The idea came from a simple frustration. I was paying close to $80/month for about 5,000 subscribers with a popular email tool. One day I looked up what it actually costs to send the same volume through your own SMTP: roughly $3. That's a 25x markup just for a UI and some automation logic.
I kept thinking, what if there was a platform that gave you the full experience - visual email builder, campaigns, automations, analytics; But let you plug in your own SMTP provider? You'd get the same power without the per-subscriber tax that punishes you every time your list grows.