Weekly AI Recap: Creating a $500K/Year Business by Fixing Boring Sales Emails with AI

Welcome to Homebase Edition #21 - A weekly newsletter bringing you stories & insights from smart founders & tech leaders who are leveraging AI to build game-changing companies.

What’s on tap today:

• 1 Community Founder Story

• Weekly AI Headline Recap

• What's trending in AI

AI FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
1 Founder Story

AI Turns Cold Emails Hot: Perlon's $500K/Year Secret to Better Sales Outreach

While everyone's talking about ChatGPT, St John Dalgleish is tackling a pressing business problem: ineffective sales outreach. His startup, Perlon AI, is using custom AI models to revolutionize how companies generate leads, promising 5x more replies than standard templates.

Dalgleish, with 7+ years leading sales teams at global tech firms and expertise in applied NLP, co-founded Perlon AI in 2023. Within months, they ditched consulting to build a SaaS product, spotting a massive opportunity in AI-powered pipeline generation. Their one-month MVP sprint and laser focus on user feedback propelled them to serve clients from lean startups to 7,500-employee enterprises across four continents.

They've achieved:

💰 Raised £310K in February 2023
💼 Reached $500K annual revenue
🏗️ Built and launched MVP in under a month
💡 Driving over 80% of the ongoing pipeline using their own AI technology
🌐 Serving clients from the UK, US, MEA, and Africa, including large enterprises
🚀 Expanded from an initial focus on private aviation and B2B SaaS to other industries

Here's the cool part: Perlon AI grows by using its own product. With zero marketing budget, they rely on self-generated outbound leads and referrals. Starting with private aviation and B2B SaaS, they've expanded to banking, crypto, interior design, and lead gen agencies.



How they did it: 

• Rapidly developed and iterated on their MVP based on user feedback

• Focused on profitability and positive monthly cash flow

• Built a strong network of referral partners and used LinkedIn for growth

• Leveraged contract engineers and ML specialists for flexible product development
  Used their own AI tool at scale for customer acquisition (with zero marketing budget)
  
  
  
  Key Highlights:

• Solving a specific problem in outbound prospecting with custom AI models.

• Aiming for $1 million ARR with fewer than 5 full-time employees.

• Product-led growth strategy, using their own AI tool for customer acquisition.

• Expanding from an initial focus on private aviation and B2B SaaS to other industries including banking, crypto, and lead gen agencies.

• Cautious scaling with a focus on profitability and monthly cash flow. positivity.

• Rapid MVP development (under a month) followed by continuous iteration based on user feedback.

Read more about Perlon AI's journey here! 🔥🔥🔥

HEADLINE ROUNDUP
Headline recap

• Russia's AI Election Meddling: Deepfakes and Digital Deception Unveiled! (NPR)

• OpenAI's CEO Predicts AI Wonderland—Are We Falling Down the Rabbit Hole? (TC)

• Real Results, Not Hype: SAP's AI Partnerships Deliver the Goods. (SAP)

• Google's AI Summaries: Streamlining Search, Strangling Site Traffic. (IW)

• Microsoft's AI Report: Workers Embrace AI, Leaders Scramble to Catch Up. (M)

• 60 Million Jobs on the AI Line: US and Mexico Brace for Impact! (E)

TRENDS
What's trending in AI

Rosebud AI - AI-Powered Game Development Tools

• Founded: 2023

• Employees: 11-50

• Latest Funding Round: Series A ($15M)

• Location: San Francisco, USA
  

Rosebud AI offers a suite of AI tools for game developers. Their platform lets users create game assets, animate characters, and develop game concepts using natural language inputs. The goal? To speed up game development and spark new creative possibilities.

Why it matters: These AI tools could level the playing field in game development. Smaller teams and indie developers might now tackle projects that once needed big studios and budgets. It's about making game creation faster, cheaper, and more accessible.

The big picture: As AI makes development easier, we'll see more titles hit the market. This could mean more diverse games, but also more noise. Standing out will be tough. Traditional game dev roles will shift, with new jobs emerging for those who can best work with AI. Human creativity will still be key – the best games will come from those who use AI to amplify their unique ideas, not replace them. We might be looking at a future where games blend AI-generated content with human storytelling in new ways.