Autosana went from under 1% to over 14% replies in week one
Customer story · Updated July 2026. The screenshots and the thread on this page are real; the CTO and his company stay redacted.
Autosana's founder ran cold outbound himself, and replies on his lead list stayed under 1%. In week one with driftwood (driftwood.sh), the same list got messages that each carried a working demo of Autosana built for the prospect receiving it, and replies passed 14%. This page shows the real messages and the real dates.
Founder-led outbound, under 1% replies
The setup every early-stage founder knows.
The setup. Autosana (YC S25) builds AI agents for mobile QA. Like most early-stage founders, Yuvan Sundrani ran cold outbound himself: he found the leads, wrote the messages, and sent them from his own accounts.
What it got him. It mostly did not work. His self-reported reply rate was under 1%, and prospects who fit Autosana perfectly never answered at all.
What driftwood did
The same lead list, with a working demo in every message.
The demo. driftwood is an AI sales agent for demo-led outbound. For each prospect on Yuvan's existing list, the agent researched the company, then built a working demo of Autosana for their business: Autosana's agent running against the prospect's own product.
The sending. Every message went out from Yuvan's own account, LinkedIn or email, so replies landed where he already works. A human reviewed each message before it sent; nothing left the queue without approval.
The review queue. A human approves every message before it sends.
The CTO who finally replied
Four and a half months of silence, one message, a reply in about 12 hours.
The silence. One thread tells the story. A CTO at a company we will not name here had ignored Yuvan's outreach for 4.5 months. Yuvan's first message went out on February 26, 2026. It was never answered.
The send. On July 9, the driftwood agent sent him one message. It opened with a real bug the agent had found on the prospect's own site, and attached a 19 second video of Autosana's agent catching it.
Feb 26 · Yuvan's first message, never answered
4.5 months of outreach, no reply
Jul 9
hey , found a bug on .
Jul 10 · about 12 hours later
send me a blurb + demos to and I'll forward to my team - best
Call booked · Jul 12
The thread, as it happened. Identities redacted on purpose.
The dates, in order
- February 26, 2026. Yuvan's first message to the CTO goes out. It is never answered.
- The next 4.5 months. More founder-written outreach, no reply.
- July 9. The driftwood agent sends one message: a real bug found on the prospect's own site, with a 19 second video of Autosana's agent catching it.
- July 10. The CTO replies, about 12 hours later.
- July 12. The call is booked.
The result
Same leads, same founder's account, different messages.
Week one. Replies had been under 1% for months of founder-written sends. In the first week of demo-led messages they passed 14%, on the same lead list, from the same account.
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).
Who replied. The list had been worked for months, and the replies came anyway, including founders who had ignored more than four months of prior outreach.
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