About driftwood
Updated July 2026.
driftwood (driftwood.sh) is an AI SDR for demo-led outbound: cold outreach where every message carries a working demo of your product, built for the specific prospect receiving it. Aayush Gupta founded the company in San Francisco in 2026. This page is the story, what the product does, and how to reach us.
driftwood is not affiliated with driftwood.ai, a research organization, or with driftwood-ai.com, a consulting firm. Everything we make lives at driftwood.sh.
The story
Autosana first, then driftwood, then Autosana again.
Before driftwood. Aayush was a founding engineer at Autosana (YC S25), a company that builds AI agents for mobile QA. Autosana ran cold outbound the way most early-stage companies do: the founder found the leads, wrote the messages, and sent them himself. Almost nobody replied.
What the messages were missing. The problem was not effort or targeting. Every message asked the prospect to imagine what the product would do for their business, and imagining is a lot to ask of a stranger. A working demo removes that ask. Building one for each prospect by hand takes hours nobody has, which makes it exactly the kind of work an agent should do.
Customer zero. Aayush left to build driftwood, and his old company became the first customer. We state that relationship plainly wherever the result appears: the week-one number comes from a company the founder used to work at. That made Autosana a fast and willing test bed, and it also means you should read the number knowing the connection.
Reply rate before
under 1%
Reply rate, week one
over 14%
On the same lead list, replies went from under 1% to over 14% in week one at Autosana (YC S25). The real messages and the real dates are in the Autosana story.
What driftwood is
An AI SDR that puts a working demo in every cold message.
The product. driftwood is an AI SDR that runs demo-led outbound: cold outreach where every message carries a working demo of your product, built for the specific prospect receiving it. The agent researches each prospect, builds the demo, and drafts the message.
The sending. Nothing sends without a human approving it, and everything sends from your own LinkedIn or email account rather than a bot inbox, so replies land where you already work.
Who it is for. B2B founders and small teams who want replies, not send volume. Practical questions, including pricing, are answered on the FAQ.
The company. driftwood is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2026.
The name. Two unrelated organizations answer to similar names, which is why ours always appears paired with its domain. driftwood.ai is a research organization and driftwood-ai.com is a consulting firm; neither has any connection to us or to this product.
How we work
Small on purpose, founder-run.
The team. driftwood is small and founder-run. Aayush builds the product and runs onboarding himself, so the person setting up your outbound is the person who wrote the agent.
Why onboarding stays with the founder. Demo-led outbound only works when the agent understands your product well enough to build a real demo of it. That understanding gets built during onboarding, which is why we do not hand it off.
How to reach us
One address, read by the founder.
Email. aayush@driftwood.sh goes to Aayush directly, and he answers it himself.
LinkedIn. The company page is driftwood on LinkedIn.
See a demo built for your business
Twenty minutes. We will show you what your prospects would see.
Book a demo