What Blade does

Blade (blade.net) is a self-serve, product-led Gmail contact-discovery and mail-merge platform that scans a user's inbox, ranks every human correspondent by communication volume, filters automated and one-off senders, and lets the user send personalized email campaigns from their own Gmail account. The product is built around four proprietary capabilities: a Contact Discovery Engine that mines Gmail headers (From, To, Cc, Bcc, List-Unsubscribe, Precedence, internal date) but never message bodies; privacy-first token handling with AES-256-GCM at rest; on-demand contact history that fetches Subject headers and ~150-character snippets in-browser without persisting them; and mail-merge sending paced under Google's per-account caps (~500/day personal Gmail, ~2,000/day Workspace). Infrastructure is fully managed and composable — Neon Postgres on AWS us-east-1 for the contact/send database, Vercel for the web app, and Trigger.dev for background mining and sending jobs — enabling a sub-10-person team to operate the service.

The company is co-founded by Paul English (co-founder of KAYAK) and Yasser Bashir (founder of Arbisoft), headquartered in Boston, USA, and governed under Delaware law, with Terms of Service and Privacy Policy effective May 18, 2026. Its go-to-market is purely PLG: users sign in with Google OAuth, the product pulls their headers, and onboarding is described as 'Three taps. Done.' Marketing runs through the product website (blade.net), a LinkedIn-vs-email comparison page, and founder credibility, with distribution limited to a single self-serve web channel.

Commercially, Blade is freemium — free to start with headers-only scanning and manual campaign approval — with implied but undisclosed paid premium tiers. The customer base is horizontal and individual/SMB, segmented primarily into authors and content creators seeking launch-week readers, founders and makers announcing product or funding milestones, and professionals 'going independent' who need to notify their network of career transitions. No revenue, funding rounds, or enterprise customer logos are publicly disclosed.

Name

Blade

Legal name

blade.net

Website

https://blade.net

Company type

Private

Founded year

2014

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Blade (blade.net) is a self-serve Gmail contact-discovery and mail-merge tool that ranks a user's real correspondents by email volume and enables personalized campaigns sent from their own Gmail account, targeting authors, founders, and professionals going independent.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Boston

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Core Service (Free tier): Free to start with headers-only scanning. Users can find contacts and send campaigns at no cost.
2. Premium/Paid Features: While not explicitly detailed, the 'Free to start' phrasing suggests premium paid tiers exist for advanced features.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Blade is a Gmail contact discovery and outreach platform. After a user signs in with Google, Blade scans their Gmail inbox (headers only, never message bodies or attachments) to identify, rank, and continuously update every real person the user has corresponded with — filtering out no-reply senders, automated mail, receipts, and one-off contacts. From the resulting ranked, warm contact list the user can compose and send personalized email mail-merge campaigns directly from their own Gmail account, with per-day send throttling that respects Google's limits.

Product overview

Blade is a single unified email contact discovery and outreach product. It operates as a mail-merge platform that mines a user's Gmail inbox to find and rank contacts by communication frequency, then enables the user to send personalized email campaigns to selected contacts directly from their own Gmail account. The product emphasizes 'hyper-warm' outreach to people with proven two-way email dialogue history.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Blade Self-serve web application that, after Google sign-in, scans a user's Gmail headers to discover, rank, and continuously update the list of real people the user has corresponded with; filters out automated senders, no-reply addresses, and one-off contacts; and lets the user compose and send personalized mail-merge campaigns directly from their own Gmail account, throttled to Google's per-day sending limits. Marketed to authors, founders/makers, and professionals going independent.

Quantifiable outcome

• 15-30x higher click-through rate vs LinkedIn organic posts (15-30% email CTR vs 0.5-1.5% LinkedIn CTR)
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration1 record

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Four partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• GooglecoreTechnology or IntegrationGoogle provides sign-in authentication via OpenID Connect and is the source and destination of all email processed through blade. Gmail API integration enables reading headers and sending campaigns. Subject to Google's own privacy policy and Bulk Senders Guidelines compliance required.
• NeoncoreTechnology or IntegrationNeon provides managed Postgres database hosting on AWS us-east-1 region for storing user data, contact lists, and send history.
• Trigger.devcoreTechnology or IntegrationTrigger.dev runs background mining and email sending jobs on managed worker infrastructure. Receives minimal metadata (user IDs, job IDs, hashed recipient identifiers) - not raw mailbox content.
• VercelcoreTechnology or IntegrationVercel hosts the blade.net web application. May log standard request metadata (IP address, user agent, timing).

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Emerging players

• Yesware: Yesware is an older Gmail/Outlook sales productivity add-on for tracking, templates, and drip campaigns. It overlaps with Blade on email-based outreach, but with a sales-rep persona rather than a creator/founder persona.
• Mixmax: Mixmax is a Gmail-native sales engagement tool that adds sequences, templates, and tracking inside Gmail. It is the closest peer to Blade in terms of being a Gmail-integrated productivity/outreach layer, though it is more sales-rep-oriented.

Direct peers

• Apollo.io: Apollo is a B2B sales intelligence and outreach platform that combines a contact database with sequenced email campaigns. It directly overlaps with Blade on contact discovery and email outreach, though it relies on third-party data rather than mining a user's own inbox.
• Reply.io: Reply is a multichannel sales engagement platform (email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS) with built-in contact discovery. It competes for the same SMB/outbound persona as Blade, with a broader channel mix.
• Instantly.ai: Instantly is a high-volume cold email outreach platform with built-in warmup and deliverability features. It targets the same SMB/agency buyer as Blade, with stronger emphasis on cold volume rather than warm inbox mining.
• Hunter.io: Hunter finds professional email addresses and runs cold email campaigns. It is comparable to Blade on the contact-discovery-plus-outreach workflow and serves similar SMB/founder and marketer personas.
• Smartlead: Smartlead offers AI-driven cold email outreach with unlimited mailbox warmup. It is comparable to Blade on the email-campaigning mechanics and on serving senders who want higher deliverability from a connected Gmail/Outlook account.
• Mailshake: Mailshake is a sales engagement and email outreach platform aimed at SMBs and agencies. It is comparable to Blade on the campaign-orchestration workflow and target buyer, though it does not mine the user's own inbox.
• Lemlist: Lemlist specializes in personalized cold email outreach and follow-ups with deliverability tooling. It competes for the same use case Blade serves (driving warm/cold responses) and overlaps on campaign execution from a connected mailbox.

Broad incumbents

• Mailchimp: Mailchimp is the dominant email marketing and automation platform for SMBs. It serves a broader marketing use case than Blade, but its campaign and audience features are the broad-incumbent alternative for users who could otherwise use Blade for audience-building and broadcast.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/bladebos

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments1 record

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Blade