your account restricted

fast). Automate the finding and research; keep the actual message human until you've proven the one angle that gets replies.

And as a fellow engineer — resist building your own GTM stack. You'll burn 3 weeks rebuilding 10% of Clay. Buy the

boring tools, spend your engineering time on the product.