Solutions · For founders
Talk to every signup. Without hiring a single SDR.
You can't be on every demo call, every onboarding session, every support ticket — and the first $200k SDR hire is the bet you can't unmake. Set me up in an afternoon. I talk to every signup in your voice. You stay founder-led for another two quarters.
- Live in one afternoon
- < $200/month at < 1000 signups
- Trained on your voice
- Forwards only the calls you should take
Backed into use by founders shipping voice products in an afternoon
- Helix
- Northstar
- Atlas SaaS
- Forge
- Meridian
- Cipher
Three moments the founder phase ends
The bets you can't unmake — and the one you can.
Most founders extend the founder-led phase by hiring. I let you extend it by not hiring — until the moment hiring is genuinely the right call.
Moment 01
The signup you'd love to talk to. But you're shipping.
You promised yourself you'd call every signup until you couldn't. Then you couldn't, somewhere around signup number 80. Now they fill the form and hear back from your auto-responder. That's the moment the company stopped being founder-led — and you weren't even in the room.
Founder-led conversion is 2–3× a generic SDR cadence
Moment 02
The customer churning quietly. Nobody noticed.
They paid in January, used the product twice in February, and you never heard from them again. The renewal email goes out and they don't reply. You find out about the churn in the next month's MRR report. Calling them in February would have saved it.
Silent churn = 30–50% of early-stage attrition
Moment 03
The first SDR hire you can't unmake.
$80k base, $40k variable, six months of onboarding before they're productive. If you got the bet wrong, you've burned a quarter of runway. The market doesn't refund SDR hires. Most early-stage SDR hires are made too soon — because the founder ran out of hours before they ran out of pipeline ideas.
Median first-SDR tenure at pre-Series A: 9 months
From afternoon to first hire — one voice in your corner
Stay founder-led until you genuinely shouldn't.
Afternoon · setup
Set me up in one sitting. Without writing a line of code.
Hand me your marketing site, your docs, your top three founder-led demo recordings. I learn the voice, the answers, the questions you ask back. By dinner I'm on your site with a floating aura.
- Point me at your URL — I crawl what's public
- Upload 3-5 of your own calls so I match your tone
- Test on yourself first, ship to the world when ready
Setup checklist · Today
● 34 min total
Crawl your site + docs
~ 10 minutes
Upload 3 founder calls
~ 5 minutes
Tegan writes a draft personality
~ 2 minutes
You rewrite anything off-tone
~ 15 minutes
Embed on your marketing site
1 line of code
Live · every signup, every shift
I take the call you wish you could take.
The signup at 11 p.m. from Berlin. The pricing-page lurker on Saturday morning. The cold reply that came in while you were on a flight. I'm there in your voice, in their language, in under a second. You wake up to a list of conversations, not a list of missed opportunities.
- 24/7, every timezone, every signup form
- Speaks your language(s), holds your tone
- Captures the signal so you can find the gold
Saturday morning · in your inbox
14 calls handled overnight
⭐ Founder review · 1
Director of Ops · Meridian Labs — eval next 2 wks · $42k band
Handled · 9
Pricing questions · feature scope · trial setup
Polite triage · 4
Browsing, not buying · scheduled for monthly newsletter
Filter · only the calls you should take
I forward you the one in twenty that needs the founder.
Not every conversation needs you. The 19 that don't, I handle. The 1 that does — the design partner, the strategic prospect, the press lead — I push to your phone with the context already loaded. You walk in already knowing what they want.
- Founder-priority routing rules you set
- Email + in-app notification with full conversation context
- Audio + transcript archived for your morning review
Slack · #founder-priority
● 4 min ago
- Routed to you
- Andrea Park · Director of Ops
- Account
- Meridian Labs
- Why founder
- Strategic logo · series-B target
- Captured
- Eval next 2 weeks · 12-seat team
- Suggested call
- Tuesday 10am — they're free
- Audio
- 08:21 · transcript attached
Hire · when it's genuinely time
I tell you when the SDR hire is actually justified.
When I'm forwarding more than you can handle, when the founder-priority queue stops emptying, when the same patterns of objection or expansion keep recurring — I'll tell you it's time. You hire with data, not with the gut feeling that you're "behind."
- Volume + complexity + escalation rate signal
- Suggested first-hire profile based on patterns
- Hand-off plan so the SDR walks into a working system
Hire-signal dashboard
● green: not yet
- Conversations / week88
- Founder-routed / week36
- Repeat objection patterns18
- Expansion conversations14
- Founder hours / week on calls22
What changes for the founder
Stay founder-led on the metric that matters: runway.
Pipeline w/o SDR
+$420k
Median ARR from inbound at < 1,000 signups
Founder hours saved
~18 / wk
Calls handled or politely deflected
Signups talked-to
98%
Up from ~12% pre-Tegan in early stage
Runway extended
+2 qtrs
By delaying the first $200k SDR hire
Aggregated across founder-stage private-beta partners between Apr–May 2026. Pipeline figures reflect the median founder-direct conversion before first sales hire.
“We shipped pipeline before we shipped people. The first SDR conversation in the pipeline still came from Tegan — she warmed the lead, then I closed it. Saved us a quarter of runway and we hired six months later than we'd planned, with way better data.”
Founder, seed-stage SaaS
Open beta · 2026
What changes for you
Founder-led for longer. Less guilty Saturdays.
You'll still take the strategic calls. You just won't take the 19 calls that didn't need you. Your name is still on the marketing site. I just answer the door when you're not in the room.
Founder questions
The questions before the next board update.
Different question? .
Want the technical spec? Read the agent product page.
When should I actually hire my first SDR?
When the founder-priority queue stops emptying — when you're routing more than you can call back same-week, and when the patterns are clear enough that a smart 1st hire can run a playbook. Until then, you're using Tegan AND saving the runway.
How do you sound like me?
Upload 3–5 of your own recorded calls (demo, sales, founder Q&A — anything). I learn the rhythm, the words, the questions you ask back. You sign off on the personality before I go live, and you can adjust it any time.
What does it cost at early stage?
Free during open beta. Post-GA: usage-based pricing — typically < $200/month under 1,000 signups, with the first 100 conversations free each month. Pricing scales with volume, not with seats.
Can I take over a conversation mid-call?
Yes — "barge in" on any active call. The user hears a brief hand-off note ("I'm passing you to the founder") and you pick up with the transcript in front of you. Useful for the strategic deal that just walked in.
What about brand risk if you say the wrong thing?
I'm grounded in your docs and your tone guide — I don't fabricate procedures or pricing you haven't approved. You can audit every call and flag anything off-tone, and the personality updates immediately for future conversations.
Does this work if I'm pre-product-market-fit?
Especially well, actually. The transcripts are gold for PMF — you hear every objection, every adjacent use case, every "I almost wanted that but…" in the customer's own words. Most founder partners say Tegan paid for itself in research alone.
Be founder-led for longer.
Set me up this afternoon. By tomorrow I'm answering signups in your voice. By Friday you're triaging a queue instead of drowning in one — and the first SDR hire just bought you another two quarters of runway.
Rollout — one afternoon
- Hour 1 · I crawl your site + docs
- Hour 2 · You upload 3-5 of your own calls
- Hour 3 · We tune the personality together
- Hour 4 · Live on your marketing site
- Tomorrow · First overnight queue in your inbox
- Week 1 · Founder-priority routing dialed in
- Month 1 · Hire decision based on data, not guilt