You're six months into building your startup. Product is coming together, early customers are giving positive signals, but you need pipeline yesterday. Your co-founder keeps asking about sales numbers, and you're spending Sunday nights crafting LinkedIn messages that get 0.5% reply rates.
The advice online is all over the place: hire an agency, get a VA from the Philippines, or use one of these new AI platforms. Each option promises to solve your outbound problem, but they all work completely differently: and cost vastly different amounts.
Here's the breakdown that actually matters for seed-stage teams.
The Three Options Aren't Even Playing the Same Game
AI platforms act autonomously. They research your prospects, write emails, handle follow-ups, and qualify leads while you sleep. Think of them as an SDR that never takes vacation, never burns out, and costs a fraction of a human hire.
Agencies give you a team of human SDRs managed by someone else. You hand over your ICP, they build lists, write sequences, and book meetings. It's outsourced sales development with human judgment and creativity.
Virtual assistants do what you tell them to do. They'll send emails, update your CRM, or research prospects: but only when you give specific instructions. They're reactive, not autonomous.
The fundamental difference is autonomy. AI platforms identify opportunities and act on them. VAs wait for you to tell them what to do next. Agencies combine human judgment with systematic execution but at a premium price.
What Actually Matters for Seed-Stage Teams
Budget Reality Check
A decent SDR agency starts around $4,000/month, often closer to $8,000-12,000 for quality shops. That's $48K-144K annually before you factor in their software costs.
VAs run $800-2,000/month depending on skill level and location. Seems affordable until you realize you're still doing most of the strategic work: the VA is just executing your instructions.
AI platforms typically cost $499-2,000/month. The math gets interesting when you consider what you get: 24/7 operation, unlimited email sends (with your own API keys), and the ability to work hundreds of prospects simultaneously.
Time Investment
Agencies promise the lowest time investment upfront. Hand them your ICP and budget, and they should start producing meetings within 2-4 weeks. The catch? You lose control over messaging, timing, and prospect selection. Good agencies are worth it. Bad ones will burn your domain reputation and waste months.
VAs require the most ongoing management time. You're essentially building an internal sales process but with remote execution. Every decision, every sequence change, every new campaign needs your input.
AI platforms sit in between. Higher setup time than agencies (you need to configure targeting, approve messaging, and set up integrations) but lower ongoing management than VAs. Once configured, they run independently while still keeping you in the loop on key decisions.
Quality Control
This is where most founders get burned. Agencies scale by hiring junior SDRs and giving them templates. Your carefully crafted positioning gets turned into generic outreach that sounds like every other "growth partner" or "revenue accelerator."
VAs maintain quality if you maintain oversight. But quality is only as good as your own sales skills. If you don't know how to write sequences that convert, neither will your VA.
AI platforms excel at consistency but struggle with nuance. They'll never send a drunk email at 2 AM or forget to follow up. But they can't read between the lines of a prospect's response or pivot strategy mid-conversation the way a skilled human can.
The Seed-Stage Truth
Most seed-stage founders think they need perfect outreach to succeed. In reality, you need consistent outreach that doesn't break your budget or consume all your time.
Choose an AI platform if:
- You have product-market fit signals and a clear ICP
- You're comfortable with technology and can handle initial setup
- You want predictable monthly costs for budgeting
- You need to test multiple audiences quickly
- You can't justify $5K+/month for outsourced sales
Choose an agency if:
- You have zero sales experience and a decent budget ($5K+/month)
- You want results in 4-6 weeks, not 4-6 months
- You prefer to focus 100% on product while someone else handles outbound
- Your ICP is crystal clear and you've validated messaging
- You can afford to pay premium for hands-off execution
Choose a VA if:
- You're pre-revenue and every dollar counts
- You have strong sales skills but lack execution time
- Your outbound volume is manageable (under 100 prospects/week)
- You enjoy the strategic aspects of sales but hate the administrative work
The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About
Agency Risk: Bad agencies will blast your prospects with generic templates, burn your domain reputation, and teach your market to ignore you. Recovery takes months.
VA Risk: You become the bottleneck. Every decision requires your input, and your VA sits idle while waiting for direction. Plus, good VAs eventually get better offers or start their own agencies.
AI Platform Risk: Setup complexity and the learning curve. If you can't configure targeting properly or approve good messaging, the platform becomes expensive spam.
But here's the bigger risk: doing nothing. Every day you spend researching the perfect solution is a day you're not building pipeline.
What We'd Do (And Why)
If you're generating any revenue and have identified your ICP, start with an AI platform. The upfront learning investment pays dividends in predictable pipeline generation and cost control.
Specifically, look for platforms that let you bring your own API keys (controlling your own sending costs) and keep humans in the loop for quality control. You want the efficiency of AI with the guardrails of human oversight.
Ramen works this way: unlimited AI agents for $499/month, but every email gets your approval before sending. You're not paying per send or per contact. You control your OpenAI and email provider costs directly.
The goal isn't perfect outreach. It's sustainable outreach that generates meetings while you focus on building a product people actually want.
If you're spending more than 10 hours/week on outbound or considering an $80K SDR hire, the economics make the decision easy. Your time is worth more than the monthly cost of good tools.