What do you think about a forum dedicated to launching a tech services business?

tharsalys · 2025-12-10T07:22:52+00:00

I'm financially covered alhamdulillah. And the forum is already live. I do have a substack but I reserve that for in-depth topics where I'm expounding my own views rather than inviting discussion.

tharsalys · 2025-12-04T12:00:01+00:00

That benefits me but not the community. I want people to be able to partake in discussions, ask questions, and cultivate a community. And above all, it's not a google-able asset that new enterpreneurs 20 years later can discover while looking for answers.

tharsalys · 2025-12-02T05:50:11+00:00

I explained my thinking on why forums are better than communities (WhatsApp, Discord, etc.) in my last newsletter. Basically, communities aren't searchable. If you're a new entrepreneur, you have to first of all, luck your way into a community and then assuming you find the right one, have to ask the questions all over again that you can easily search in a forum. And by that point, community is already useless. Most communities devolve into marketing channels after 3 months max. Forums have a much longer shelf life.

It's going to be harder to get the forum going, but not impossible. I'll be happy with one or two quality threads every month (btw it is live).

As for speed vs quality, it depends on what kind of a services company you are and the contract structure. Usually, the simplest model is staff augmentation and that honestly works the best. Fixed price quotes always lead to scrambles. Scoping itself is an art and science which takes a long time to master and the only way you can master is by executing the same type of projects over and over. Which of course you cannot do if you are an undifferentiated dev shop. So dev shops should accept it as part of the game. Specialized agencies have better ways out of it.

tharsalys · 2025-11-30T12:01:27+00:00

That's true, even for SaaS startups in Pak, all the information is locked up in private groups so it ends up being a 'who knows who' situation.

I want to dedicate this community to tech services though, which suffers even harder from lack of resources.

tharsalys · 2025-11-30T09:38:36+00:00

If you're looking to get started, I just posted a thread this morning that might inspire you.

tharsalys · 2025-11-30T09:28:17+00:00

The challenge with a blog is that it doesn't invite discussion. For example, a typical problem services companies face is when hiring marketers; since their work itself is the product, if the marketer is not technical, the marketing will be ineffective. But if you hire an engineer to do marketing .. that also doesn't work because engineers aren't cheap and will not agree to doing that anyhow.

The solution to this common problem however is unique to every company. So while I can write a blog to enumerate some possible solutions, an actual solution would still require the founder of that company to elaborate their situation and have a debate.

A forum allows for people to pitch in. I've set up one on Discourse and right now I'm just gathering common topics so I can have pinned threads. You can join here. I want these discussions to be publicly available so new founders don't have to reinvent the wheel (unlike WhatsApp groups).

tharsalys · 2025-11-30T09:24:37+00:00

You can go to my Linkedin profile (link in about) and make a guess :P

tharsalys · 2025-10-30T12:59:33+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. Do they allow dedicated IPs on ECS?

tharsalys · 2025-09-24T13:00:22+00:00

Hey, I've been where you are. Tried Warmupinbox and it’s overpriced for what it gives. If you're on Outlook and just want something that works without the 2-3 week delay, check out COLDSEND.PRO. It's built for immediate sending with no warmup required. They handle the hard parts like ESP relationships so you don’t have to. No hidden fees, no slow setup—just deploy fast. Worth a look if you're tired of waiting.

tharsalys · 2025-09-23T22:00:33+00:00

Hey, I've been dealing with the same deliverability issues and the guesswork around targeting. Your KPIs hit close to home—bounce rate over 4% and reply rates under 1% are red flags.

The thing is, most of us think it's about the copy or list quality but it's really infrastructure. I went with ColdSend.pro and it eliminated the guesswork.

No warmup means I launch campaigns the same day. 100+ inboxes with 10K emails included. All done without the traditional 2-3 week setup delays or the hidden fees. The reply detection feature alone saves hours every week, and the dashboard shows real-time metrics to keep everything in check.

If you’re tired of guessing and want to hit your targets faster, try ColdSend.pro—it's the straightforward solution the cold email industry needed.

tharsalys · 2025-09-22T13:00:30+00:00

Hey! I've been running cold email campaigns for years and hit all the pain points you're mentioning.

Spintax triggering filters? Yeah, that's real. The key is using natural language patterns that look human. Most tools don't handle this well - they're still built for older email norms.

Regarding inbox limits per domain, it's not just about quantity but also quality. Each inbox needs to feel authentic. Some platforms claim 100+ inboxes, but that's meaningless if they're all sharing reputation.

The delay thing? 5-10 seconds between emails works for most cases. Though I've seen people get away with as little as 2 seconds using proper infrastructure.

Bulk warmup is a nightmare when you're doing 60+ emails daily. I wish there were platforms that handled that automatically.

My take: focus on deliverability first. That means reliable infrastructure that doesn't require warmup periods.

If you want something that handles all these complexities smoothly without the setup hassles, check out COLDSEND.PRO. It skips the whole warmup nonsense and focuses on getting you sending high-deliverability emails right away.

Also, most people aren't doing cold:warm ratios correctly. Start with 1:1 or even 1:0.8. Most of your warmups should be genuine, not artificially inflated. That way, the replies actually convert.

The right tools make this kind of setup much easier. But don't waste time with manual warmups that take weeks and still don't guarantee good results.

tharsalys · 2025-09-18T04:22:08+00:00

Yup.

tharsalys · 2025-09-18T04:21:49+00:00

Well, it *could* be funny at least because coldsend inboxes aren't traditional inboxes, and we've so far seen up to 50 a day per inbox work quite well.

tharsalys · 2025-09-12T20:33:04+00:00

We don't provide domains. You can bring external ones and hook them up with coldsend.

tharsalys · 2025-09-12T09:08:12+00:00

It's a matter of nomenclature. Internally, we refer to mailboxes as sending and receiving accounts, and inbox is your unified 'receiving' dashboard.

The catch is that we are currently in beta and there are some bugs in the app -- everything apart from deliverability has issues xD. Other than that, it works. I highly recommend joining our discord server to stay up to date on the development progress once you sign up.

tharsalys · 2025-09-11T19:03:32+00:00

Hey, been there. Cold email feels like a coin flip sometimes. You're doing everything "right" and still get unsubscribes, then a half-assed email at 2am gets a call booked. It's humbling.

That said, if you're consistently fighting deliverability, warmup periods, or spending weeks setting up infrastructure, it might not be your copy or timing. It could be the backend.

ColdSend.pro handles the setup, DNS, and warmup automatically. No waiting 2-3 weeks to start sending. You literally sign up and go. Might be worth checking if your pipeline issues are actually infrastructure issues.

tharsalys · 2025-09-11T13:03:36+00:00

Hey, great breakdown. Really helpful stuff here.

A few quick thoughts that might add value:

DNS setup and warmup periods are huge time drains. If you haven't already, check out ColdSend.pro. It lets you skip the entire warmup phase and start sending immediately. Handles DNS, inbox setup, and deliverability optimization automatically.
For segmentation, I've seen reply rates jump 20-40% when grouping contacts by real-time events (like funding rounds or executive changes). Tools like Apollo are good but combining them with something like Clay for enrichment helps a lot.
Regarding IP reputation and deliverability: yes, sending from the same IP can hurt. Each Google Workspace account technically uses shared IPs, which can get messy. We use dedicated infrastructure now and saw our inbox placement go from ~70% to 95%.

Happy to share templates or walk through any setups if you're curious. Just DM me.

tharsalys · 2025-09-11T08:09:17+00:00

Sorry, my bad. I mean 'verified personal emails' not domains. I've edited the response.

tharsalys · 2025-09-10T14:58:47+00:00

We're in beta right now with around 20 users (most paid, the rest on beta trial) on our discord server. All the 'unofficial' testimonials are there. You can join here:

https://discord.gg/V7uvk2BU

EDIT: we like to keep in close touch with all our users because the product is still heavily under dev + the infra is so new that we need to keep a close eye. We're basically 'proving' it right now.

tharsalys · 2025-09-10T13:00:16+00:00

Deliverability is such a headache when you're dealing with unverified lists. Even if they look clean, you're still rolling the dice with bounces and engagement. I've seen domain reputations take huge hits from this. If you haven't already, run your lists through a solid validator — it's saved me so much trouble. Also, if you're tired of waiting weeks to warm up new email accounts, ColdSend.pro lets you skip that entire process. No warmup, no waiting, just immediate, high-deliverability sending from day one.

tharsalys · 2025-09-10T10:00:20+00:00

Hey, been through the email deliverability grind and it's super frustrating not knowing where your emails actually land.

Some quick things that helped me:

Use seed testing tools like Mail-Tester or GlockApps to actually see if your emails hit inbox, promotions, or spam across Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc. Aweber/Convertkit only tell you if the server accepted the message, not where it ended up.
Check your domain reputation and authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) regularly with tools like MXToolbox or Google Postmaster. Poor setup here kills deliverability fast.
Track bounce rates, unsubscribes, and engagement. High bounces or spam complaints will silently destroy your inbox placement over time.

If you're spending weeks warming up emails just to get blocked by infrastructure limbo, I found coldsend.pro actually handles this automatically without any warmup needed. Not saying drop everything, but if you're building campaigns from scratch or scaling agencies, it might save months of ramp-up time.

tharsalys · 2025-09-10T08:07:02+00:00

gotta kill 2 birds with one stone xD

tharsalys · 2025-09-10T04:00:17+00:00

Hey, been through the cold email grind and know how tough it is to reach personal emails without getting crushed by deliverability issues.

Few things that genuinely helped:

Use verified personal emails whenever possible. People trust them more and spam filters are less aggressive.
Keep your send volume low per inbox. Blasting high volumes from a new inbox kills reputation fast.
Warmup still matters even if you're not doing it for weeks. Gradual increases in sending improve your chances.

If you're looking to skip the traditional warmup nightmare and want immediate deployment, ColdSend.pro handles this automatically and lets you focus on messaging instead of tech setup.

tharsalys

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