The comments on cold outreach on HN are always going to be negative. I assume the majority of us here are developers and go to insane lengths to block "spammers".
That said, even YC (can't find the exact Dalton + Michael episode) encourages cold outreach. If it didn't work, people wouldn't still be doing it.
Cold outreach is the only way I found to actually find users early on. No amount of blogs or social media stuff will get you users.
I had a product that got thousands of views from a Reddit post. Out of those, literally 0 clicked anywhere besides the page they landed on. I've been #2 on Product Hunt, 0 have actually used the product after clicking into it the first time.
Most products have a very tiny customer base, and they're not just casually browsing social media looking to find your exact product. You need to find these people and reach out to them directly.
Don't lie, but do little things that show them that you respect their time. Keep it short, tell them what the product is in plain English. Do some amount of research to qualify them as a potential customer. Try to tailor it to be relevant to them. Put your real name behind it. Ask them for feedback even if they wouldn't pay for your product. And don't follow up more than once or maybe twice.
It sucks. No one likes doing it. But if something is actually relevant for me, I would at least be curious enough to take a meeting. Unfortunately the only cold emails I get is from dev pod-shops or venture debt type people which are uninteresting.
You are on point with what you have just said, and I agree with that as well. Other than that, the most important part, if you have to get the right users, is the right targeting, which is not in most of our control. If you are doing it on Reddit, product, and/or even news hacker as well, right now hyper-targeting is really important so that people can relate to it. Everywhere, they are already seeing the marketing. That is why ads work the best, because you can target the exact audience you want.
Even with the AI thing, I think YouTube and Instagram models are improved so much that they are now taking your content to the right audience, unlike before. They used to serve it to random 10 people, then used to see the engagement, and then improve on that. Now they are on different paths where they are doing psychology- and interest-based targeting, and cold outreach does exactly the same. Even if it is the slowest, it is the most powerful as well, one of the most powerful.
Right there with you. All the products I have built are not interesting to the HN or ProductHunt crowd. I don't even bother in those channels. Anyone reading this, find the places that are actually relevant to your customers.
I get a lot of office cleaning / janitorial spam (I don't have an office) alongside the dev shop spam. Just checked my junk SMS folder, I had 5 SMS messages for "fundraising" for a company gone 10 years ago. It is non-stop.
If it didn't work, people wouldn't still be doing it.
The same can be said for all sorts of activities, from the illegal and unethical to the mundane.
Although, to be fair, you're right. Which is why I actively make it my goal to make doing cold sales outreach more costly to the companies doing it than if they had done nothing at all. A BDR cold emailing me is a pretty good way to make sure your software does not get considered by my organization, and I'm very likely going to cost their privacy/compliance team more time than they spent contacting me unwantedly in the first place.
I wish BDR's and AE's could just answer the important questions I have for them in the first call. I have wasted countless hours of my life sitting in sales meetings, when my wallet is already open.
It really shouldn't be that hard, I even would do the work of "hey this is our expected usage, I have already adjusted for an overage buffer, how much?".
Some commenters did indeed discuss cold outreach, in spite of TFA author willfully misrepresenting his activity of “networking” as “cold” when it really wasn’t.
Come to find out that most HN commenters don’t know/care what “cold calling/email” actually entails, and that “networking” is somehow equivalent and equally miraculous!
Yeah, wish I’d ignored them sooner. “Spammers” don’t care if they bother people with offers that have no potential to benefit them. But actual entrepreneurs wanting to serve people with their products need to know that cold outreach is essential to get off the ground, and that they should fiercely ignore the people that call it spamming.
It's just the same thing viewed from two perspectives. For the sender, it's cold outreach - even when it's about some Viagra clone. For the receiver, it's spam - even when it's about AGI for $5.
Comments
The comments on cold outreach on HN are always going to be negative. I assume the majority of us here are developers and go to insane lengths to block "spammers".
That said, even YC (can't find the exact Dalton + Michael episode) encourages cold outreach. If it didn't work, people wouldn't still be doing it.
Cold outreach is the only way I found to actually find users early on. No amount of blogs or social media stuff will get you users.
I had a product that got thousands of views from a Reddit post. Out of those, literally 0 clicked anywhere besides the page they landed on. I've been #2 on Product Hunt, 0 have actually used the product after clicking into it the first time.
Most products have a very tiny customer base, and they're not just casually browsing social media looking to find your exact product. You need to find these people and reach out to them directly.
Don't lie, but do little things that show them that you respect their time. Keep it short, tell them what the product is in plain English. Do some amount of research to qualify them as a potential customer. Try to tailor it to be relevant to them. Put your real name behind it. Ask them for feedback even if they wouldn't pay for your product. And don't follow up more than once or maybe twice.
It sucks. No one likes doing it. But if something is actually relevant for me, I would at least be curious enough to take a meeting. Unfortunately the only cold emails I get is from dev pod-shops or venture debt type people which are uninteresting.
You are on point with what you have just said, and I agree with that as well. Other than that, the most important part, if you have to get the right users, is the right targeting, which is not in most of our control. If you are doing it on Reddit, product, and/or even news hacker as well, right now hyper-targeting is really important so that people can relate to it. Everywhere, they are already seeing the marketing. That is why ads work the best, because you can target the exact audience you want.
Even with the AI thing, I think YouTube and Instagram models are improved so much that they are now taking your content to the right audience, unlike before. They used to serve it to random 10 people, then used to see the engagement, and then improve on that. Now they are on different paths where they are doing psychology- and interest-based targeting, and cold outreach does exactly the same. Even if it is the slowest, it is the most powerful as well, one of the most powerful.
Right there with you. All the products I have built are not interesting to the HN or ProductHunt crowd. I don't even bother in those channels. Anyone reading this, find the places that are actually relevant to your customers.
I get a lot of office cleaning / janitorial spam (I don't have an office) alongside the dev shop spam. Just checked my junk SMS folder, I had 5 SMS messages for "fundraising" for a company gone 10 years ago. It is non-stop.
The same can be said for all sorts of activities, from the illegal and unethical to the mundane.
Although, to be fair, you're right. Which is why I actively make it my goal to make doing cold sales outreach more costly to the companies doing it than if they had done nothing at all. A BDR cold emailing me is a pretty good way to make sure your software does not get considered by my organization, and I'm very likely going to cost their privacy/compliance team more time than they spent contacting me unwantedly in the first place.
I wish BDR's and AE's could just answer the important questions I have for them in the first call. I have wasted countless hours of my life sitting in sales meetings, when my wallet is already open.
It really shouldn't be that hard, I even would do the work of "hey this is our expected usage, I have already adjusted for an overage buffer, how much?".
What might this look like for you?
(I don’t cold email except thanks or say questions btw, but I am curious!)
Probably some GDPR requests to remove their email and other personal information from their databases.
Cold outreach was recently discussed on HN some days ago with this comment even highlighted! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104838
Some commenters did indeed discuss cold outreach, in spite of TFA author willfully misrepresenting his activity of “networking” as “cold” when it really wasn’t.
Come to find out that most HN commenters don’t know/care what “cold calling/email” actually entails, and that “networking” is somehow equivalent and equally miraculous!
Yeah, wish I’d ignored them sooner. “Spammers” don’t care if they bother people with offers that have no potential to benefit them. But actual entrepreneurs wanting to serve people with their products need to know that cold outreach is essential to get off the ground, and that they should fiercely ignore the people that call it spamming.
It's just the same thing viewed from two perspectives. For the sender, it's cold outreach - even when it's about some Viagra clone. For the receiver, it's spam - even when it's about AGI for $5.
Stealing is also an effective way to enrich yourself, otherwise criminals wouldn't still be doing it.
Yup. That’s why rape and murder is so popular.