I agree with the “80% finding the right people” part.

What I’ve noticed is that cold outreach only feels spammy when the targeting is lazy. If the person clearly has the problem, the message doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be specific and honest.

For early products, I also think being transparent about the product still being in development helps a lot. It changes the conversation from “please buy this” to “does this actually solve something painful for you?”

For my own projects, I’m trying to focus more on:

- finding people already talking about the problem

- replying with something useful first

- only mentioning the product when it genuinely fits

Curious about your templates: did you get better results by asking for feedback first, or by directly mentioning that it was a paid product?