Thanks for reaching out! Really appreciate you letting me know about the tool and the free trial! 🙌
LinkedInの自動化ツールなので自分は直接使わなそうですが、開発者ご本人からリプいただきました…!クラウドではなく「ローカル環境で動かす」タイプのアプローチは、Xなどの他プラットフォーム自動化やツール運用の観点でも仕組みとして面白いですね。
I used AI to build a LinkedIn automation tool without knowing how to code, now it’s making ~$2.5K MRR 🚀
What I built
I built a LinkedIn outreach automation tool called ZenMode, which scrapes profiles of your target customers, sends connection requests and follow up messages on autopilot.
The main purpose is for Founders, Sales teams, Marketers and anyone else who uses LinkedIn for outreach, to generate more meetings and grow their businesses.
It’s a software that controls a dedicated chrome browser to automate LinkedIn, without needing plugins/the cloud.
Why I built it
Last year I got a warning from automating on LinkedIn using another tool (automating on LinkedIn is against their terms - people automate on LinkedIn at their own risk).
I wanted to automate my outreach as I was working in sales, and it was really helping me to generate more discovery calls, without the manual grind of sending loads of messages and connection requests manually.
I didn’t trust any of the existing tools for safety, as the majority are on the cloud using IP addresses that are different from where you normally use LinkedIn from, and are slightly higher risk for being flagged as a result.
So, I solved for my own pain point, and created a software that’s desktop based, using your own IP address, and essentially acting like a human would when performing actions on LinkedIn.
How I built it
I used Claude to figure out how to do it, and made architectural decisions based fully around safety mechanisms - what would the safest tool look like and how would we build it?
So I realized the safest way would be to make an electron desktop application controlling a browser, which was governed by a dashboard that fed/stored the data.
There was a lot of setup involved at the start with various tools - Vercel, Cloudflare, GitHub etc but eventually I was able to start building.
It was a huge amount of learning to not just build, but build in a scalable and sustainable way. At first I was shipping without testing, then spending much longer fixing bugs afterwards.
How I scaled it
1. I use ZenMode itself to promote ZenMode on LinkedIn, through cold outreach.
I have a target market of customers/locations/industries, then the tool scrapes profiles for me, & sends connection requests and follow up messages in a sequence.
I run this daily, and typically book 5 or so meetings per week. I’m not the best at demo calls but I do generate new business this way.
2. I also post a lot on Reddit, LinkedIn, X; I post mostly build in public style posts, and usually people naturally gravitate towards it.
I like Reddit because you can usually get 10’s of thousands of views if you post good quality content in the right subs.
3. On my site I’ve tried to do good SEO practices where possible - I have quite a few “alternative to” pages where I talk about the difference between ZenMode and other LinkedIn automation providers, along with a regularly updated blog.
When you have a high volume of good content, more pages get indexed by google and your visibility/impressions are also likely to increase over time.
Lately I’ve been trying to do more offsite SEO - especially reviews across various platforms, a few directories, and on my to do list is some listicle/comparison articles and more YouTube content.
4. I handle every query myself, and even make new features/enhancements based on what my customers are asking for. The human element makes a big difference to retention.
5. I think primarily though the number one thing for scaling is really making a good product that solves a problem well, with great customer experience, and to keep iterating/making improvements.
What’s next
ZenMode still has a long runway and a massive roadmap but I’m just going to keep grinding away at it one day at a time, and so far at least what I’m doing seems to be working.
Hope you find this story helpful for your own journey and happy to answer questions/comments 🙏