We Built iCloseLeads
Because We Needed It
We were freelancers too. And we were tired of paying 20% platform fees to Upwork, competing in a race to the bottom on Fiverr, and spending 4 hours a day manually cold emailing with zero strategy.
The Problem We Solve
The freelance market is massive — over 73 million freelancers in the US alone — but most of them are stuck on marketplaces that take a huge cut, control the relationship, and commoditize their skills.
Direct outreach is 3x more effective than marketplace bidding, but it requires finding verified contacts, writing personalized proposals, and tracking everything — which takes more time than most freelancers have.
iCloseLeads solves all three problems in a single platform. We use Hunter.io to find verified email addresses, GPT-4o to write personalized proposals, and Resend to send them with enterprise-grade deliverability.
Our users report finding their first lead in under 2 minutes and landing their first new client within 2 weeks of consistent outreach.
Our Values
Freelancer-First
Every decision we make starts with the question: does this help freelancers find better clients faster?
Automation Without Spam
We believe in smart, personalized outreach — not bulk spam. Our AI writes emails that respect prospects.
Sustainable Businesses
We want to help freelancers build real, sustainable businesses — not just quick gigs on race-to-the-bottom platforms.
Built in the Open
We share our roadmap, listen to feedback, and build features our community actually asks for.
The Team
Alex Chen
Co-founder & CEO
Former freelance developer who built tools for himself, then decided to share them.
Priya Sharma
Co-founder & CTO
ML engineer with a passion for automating the boring parts of running a business.
Jordan Miles
Head of Design
UX designer who believes every tool should be beautiful and intuitive.