What does a lean outbound stack look like for a bootstrapped founder?

You can run credible outbound for roughly 50 to 150 dollars a month: a data source like Apollo, a sending tool like Instantly or Smartlead with a couple of warmed secondary domains, and free AI (ChatGPT or Claude) for research and drafts. The constraint that matters is not budget, it is consistency: a narrow list, specific messages from your own voice, and two follow-ups beat any expensive platform used sporadically. Add tools only when a manual step is provably eating hours every week.

A quick orientation. The real value is below: resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it.