Wayy.ai, a new AI sales agent from TrueCare24 co-founder Leo Popov, is built to automate cold outreach for the roughly 30 million Americans working alone. For sales professionals, the product raises a direct question: what happens when a $49-a-month system can do what an entry-level sales development rep does-and do it continuously, without sleep or commission?
From founder who hated sales to AI that handles it
Popov spent years in corporate sales at Red Bull and Pepsi, then co-founded a marketplace startup and raised $2.3 million. He says he hated every minute of the selling part. After scaling TrueCare24 through pandemic contracts with Coca-Cola and the state of Colorado, he still found himself spending too much time on outreach. In 2023 he started Wayy.ai to automate the task he couldn't avoid.
"What any entrepreneur really needs," Popov said, "is a co-founder who takes care of the part of the business you can't afford to neglect."
The first version of Wayy failed. Popov and his co-founder, mathematician Dr. Aleksei Samarin, built a cold-email sequencer full of manual controls-basically a thinner copy of existing tools. Nobody switched. So they changed the metaphor: build a self-driving car, not a race car. The right customer doesn't want a steering wheel. They want to say "here's my product, go find me customers."
How the system makes sales decisions at scale
Samarin, who holds a PhD and has published more than 50 papers on machine learning, described the system as encoded judgment. It reads a founder's company profile and LinkedIn presence, builds a model of the value proposition, then scores and filters prospects automatically.
"The way most people find their best customers manually is by going through a long mental checklist," Samarin said. "Does this person work in the right industry? Do they have the budget? Do they have the problem we solve? Are they the right decision-maker? We built a system that replicates that reasoning process across thousands of profiles simultaneously… The speed is what changes - the judgment stays the same."
Outreach is capped at 15-25 messages per day to prioritize quality. Every three days the system grades its own results and adjusts targeting. Across more than 100,000 messages sent, Wayy reports a response rate of roughly 3%-nearly double what a typical salesperson would expect from careful manual outreach.
Wayy competes in a crowded market of AI SDRs and autonomous sales agents. Most promise pipeline without headcount. The difference here is the target customer: solopreneurs and microbusinesses that can't afford a salesperson at all. The bet is that steady, consistent effort at scale beats sporadic human effort-not that AI is more persuasive, just more persistent.
For sales professionals, this shift in AI for Sales automation means systems like Wayy are becoming a real option for founders who would otherwise hire junior sales talent. The threat isn't to experienced closers who handle complex deals, but to pipeline generation and initial outreach-tasks that AI can now run continuously at low cost.
Proof in the fundraising round
The strongest evidence Popov offers is his own raise. He pointed Wayy at one target group-exited serial founders in the U.S.-and let it run. Over 30 days the system sent 347 connection requests, landed 88 new connections and 13 interested replies, and produced one investor check from a cold start. "I was not manually building outreach lists one-by-one," Popov said. "I was defining the target. Wayy handled the execution."
Wayy has closed a $2 million pre-seed round led by 0 to 1 Ventures. It is approaching its first 100 paying customers on recurring plans priced at $49, $99, or $149 a month. Users average nine new potential clients per month.
Why this matters for sales professionals
Wayy.ai is not designed to replace an experienced account executive who builds relationships and closes enterprise deals. It is designed to replace the junior sales role-the person who spends hours building lists, sending connection requests, and making initial cold calls. For salespeople whose daily work is volume outreach and prospecting, the message is clear: this kind of automation is becoming cheap and effective. The competitive advantage will shift toward people who can handle complex sales cycles, negotiate terms, and manage relationships-tasks AI cannot yet replicate. If your job is to find leads and send templates, it is worth examining how your skills translate to higher-value sales work that requires human judgment.
For those already using AI Learning Path for Sales Representatives to integrate AI into their workflow, the lesson is that the tools are moving from assistant to operator. Understanding where automation stops and human selling begins will define the next phase of the profession.
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