ABS T.

catherineanneriley this is gold, thank you. The “no deadline, no offer” part stung a bit because ours has zero urgency right now. Adding a cap this month: 5 audits max. And you’re right on awareness; I’ve started posting short build videos on LinkedIn and X, so we’re not total strangers when the email lands. Curious: for founders in the US, do you still find cold calls work, or do they mostly go to voicemail now?

andremazzo29 This is gold, Andre, thank you. You’re right, the email never names the pain, and “want the details?” gives them no reason to reply. Plan: rewrite around the production pain, offer the “what I’d expect to break first” list for real, switch signals to demos and hiring posts instead of funding news, and send 20 to 30 by hand before touching any tool. One change at a time. Will report back with numbers.

katie.marr Yes, that helps a lot, thank you. We have Zoho CRM but no sequencing set up yet, so most people got one or two touches at most. That alone probably explains a big part of it. Going to read the article and rebuild this as a multi-channel sequence over a few weeks, with a real offer earlier on. One last question if you don’t mind: for a dev studio, what kind of first-touch offer have you seen land? Something like a free audit, or more like a useful resource?

Thanks, katie.marr, that’s really helpful. Honest answers: - ICP: US founders, 1 to 50 people, who need an AI feature built or a vibe-coded MVP made production-ready - Cadence: email plus LinkedIn, [one email and 2/3 follow-ups] per person - Brand: founder posts on LinkedIn and X a couple of times a week, case studies on our site, one open-source project - Offer: “want the details?” Pretty much no offer, now that I look at it - Metrics: none. No open or click tracking, just replies - Link: no link in the email at all - Leads: Sales Navigator plus news signals like funding rounds. Researched one by one, but the founder has never heard of us Looking at that list, the offer and the lack of any tracking jump out. Would you start there?

andremazzo29, thanks, Andre! I’ll drop one of our cold emails here in the thread. Would love your honest take on it. Here’s the style we’ve been sending (names swapped for placeholders): “[First name], congrats on the [$X raise] and the move from [old company] to [new company]. [One line on what they’re building] is a serious engineering load to keep extending. My studio builds AI products on fixed-price, 6-week cycles, with senior people working next to your own engineers. Want the details?” That’s the whole email/same way use it for LinkedIn DM. Tear it apart 🙏

Avinash G. The inbox point is the one that sticks with me. When you found that pipeline sitting in rep inboxes, roughly what share of real deals was it? Trying to get a sense of how big the gap usually is.

Ginny F. That’s really useful, thanks Ginny. The exit criteria one rings true, if nobody agrees what “Proposal” means the board is fiction before anyone even skips an update. Which pre-pipe signal did you find most reliable? I’d guess meetings happening with an account that has no open deal, but curious what actually tipped you off.

Neo D. The trust point reframes the whole thread for me. Enforcement only works on data people believe, otherwise it’s nagging about a broken system. And quick and boring beats thorough, that’s a good line. In the sweeps you’ve seen, what eats the most time: duplicates, missing fields, or formatting?

Ginny F. Shadow pipe is the bit I hadn’t thought about. Enforce too hard and the deal just never gets created, so everything looks clean and nothing’s real. What’s the friction point that surprised you most when you actually asked reps?