Get in front of the people who should know about you
I run outreach for small companies and founders: cold email to the buyers who fit, pitches to the reporters and podcast hosts who cover your space, and the replies and bookings that follow. Every message is written for the one person receiving it.
I did this for my own product first. Porchlight launched this year with no PR budget and no agency. In its first months the outreach landed a GeekWire Startup Spotlight, a recorded episode of The Aging Well Podcast, a booked recording on Alzheimer's Speaks, and intro calls with the senior-living communities it is built for.
Tell me what you sellA short form, one reply within a business day, no sales sequence.
Startup Spotlight
Startup Spotlight: Porchlight uses AI to help foster human connection in senior care
“Donahue is the founder and sole builder of Porchlight, a newly launched life-story and reminiscence tool designed for assisted living and memory care communities.”
I’m Patrick Donahue. I designed, built and run Porchlight on my own, from the one-button resident recorder to the staff briefings and the family relay.
What I take on
Press pitching
Finding the reporters, newsletters and startup lists that actually cover your space, reading what they wrote, and pitching a story they can use, not a press release.
Podcast bookings
Shows whose audience is your buyer, a pitch built around what the host has already aired, and the scheduling, prep notes and talking points once they say yes.
Cold email to buyers
A short list of the companies and people who fit, a message for each that refers to something real about them, and follow-ups that stop when they should.
List building and checking
Addresses taken from the person's or company's own site, then checked: dead domains, mailboxes that do not exist and anything that has bounced before are dropped before a single send.
Deliverability setup
SPF, DKIM and DMARC on a separate sending domain so your main domain's reputation stays clean, a slow warm-up, and daily caps that keep the inbox providers happy.
Replies and booking
Answering the people who write back, getting the call on your calendar with the details attached, and a plain weekly report of who replied and what came of it.
How I do it
Small, targeted and personal beats large and generic, for cold email and for press. The method is the same either way.
- One person at a time. Each message opens with something specific to the recipient: a post they wrote, an episode they aired, a problem their company has said out loud. If there is nothing specific to say, they do not get an email.
- Printed addresses only. Addresses come from the recipient's own site or the page where they published it, never a bought list. In my own sends, guessed addresses bounced about three times as often as printed ones (roughly 11% against 3.5%), and bounces are what get a domain flagged.
- Low volume, steady pace. Tens of messages a day, not thousands. A new sending domain starts at a handful and ramps over weeks.
- The ask is small. A reply, a fifteen-minute call, a yes to sending more. Nobody is asked to buy anything from a cold email.
CAN-SPAM, by default
Commercial email in the US is covered by the CAN-SPAM Act. Every campaign I run is set up to follow it from the first send:
Honest headers
The From name, address and Reply-To are real and belong to you. Nothing is sent from a lookalike or borrowed domain.
Honest subject lines
The subject says what the email is about. No fake "Re:" or "Fwd:", no invented urgency.
A real postal address
Every commercial message carries your valid physical postal address, as the law requires.
An easy way out
Every message says how to opt out. Opt-outs are honored promptly, well inside the ten business days the law allows, and that address is never mailed again, by any campaign.
No harvested lists
No scraped address dumps, no purchased lists, no guessed addresses mailed blind.
Outside the US
Canada (CASL) and the EU and UK (GDPR, PECR) are stricter than CAN-SPAM. If your buyers are there, we plan around those rules before anything goes out.
This is how I run campaigns, not legal advice. If your industry has its own rules (healthcare, finance), your counsel has the final word.
How it starts
1. Tell me what you sell
A few sentences below: the product, who buys it, and what you have already tried.
2. A sample before anything sends
I come back with a short target list and a handful of sample messages, written to real people on it, so you can judge the work first.
3. A small first run
You approve the list and the copy, we send a first small batch from your domain, and you see the replies yourself before we decide on more.
Tell me what you sell
A sentence or two is plenty. I read every one of these myself.
Need engineering instead?
The same person builds and fixes software for small companies. See the engineering side.