Jeremy Chatelaine on Building QuickMail and Playing the Long Game
Jeremy Chatelaine is the founder of QuickMail, a SaaS product for cold outreach at scale. He was the first SaaS founder on the channel. At the time of recording, QuickMail had been running for eight years. Jeremy explains how a tool he built to save himself 30 minutes a day became a business, how he won early customers by shipping features fast, what drives retention, and why exiting isn't part of his plan.
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Topics covered
- Building QuickMail to solve his own outreach problem
- What cold email looked like eight years earlier
- Turning a personal tool into a business
- Playing to your strengths and doing things that don't scale
- Getting found again through SEO
- Retention: promise less, deliver more
- A founder's day-to-day and why he isn't planning an exit
Key takeaways
- Build for a real need. QuickMail started because Jeremy was spending 30 minutes a day setting up meetings and sending emails by hand.
- Before building for a wider market, check the tool is useful outside your own circle. Jeremy used his own tool to reach out to other SaaS founders.
- The more demos Jeremy did, the more he closed, so more time on the business meant more growth.
- Use your strength. As a developer, Jeremy offered to build a requested feature within a week, or the product would be free until it shipped.
- Early on, do things that don't scale.
- Retention comes from matching what you promise with what you deliver. Support should solve problems, not just close tickets.
- Treat customers fairly. Jeremy never raised prices on early customers.
Show notes
🛠️ A tool built out of necessity
Jeremy says the market had marketing automation but not sales automation, so he built what he needed. Around the same time, tools like Woodpecker, Reply and Outreach were starting too, and together they opened up the market.
His trigger was a course he calls the Foundation course. Part of the curriculum was reaching out to people and getting on a call to understand their problems. He was spending 30 minutes a day just setting up meetings and sending emails, and figured there had to be a better way.
📬 Cold email eight years ago
Jeremy admits his first emails were "really crap", but back then almost everything stuck. People would reply after the second or third follow-up apologizing for not answering sooner. He remembers a reply rate of about 25 to 30%, with around 80 to 90% of replies positive. He calls it the educational phase of the market. Now it's about scaling and building the best product.
🚀 From side tool to full-time business
People in his own group kept complaining about email tools, so he offered them his. He wasn't trying to sell it, and at first he saw it as a distraction from another business. He didn't want to build only for a small group, so he used QuickMail to reach out to other SaaS founders and check for interest. Demos followed, and then sales.
He started in April 2014, resigned soon after, and was full time on it from August. Revenue was small at first, but he noticed a simple pattern.
“the more time I spend on it the more demo I could do the more demo I did the more I close people”
Jeremy Chatelaine, 8:04
💪 Play to your strengths
Jeremy's strength was development, so that's how he grew. When a prospect on a demo said a feature was missing, he'd offer a deal: pay now, and if the feature isn't built by the end of the week, the product is free until it is. Often the feature was done the next day. He calls it "promise less and deliver more".
A few years in, he realized many people had never heard of QuickMail, because competitors had been smarter about SEO. So QuickMail started doing SEO too. He also still runs his own cold outreach campaigns to targeted agencies and clients.
“if you have to consider one thing when you're starting is like do things that don't scale”
Jeremy Chatelaine, 11:53
🔁 Retention is about delivery
Michael points out that if you lose customers every month, you'll never stack recurring revenue. Jeremy says retention comes down to the quality of service and to matching what you promise with what you deliver. QuickMail keeps its marketing claims modest and focuses on high-quality support and a stable product, since some clients' whole operation relies on it. It also means listening to the market and building what it asks for, even when that's a risk. He mentions domain rotation and inbox rotation as upcoming features. He has never raised the price on customers who joined before a price increase.
“retention is a lot about the quality of service you're receiving”
Jeremy Chatelaine, 13:00
🤹 Juggling the CEO role
Jeremy compares running the company to juggling. You drop balls at first and get better with time. The first requirement is to care about clients, employees and the company. The second is a mindset shift: his product used to be QuickMail, and now his product is the company. Mondays are mostly alignment meetings on priorities, and the rest of the week is execution. He still replies to customer emails himself and sometimes joins sales calls.
🧭 No exit in sight
Jeremy says exiting isn't part of his plan. When he started working, he saw people in France made redundant in their 40s and 50s with no chance of finding another job, and he wanted to be able to work as long as he chose. His goal is to make QuickMail the best quality platform on the market and keep learning. He's glad he never raised money. He says the company was bootstrapping, working remotely and trying a four-day week before those became popular.
About Jeremy Chatelaine
Jeremy Chatelaine is the founder of QuickMail.io, a SaaS tool for cold outreach at scale that works with a lot of agencies. He's a developer by trade. Before QuickMail, he worked on around 15 projects that he says all failed, and on balance he lost money on them.
He started QuickMail in April 2014 and went full time on it a few months later. At the time of recording the company was fully remote and working a four-day week. Jeremy has two kids, and he and Michael have met in person.
Episode links
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