Role

AI tools for startups and founders

The unfun parts of running a company on AI auto-pilot. Stacks for cold outbound, inbox triage, code review, and shipping the first MVP solo.

14 stacks18 tools used

A founder has two jobs an AI stack can actually take work off: build the thing, and book the meetings. That is Claude for the writing and thinking, Lovable to turn a prompt into a deployed app, Apollo for the contact data, and Smartlead to send cold email without burning the domain. If you can already code, Claude Code is bundled into the same Claude plan, so the build half costs nothing extra.

What to actually pay for

Core set
Claude
$20/mo

The drafting layer for positioning, investor updates, and the first version of anything you would otherwise stare at. Claude Code rides on the same subscription.

Lovable
Lovable
$25/mo

UI, backend, database, and deploy from natural-language prompts, with Supabase and Stripe wired in. The shortest route from an idea to something a customer can click.

Apollo
Apollo
$49/mo

275M contacts plus sequencing in one place, so the first list does not need a data vendor. The free tier is enough to test whether the message lands before you pay.

Smartlead
Smartlead
$39/mo

Unlimited mailboxes and warmup. This is the line item that keeps a young sending domain out of the spam folder.

Monthly total
Build it, then book the first meetings
$133/mo
List price
Swaps and later additions
HubSpot
$20/mo

Catches the meetings the outbound books before they leak out of a spreadsheet. The free tier covers a small team.

Superhuman
$30/mo

Triage and AI replies for the founder who is the support queue, the sales team, and the recruiter at the same time.

Manus
Manus
$20/mo

Give it a goal, such as sizing a market or drafting a competitor teardown, and it returns a deliverable rather than a chat log.

Clay
Clay
$185/mo

Spreadsheet-shaped enrichment that fills in what a contact database leaves blank. The most expensive line here, and worth it only once the list is what is holding outbound back.

Clay is the next line item, and only once enriching the list is the bottleneck rather than the message. HubSpot's free CRM holds the pipeline until there is a team to give seats to.

Stacks for founders & operators

14
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