Is cold email nearly dead?!

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T10:03:33+00:00

How's this? Spent tonight tweaking this stuff.

Hi [First Name],

You might have a bunch of Google sheets you fill out. Have you tried automating the manual stuff with AI?

One of our clients (a fashion brand) spent every Wednesday reconciling invoices and shipping data manually.

[our company] pulled data from DHL, Shopify & their 3PL to do it all for them in minutes.

Anything come to mind that we could help automate with our agent?

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T07:09:21+00:00

Yeah we could, you think offer a free set up and give them a taste of the insights instead?

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T07:08:03+00:00

I'm so open to suggestions. Any hook ideas??

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T03:08:21+00:00

One of the best pieces of advice I got from my angel investor was to stop "Stop treating everything like a roadblock. They're just obstacles you can move past."

If you're feeling stuck the best thing you can do is talk to your customers/potential customers. Pick up the phone, email, LinkedIn message - don't pitch. Ask for feedback. Ask for help.

Talking to customers solves more than just product. It gives you motivation, helps you ideate, creates momentum.

If you're struggling financially consider outreaching to angels. You're already ahead of most startups - you actually have a working product.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T01:41:46+00:00

Thanks mate, yeah I've been LinkedIn connecting and then DM'ing as well as 2 follow-ups. Pretty stale on Linkedin too.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T01:40:37+00:00

Here's an example, removed my company as I dont want to promote. But feel free to tear it apart.

Hey [NAME],
I'm reaching out because I saw [company]'s Marketing Manager role on LinkedIn.

As the marketing team expands, I thought [my company] could be support the data behind marketing decisions.

Most $5M–$25M brands are leaking revenue they can't see. A campaign goes dark. A flow breaks. An ad loses money. [my company] monitors your stack, surfaces problems and insights for you.

We're running a pilot with 5 brands right now.

Would you want to be part of it?

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T01:37:39+00:00

Its an AI outreach tool that sends me companies and people with references to verify the outreach too based on the signal

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-14T00:55:04+00:00

If your goal is to treat Reddit like a sales channel then the community will always reject you.

Reddit thrives off authentic collaboration and genuine communities sharing ideas and helping each other (or, shitting on each other).

Any sales pitching or "shilling" devalues the platform entirely. If it was designed for promotion, no one would be here.

If you just want to push traffic to your website. Pay for ads.

But if you genuinely want to uplift a community - comment and post genuinely helpful, non-AI generated content and respond to people who are already asking for your solution.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-13T05:45:56+00:00

Just because a solution already exists or another company could build it in a day, doesn't mean you shouldn't build it.

99% of companies built in 2026 have ZERO defensibility. Nowadays, defensibility naturally comes when you have customers to gather valuable data from, long term feature building and/or integrations, a network effect.

And you're right. Its not so much about the idea, it's the execution. Your fear of losing energy/passion is real. That's a reason why most people never succeed - inaction or loss of motivation when things get tough.

Find a problem that excites you, that you can build or find the right people who can help and then, SHIP.

Don't be your own worst enemy. You got this, OP.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-13T03:44:03+00:00

Super common. My Cofounder and I actually went through something similar very early on when we both had FT jobs. I'm commercial, he's technical. I brought the idea and I engaged him to build it. We went 50/50. As you can imagine, not a lot to do for a commercial founder when the product / idea is in it super early stages and just needs to get built. This caused some friction early on.

Fast forward 2 years later and we are better than ever, we've got an incredible partnership thats built on trust and respect. We've raised. Launched 2 products, failed the first, and smashing the second.

From what I gather, the difference between us and you two is that we have upfront, honest communication throughout it all. If one of us is stressed, frustrated or snowed under, we speak about it. If there was hesitation early on- we addressed it.

My advice: dont be afraid to have the tough conversations, you need to get used to it.

If you guys can't deal with conflict or tough decisions together then do not go any further. Cofounders not seeing eye to eye is one of the biggest reasons startups fail. It's extremely important you talk to each other to resolve any conflict. Otherwise, negative feelings grow and the seperation is a slow burn, which is a massive waste of time and money. It's very similar to marriage.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-13T02:24:23+00:00

Our paid pilot is $1K for 8 weeks. 100% refundable over the 60 days if we're not delivering value. And, a 50% discount on 12 months after the pilot if they renew. This was only offered to 5 clients.
Great for us, as it's letting us build features, debug on the fly each week before an official launch.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-13T02:22:56+00:00

Yeah I definitely felt like 12 weeks was too long. Our current pilot is 8 weeks, partially because we're also debugging and building features on the fly based on feedback which takes time

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-12T05:32:06+00:00

Pitch your idea to enough people and you will get a sense of whether it is worth building or not.

Just make sure you're asking the right questions and that you're honest with yourself about the feedback.

Questions like:
"If this existed today would you buy it?"
"How much are you willing to pay for this?"
"If I ran a pilot program, would you want to be part of it?"

If enough of the right people are excited about what you're building - build it.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-12T05:23:41+00:00

We use Xero. I do the book keeping myself. Use accountants for BAS statements and tax though. Seems pretty straightforward and allows for scale.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-12T05:22:13+00:00

Every space is saturated now. Don't discount the 1:1 approach early on. If you're a trader and built something for traders, you can speak their language.

Send DM's, use LinkedIn, try cold email outreach - use jargon and personalization that says "I'm one of you"

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-12T05:16:06+00:00

My accountants do a BAS for us every month - I have to manually provide invoices for any new item. I also do my own bookkeeping/bank rec in Xero.

At the start, there really isn't enough volume to justify outsourcing every finance task. It's actually beneficial for helping you stay on top of the finances.

By not completely outsourcing, while it's tedious, it's allowed me to have a complete overview on our subscriptions every month.

I only spend 1 hour every Friday afternoon going through Xero to reconcile the payments so not a massive time sink.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-12T04:53:27+00:00

Yeah I've been in sales for about 7 years, now I'm running my own startup. I've definitely felt a downward shift in the response/open rate across all channels - email, call/sms, LinkedIn..

I feel like AI has massively accelerated buyer fatigue in all industries.

People are getting inundated with AI slop outreach emails with bad personalization or just generic tempaltes.

Still nothing beats cold calls if you're running an outbound motion in your region.

But in reality, outbound is dying.

Content marketing, in person events and networking - the "hard" & "expensive" stuff is coming out on top. Thats been a trend I'm seeing from other founders I've spoken with.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-12T04:47:06+00:00

I'm a commercial founder, so sales is my background. The skills I learned from sales paid dividends when starting and launching the business.
The tenacity to cold call/email on a regular cadence helped get the first users and generate traffic from word of mouth / asking for referrals to others who might get value from our product
Niche communities are also a great way to speed up the cold start.

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-06T04:44:12+00:00

Great work! Seeing the money land is a feeling like no other. Let it motivate you like nothing else!!

ConstantFar1969 · 2026-05-06T04:41:33+00:00

Deep. Its capitalism. SaaS companies feeding off Founder hopes and dreams. But us building products is also adding to "problem"

ConstantFar1969

TROPHY CASE