All my life, I’ve had the drive and ability to build things. I’ve always been that person who could look at a problem and figure out a product or tool to fix it. But the truth is, marketing has always been my biggest obstacle — not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I didn’t know how, and I couldn’t afford a team to do it for me.
Where I’m from, the tech ecosystem is still growing. Most people around me aren’t very digital-savvy, and building tools that people locally understand or adopt is hard. Reaching global markets from here has been even harder — I’ve had ideas I was proud of die quietly simply because no one ever saw them.
So I built Smarketly — not just as a product, but as a kind of lifeline for people like me.
Smarketly is powered by an AI assistant I call June. She helps:
Find leads in relevant communities (even Reddit threads)
Write personalized outreach messages that don’t feel spammy
Suggest marketing strategies that actually fit your stage
Generate content (emails, landing page copy, posts) based on your product and tone
The idea is: if you can build something, Smarketly helps you get it seen. Without needing a marketing background or spending hours reading growth hacks.
This is still early. There are rough edges. But I’m hoping it can genuinely help other builders — especially solo devs, indie hackers, and underdog founders — who feel invisible no matter how good their product is.
Would love any feedback, thoughts, or stories from others who’ve been in the same boat.
Thanks for reading, Frederick smarketly.lema-lema.com