I'll be honest, because honesty is rather the whole point of this. I run a small, independent studio, and like a lot of people who make things for a living, I'm just not built for blowing my own horn. It isn't my nature — never has been. I'd far rather show you the work than stand on a chair and shout about it.
The modern way seems to be the opposite: tell everyone, all the time, why today you're even better than yesterday. I can't do it. I don't want to do it. And the trouble with being quiet is simple — you end up quieter than your competition. I hate even using that word, "competition"; I'd much rather collaborate. But when you watch good work go to people whose only real edge is that they're louder — work you know you'd do beautifully — it stings.
So what do you do? Change your nature? There's a school of thought that says you should lean into your weaknesses until they turn into strengths. I knew I never would. I was never going to wake up one morning as the king of LinkedIn, posting my daily brilliance. So the answer had to be a different kind of outreach altogether. A quieter, more honest one.
The market was worse than the silence
I went looking, and what I found made it worse. AI-written spam, by the bucketload. "We'll get you meetings — only pay for the ones we book." Will they be good meetings? Everything was built to blast as many people as possible, with nothing underneath it — no quality, no sense of whether you actually do good work or care about it at all. It was so woolly and soulless that it made me even more nervous about doing outreach in the first place. (More on that here: what it means to build an AI outreach tool around judgement, not just automation — and, if you're choosing one, what to actually look for in outreach software.)
So I built the one I'd actually want
I studied History at university — research was everything; it always has been for me. So I asked myself what the perfect outreach tool would look like for someone like me, and the answer was obvious: it would start with research.
I'd type in an area — "I'm after independent bike brands in this region," whatever the starting thought is — and it would come back with the lay of the land. Here are ten worth really getting into. Here are another twenty that are promising, but don't need as much delving. Then, on the ones worth slowing down for, I could go deeper: a proper, sourced dig — with citations, the websites and signals it found, the little things that tell you whether this is someone you can genuinely help. Not to manipulate them. To make a thoughtful, grounded approach — to turn up actually knowing something true about them.
We built all of that. That's Fly Away Paul.
Paul, and Peter
The deep dig — the leave-no-stone, frontier-model research you reach for when someone's really worth it — that's Paul. And going along with Paul is Peter.
Two little dicky birds, sitting on a wall;
one named Peter, one named Paul…
Peter's for the ones you don't need to go quite so deep on — still all the essentials, just a lighter, cheaper read. When the moment calls for it, you send Peter out instead.
Your own words for the few, a tasteful batch for the rest
The handful who earn your own words become pitches — written by hand, with Paul's help, sent from your own inbox. The wider, promising group can become a small campaign: one honest message, sent to maybe twenty people at once. It's the antithesis of spam — you still have to write something real — but it doesn't ask you to deep-dive everyone. Either way, the friction between "here's the area I want to explore" and "right, let's message them" is almost nothing.
The first time I used it
I'll never forget it. I contacted ten people that day — genuinely good ones. I got two or three replies, which honestly floored me. Not all "we'd love to work with you," but warm, human replies — and one that looks like it's leading somewhere. But the feeling that stayed with me wasn't the replies. It was relief. I'd done real, careful outreach without the stress and the dread, leaning on the best of the technology to do the heavy research so I could get on with the human part. That was the whole point.
It isn't a wrapper around a prompt
A quick, honest word on the AI of it all, because the world is full of products that are really just a prompt in a nice shell — you may as well use the model yourself. Underneath Fly Away Paul, real work is happening where it counts.
Before any research happens, we ask you about your area — why you're reaching out, how much room you've got for new work, and more. It looks simple. It isn't. The questions, the wording, the order of them — all of it is built on a careful read of the research into how you actually draw clear, useful answers out of people. Hundreds of papers, distilled into a few gentle taps, so you come away with more clarity about what you're really after than you walked in with. Not to extract anything. To help.
And on our side, every finished search gets quietly graded. A handful of small models weigh up the signals behind each find — how strong the quality, demand and intent evidence really was, whether the sources held up, how much each find actually moved the result. There's a good deal of Pareto in the thinking: most of what makes a search great comes from a vital few signals, so we hunt those down and lean on them, rather than treating every data point as equal.
Then the loop closes with what happens next — which finds you keep, which you write to, and which write back. That's the part most outreach tools never see, and it's the part we care about most. And it doesn't sit in a report waiting for us to read it: the system quietly re-weighs what actually matters, nudged by what truly worked — within careful limits, so it can only ever get steadier, never wobble off. Real outcomes, fed back in, on their own clock. The best research per pound, always improving — and now, genuinely, beginning to improve itself.
And lately, the other half: the map, not just the pins
For a while Paul was about reaching out — finding the right people and writing to them well. But there are only two ways to win work: to be found, and to reach out. So we built the other half too. Now, before you chase anyone, Paul can research a whole market you're weighing up — the segments, the players, where the real demand is — and tell you straight whether it's worth entering. The map, not just the pins.
Because a briefing like that can steer a real decision, I was strict about one thing: it must never bluff. So every line is sourced — and then a second model goes back over the lot and tries to take it down. Anything that won't stand against its source is dropped; what we genuinely couldn't verify is shown plainly, not buried. I'd far rather hand you a shorter, honest map than a confident, pretty one that's wrong.
And the part I'm quietly proudest of, because it's my old trade: findability. Most market research gives you the size and the players. Ours answers the question that actually decides it online — can you get found, and what will it cost? Real SEO data, not a guess: which phrases are winnable and which are locked up tight, roughly what paid presence costs while you build, and who already owns the results. Paul reads the real numbers; he never invents one.
And it should be a pleasure to use
Here's the thing the feature lists never mention: it should be a pleasure to use. So much business software treats you like a data-entry clerk — forms, dashboards, jargon, and the quiet assumption you'll work it out. I wanted the opposite. Something that talks to you like a person, shows you only what matters, and never once makes you feel daft for not knowing the lingo.
So the whole of it — typing in a market, reading Paul's verdict, writing a note in your own voice, taking your list away with you, setting a warm-up ad live — is meant to feel like one calm, considered place to be. Clear, warm, unhurried, quietly on your side. Not a thing you grit your teeth through to get a result, but somewhere it's genuinely nice to spend ten minutes doing the part of your work you'd otherwise keep putting off.
I won't take it apart screen by screen — you lose the magic the moment you do. But it matters to me every bit as much as the cleverness underneath. The research is the engine; how it feels to use is the point.
How we charge — almost embarrassingly fairly
No subscription. No price per seat. You top up a wallet, and we add a small piggyback on top of what the research costs us from the AI providers — plus a little to cover the card fees. That's our margin: enough to keep building and keep the lights on, and not a penny of reason to pad a search or keep you paying for something you've long forgotten about.
It's so fair that a private-equity type would think we were idiots. I'd rather be the idiot than take advantage of anyone. This is meant to be useful.
Why this one's personal
My parents were small business owners who, over about twenty years, became large ones. They worked their socks off. I know, in my bones, what it is to need more work — and to deserve it, and not quite know how to ask for it. If you're good, you should be able to win good work. Especially if you're not the type to put yourself forward. You shouldn't have to be.
It genuinely bothers me how much of business has become a soulless performance of everyone's supposed brilliance. It isn't true, it's disingenuous, and it drowns out exactly the people most worth hearing. The ones quietly doing excellent work are almost never the ones shouting about it. If that sounds like you, then Fly Away Paul might just be for you.
It's everything I ever wanted in an outreach tool: sensitive, helpful, fairly priced, and always trying to be a little better for you. I'm proud of it — and I hope it takes some weight off your shoulders the way it did mine.
— Pete
Founder · Where Beagles Dare, Oxford