Building tools for people whose attention is the constraint. Ten years in developer platforms before this.
Developer tools
Seed stage
Hiring
Notes on buildingEssays, roughly monthly
Selected workSix things worth showing
Reading listWhat is on the desk
No email · no phone · no WhatsApp
This space is the product.
the threshold
Private · what Elena reads
Priya Nair
Rivet ·dotstrap.com/priya
PartnershipHigh priority
Why they reached out
Wants to take their sales platform to market through your channel, and has asked for 20 minutes to talk through the commercial shape of it.
Relevant context
Founder
SaaS · 12 people
Early revenue
US
Recommendation
Matches the partnership criteria you wrote. Worth your attention.
Written by your front desk from the conversation it had. You are not shown the transcript — the summary is the point.
Not interestedStart conversation
THE PROBLEM
Three things are wrong, and only one of them is volume.
01
Too much arrives.
Filters and priority inboxes already solve this, and nobody is buying a new product for it.
02
Whoever wrote it decided how urgent it was.
Every “urgent” is a stranger setting what your morning is about. No filter fixes that, because the message is already in the room.
03
And saying no costs you more than reading it did.
So most people never decline. They go quiet, which is worse for both sides.
THE SPLIT
Being reachable and being interruptible are not the same thing.
Your inbox is an address and a queue at once, so publishing the address means accepting the queue. Dotstrap separates them.
Public
Your address
Name, photograph, role, bio, links. Permanent, and safe to put on a business card.
The threshold
Your front desk
Interviews every visitor against criteria only you can see.
Private
Your attention
A short brief for what matched. A polite decline for everything that did not.
THE CONFIGURATION
You write one sentence. Nobody else ever sees it.
That is the whole setup — no rule builder, no keyword list, no confidence dial. You say what you want; the desk works out the rest.
Public · your page
What every visitor can read
Your name, photograph, role and organisation
Your bio and your interests
Your links, in the order you choose
That a front desk is answering
Private · used for routing
What decides who reaches you
Investment opportunities
“B2B SaaS founders raising Seed–Series A with early commercial traction.”
Partnership opportunities
“Teams whose distribution reaches operations leaders in mid-market retail.”
WHAT ARRIVES
You don’t get a message. You get a brief.
Every conversation your desk passes on arrives already read. It takes about eight seconds.
Priya Nair
Rivet ·dotstrap.com/priya
PartnershipHigh priority
Why they reached out
Wants to take their sales platform to market through your channel, and has asked for 20 minutes to talk through the commercial shape of it.
Relevant context
Founder
SaaS · 12 people
Early revenue
US
Recommendation
Matches the partnership criteria you wrote. Worth your attention.
Written by your front desk from the conversation it had. You are not shown the transcript — the summary is the point.
Not interestedStart conversation
THE DECISION
Two decisions, and neither of them is a calendar.
Start conversation
The yes. It opens a direct thread with a message you write, and only you can end it.
Not interested
The no. Your desk closes it politely in your name, and they are never told you saw it.
Dotstrap books nothing. It decides who is worth your time; what you do with that time stays yours.
WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE ELSE
Everyone else gets an answer too.
Silence is every other product's failure mode. Here your desk declines in your name, in one sentence, with a reason.
“Thanks for reaching out. Elena isn’t taking cold sales enquiries, so I won’t pass this on.”
Elena’s front desk, to a visitor it turned away
Nothing is deleted. Everything it declined sits in your spam folder with the reason attached.
One press moves it to your inbox if the desk got it wrong.
INTENT MATCH
The same address can go looking.
Write one private sentence about what you are looking for. Dotstrap ranks the people whose intentions fit it.
Private · what you write
“Looking for a technical co-founder for an AI startup.”
Matches see a percentage, never your words.
Similarity is not compatibility. A founder looking for an engineer and an engineer looking for a founding role share almost no words, and are a top match.
One is how many new people you can reach. The other is how many times you can reach the same person.
Limit one · your allowance
New people you can reach in 24 hours
It counts people, never messages, and the window rolls rather than resetting at midnight. Your dashboard shows what you have left.
Limit two · one live request
One open request per person
However much allowance you have left, you get one live request with any one person. It unlocks when they react, or after fifteen days if they never do.
Dotstrap is free today.
There are no paid plans. Your page and your permanent link stay hosted whatever you do.
No. Visitors can talk to your desk; they can never see what it is deciding against. That is the point — a published filter is a set of instructions for getting past it.
What if it turns away someone important?
Nothing is deleted. Everything the desk declined sits in your Spam folder with the reason and the full conversation, and one press moves it to your inbox.
Do visitors need an account?
To read your page, nothing at all. To write to you, one tap of Google sign-in — no email address, password or phone number is ever collected from anybody.
Does it answer as me?
It answers for you, under your name, and it says so. When you step in, a line is written into the conversation saying you took over, and the visitor is told.
Does it book meetings?
No. Dotstrap holds no calendar and books nothing. It decides who is worth your time; what you do with that time is yours.
What happens if I stop using it?
Your address stays, your page stays, and every conversation and setting stays with it. Your link is hosted whether or not you are using it.