Outreach
Track outreach from public conversations
Public outreach fails in a boring way. You write a decent reply, the person answers two days later, and you cannot remember who they were. Tracking outreach from public conversations is just not losing that.
What gets lost
You meet people in public: a Reddit thread, a Product Hunt comment, a reply on X. The useful ones are rarely the loudest. They asked a specific question, you answered it, they said this is exactly their problem, then life happened.
Two days later you cannot reconstruct the thread from memory. Browser history is a pile of titles. Your sent comments are somewhere in your profile. The person is a handle you half remember.
That is not a discipline problem. It is a missing record next to the page where the conversation lives.
Write four things down
For each person worth coming back to, capture:
- Who they are, and the URL of the thread or profile.
- What they asked, in their words.
- What you said, in yours.
- A date to look again. Two days is a default. A week is fine. Do not pick never.
Do it before you leave the tab. If you wait until the evening, you will skip it. The record does not have to be pretty. It has to be findable on the morning the reminder fires.
Follow up without chasing
A follow-up is a look, not a nudge. Open the thread. See if they replied, if the problem changed, if they already solved it. If they went quiet and the question still stands, one short note is enough. If they never wanted this, leave.
Chasing is sending the same pitch into a dead thread. Tracking is knowing who is still a live conversation. The CRM should make the second one cheap, not automate the first.
Why notes apps fade
A notes app holds the text and loses the person. A spreadsheet holds the person and loses the page. Saved posts hold the page and lose the reminder. You end up with all three, none of them open when you sit down to write.
The thing that survives is a list in the browser, on the profile, with a date. Everything else is a copy you will not maintain.
Next to the thread
Founder CRM is a free Chrome extension for this habit. You can add someone while you are on the page, or describe who you want and let a flow look on X, Product Hunt and Reddit in the session you are already signed into. Follow-ups come back in the side panel. You write every comment and every message.
There is no account. Chrome Web Store approval is coming soon. Install Founder CRM from the install page if you want it today.
For the Reddit-shaped version of the same work, read how to get your first customers from Reddit. For the list itself, see personal CRM for founders.
Questions founders ask
- Do I have to copy every URL by hand?
- You can add people from the page you are on, or describe who you want and let a flow collect matching people. You still choose who to keep.
- Should I follow up if they never reply?
- Look once. If the thread is dead, leave. The next useful conversation is usually a search away.
- Does Founder CRM send the follow-up?
- No. It reminds you. You type and send.
- Where is the list stored?
- In your Chrome profile on this machine. There is no Founder CRM account and no cloud CRM sync.
Install Founder CRM
Keep people from X, Product Hunt and Reddit in a Chrome side panel, with a follow-up on the morning it matters. You still write every message.