You need to set up a methodical go-to-market process.
You can automate some of it, but it's good to start manually and learn the ropes first.
You need to understand who your ideal customer is and what channels are they on.
Linkedin is a common one for b2b sales.
If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)
It is extremely hard at start, especially for engineer types (like myself)
Fortunately, it's a skill like any other that can be learned.
> If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)
Doesn't work. Everyone is doing this, your target is getting dozens of messages per day, or 100s if their profile shows them to be a potential decision-maker for purchases.
Maybe, n some rare case, someone in some business hits a pain point that day, and decides there and then that they need a replacement product, and your message gets to them within the next few days, then sure.
I teach AI and have around 18k Instagram followers and about 9k on LinkedIn. Do I need to connect with Instagram influencers for a collab? Is it a good way?, just curious. Btw linkedin cold message gives conversion?
Want to clarify that lazy and ai spamming on LinkedIn is lame, especially for non-tech sales people selling technology.
Also, b2b sales can be foreign to most people - when i've done b2b sales on linkedin it's mostly about just building a relationship. The 5% of the market that is ready to buy will always self identify if they are looking for help.
I'm saying this as someone who has ba background in technology and helping companies purchase software.
There are better ways to use LinkedIn to earn interest and attention of those small percentages that move forward.
Knowing your stuff and how to apply it and not confusing talking for doing is critical.
Influencers who sell courses on topcs they are new to themselves might think introducing people to topics is a cashflow stream, but most will move on and it will be a leaky bucket.
> I always see these LinkedIn or X guys making $500k ARR or $1m ARR within months; how the fkk do they get that many customers without spending on ads?
First, as others have pointed out, that ARR is an amplification number.
Second, if it is not, then they may have spent $1m in marketing for a $500k revenue.
You never know, they aren't going to let anyone see poverty, they're only going to project success.
Is it because I live in a remote place in India and don't have connections to SF companies, like they have companies in the backyard that raised 100 million and can easily make money? This stuff has been bothering me for years!! What am I missing?
Ok and? Nobody actually cares to pay for security unless it’s mandated. Why would someone spend money on your unknown code review tool when the LLM provider the company has already approved can do it?
I could easily give you that title. Or maybe you can even do that yourself.
Lots of new companies are either faked, or amplified.
Example:
If I made a sale of $100 this hour, it can become $864K ARR, with amplification (100 x 24 x 30 x 12).
What to do?
Focus on your job and forget everybody else. Don't ever judge progress by revenue alone. A low revenue company who invents something in energy could be worth all companies exist today. But you never hear about it, because it is the real stuff.
Its fking frustrating and exhausting when you spend 8 months to build something genuinely good and not another AI wrapper and can't get money out of it and teach ai to survive. It sucks man
Yes it does. I spent (and still spending) years developing stuff and still not have enough money out of them.
Some want to kick me out of home because of it. It sucks.
But you never knew when your efforts compound, and that's the point.
To my estimation, you are in B2B, competing with the likes of Wiz. Those with $500k ARR are usually "ad forwarding" or "networking" companies. Think about how you distribute your software, that's probably more important than your current features.
They have an ICP, a no-brainer offer, and they reach out to hundreds of people per day. They also test multiple offers. That's literally it.
Most people can't get customers because they don't do enough targeted consistent volume over one channel.
For example, email requires minimum ~300 targeted sends per day to see any sort of replies. Anything less and you're guessing.
The people running ads spend thousands per month before they have a winning angle, and even then target relatively modest ROAS.
People who make content make it with little views for months or years before finding something that works.
All of this takes time, and more volume than you could imagine. Take however many outreaches you think you should be doing per day, and 10-100x it. That's the real number.
And anyone who tells you "all cold outreach is spam, don't send it!" doesn't understand the game. Most people who view your content/outreach won't buy or find it interesting. The whole point of outreach is to find the 1% who do.
So TLDR: Do more volume and test more offers. There is no shortcut. The people who are winning mostly do more volume than you do.
Recommend the Mom Test as good place to start on how you can make sales before having a product (and figuring out if your product is something people actually want):
Kinda? One of the biggest advantages of being small is that, when someone asks where they can find suchandsuch feature, you can build it and point them to it in the same time it would take a larger company to reply “yeah that’s on our roadmap”. You’ve gotta leverage that to compete.
They cannibalize their social group. For example, they will make a lot of immediate small deals with other people in their cohort, incubator, or investor circle, and then use these deals to get to their next round of investment. Functionally those early sales are just there for signal.
Further, if you "cheat" your first tranche of sales you're potentially burying a valuable negative feedback loop for your product and sales development. The real hurdle, afaik, is mid-market and enterprise sales which is a big jump from getting your buddy to sign a small one year contract.
Just because someone says something on the internet doesn't mean it's true. It's critical to do the CBT or other work to remind ourselves of this.
There is no real get rich scheme. Someone might have 10-15 years of experience and know how something is priced in an inefficient market and know how to capitalize on it (they understand how people buy). In those cases there can be quicker approaches to leverage.
If you do not have funding, you probably need to set aside most startup advice. The resources and time you have available are entirely different.
Spending on ads can be a waste of time if you don't know know to retain the customers you keep.
Google one phrase: Founder-led sales.
Founder-led sales is what must be done before having delusions of product-l ed growth. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just a question of whether you notice how many new things you're trying to learn to do at once.
The secret that you have available to you is you can spend one week building, and then one week in market showing what you've built and getting feedback.
Most people will make their life much harder by picking a startup in an industry that they don't know, trying to solve a problem they've never had nor know the depths of. It can be a subtle form of self-sabotage.
Being problem focused (problems of an identifiable company in the market that says yes to solving a probelm).
You must avoid the disease of building and selling an idea. Solving a problem that's verified is something else.
Back to founder led sales, this means, you, and you alone, must learn the needs from the market, and how to sell it, and get it going.
The first 100 customers is up to you. Do you know how to sell small, medium, or large customers?
Growth is about building an acquisition (marketing and sales system) that can distribute (product) something that can gain and retain customers from the market.
You need to set up a methodical go-to-market process.
You can automate some of it, but it's good to start manually and learn the ropes first.
You need to understand who your ideal customer is and what channels are they on.
Linkedin is a common one for b2b sales.
If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)
It is extremely hard at start, especially for engineer types (like myself)
Fortunately, it's a skill like any other that can be learned.
Read this article for more info https://x.com/namanyayg/status/2097783972302557668?s=46
> If you make 200 connections on linkedin every week and send them a message, some % of that will convert to meetings and sales (the exact % depends on your audience, message, and how urgent the pain you're solving is)
Doesn't work. Everyone is doing this, your target is getting dozens of messages per day, or 100s if their profile shows them to be a potential decision-maker for purchases.
Maybe, n some rare case, someone in some business hits a pain point that day, and decides there and then that they need a replacement product, and your message gets to them within the next few days, then sure.
But, unlikely.
As someone who gets a ton of these inbounds every day, I report every single one of them as spam.
Agreed. And nowadays any sales or promotion posts thst look llm generated are flagged as AI slop
Please don’t send me messages on LinkedIn. The spam is unbearable.
I teach AI and have around 18k Instagram followers and about 9k on LinkedIn. Do I need to connect with Instagram influencers for a collab? Is it a good way?, just curious. Btw linkedin cold message gives conversion?
Appreciate the post.
Want to clarify that lazy and ai spamming on LinkedIn is lame, especially for non-tech sales people selling technology.
Also, b2b sales can be foreign to most people - when i've done b2b sales on linkedin it's mostly about just building a relationship. The 5% of the market that is ready to buy will always self identify if they are looking for help.
I'm saying this as someone who has ba background in technology and helping companies purchase software.
There are better ways to use LinkedIn to earn interest and attention of those small percentages that move forward.
Knowing your stuff and how to apply it and not confusing talking for doing is critical.
Influencers who sell courses on topcs they are new to themselves might think introducing people to topics is a cashflow stream, but most will move on and it will be a leaky bucket.
> I always see these LinkedIn or X guys making $500k ARR or $1m ARR within months; how the fkk do they get that many customers without spending on ads?
First, as others have pointed out, that ARR is an amplification number.
Second, if it is not, then they may have spent $1m in marketing for a $500k revenue.
You never know, they aren't going to let anyone see poverty, they're only going to project success.
Is it because I live in a remote place in India and don't have connections to SF companies, like they have companies in the backyard that raised 100 million and can easily make money? This stuff has been bothering me for years!! What am I missing?
that’s certainly part of it. Your network access matters.
but some people dont have office make shit ton of money from ai slop saas? genuinely frustrated by all the effort I put and no outcome
The thing about gold rushes, and market manias, is that the outcomes are irrational.
Did you build what you want or what your customers need?
its a need of the hour
And none of the LLM providers can do this themselves? I can’t just point Claude at a GitHub repo and ask it to check it for me?
not without sending your code to them, if you have .env file with variables exposed, you will need to rotate again.
Ok and? Nobody actually cares to pay for security unless it’s mandated. Why would someone spend money on your unknown code review tool when the LLM provider the company has already approved can do it?
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How much you want? $1M? $10M?
I could easily give you that title. Or maybe you can even do that yourself.
Lots of new companies are either faked, or amplified.
Example: If I made a sale of $100 this hour, it can become $864K ARR, with amplification (100 x 24 x 30 x 12).
What to do? Focus on your job and forget everybody else. Don't ever judge progress by revenue alone. A low revenue company who invents something in energy could be worth all companies exist today. But you never hear about it, because it is the real stuff.
Its fking frustrating and exhausting when you spend 8 months to build something genuinely good and not another AI wrapper and can't get money out of it and teach ai to survive. It sucks man
Yes it does. I spent (and still spending) years developing stuff and still not have enough money out of them. Some want to kick me out of home because of it. It sucks.
But you never knew when your efforts compound, and that's the point.
Keep up the good work. No. Matter. What.
To my estimation, you are in B2B, competing with the likes of Wiz. Those with $500k ARR are usually "ad forwarding" or "networking" companies. Think about how you distribute your software, that's probably more important than your current features.
the whole vision is not sending code to cloud servers to audit. So people dont worry about the egress
thats nice suggestion tbh
They have an ICP, a no-brainer offer, and they reach out to hundreds of people per day. They also test multiple offers. That's literally it.
Most people can't get customers because they don't do enough targeted consistent volume over one channel.
For example, email requires minimum ~300 targeted sends per day to see any sort of replies. Anything less and you're guessing.
The people running ads spend thousands per month before they have a winning angle, and even then target relatively modest ROAS.
People who make content make it with little views for months or years before finding something that works.
All of this takes time, and more volume than you could imagine. Take however many outreaches you think you should be doing per day, and 10-100x it. That's the real number.
And anyone who tells you "all cold outreach is spam, don't send it!" doesn't understand the game. Most people who view your content/outreach won't buy or find it interesting. The whole point of outreach is to find the 1% who do.
So TLDR: Do more volume and test more offers. There is no shortcut. The people who are winning mostly do more volume than you do.
but sending 300 ish emails make all of my email outbound to spam right!!
You get sales first. Then you build the thing.
But you do need a product for sales aint it
Recommend the Mom Test as good place to start on how you can make sales before having a product (and figuring out if your product is something people actually want):
https://inkubator.si/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/The-Mom-Test...
Kinda? One of the biggest advantages of being small is that, when someone asks where they can find suchandsuch feature, you can build it and point them to it in the same time it would take a larger company to reply “yeah that’s on our roadmap”. You’ve gotta leverage that to compete.
They cannibalize their social group. For example, they will make a lot of immediate small deals with other people in their cohort, incubator, or investor circle, and then use these deals to get to their next round of investment. Functionally those early sales are just there for signal.
That or they just lie on socials.
Further, if you "cheat" your first tranche of sales you're potentially burying a valuable negative feedback loop for your product and sales development. The real hurdle, afaik, is mid-market and enterprise sales which is a big jump from getting your buddy to sign a small one year contract.
So going for an incubator is a good approach as I do have functioning product
How do you know they’re not lying? Words are free.
thats true, but many are genuine btw
Just because someone says something on the internet doesn't mean it's true. It's critical to do the CBT or other work to remind ourselves of this.
There is no real get rich scheme. Someone might have 10-15 years of experience and know how something is priced in an inefficient market and know how to capitalize on it (they understand how people buy). In those cases there can be quicker approaches to leverage.
If you do not have funding, you probably need to set aside most startup advice. The resources and time you have available are entirely different.
Spending on ads can be a waste of time if you don't know know to retain the customers you keep.
Google one phrase: Founder-led sales.
Founder-led sales is what must be done before having delusions of product-l ed growth. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just a question of whether you notice how many new things you're trying to learn to do at once.
The secret that you have available to you is you can spend one week building, and then one week in market showing what you've built and getting feedback.
Most people will make their life much harder by picking a startup in an industry that they don't know, trying to solve a problem they've never had nor know the depths of. It can be a subtle form of self-sabotage.
Being problem focused (problems of an identifiable company in the market that says yes to solving a probelm).
You must avoid the disease of building and selling an idea. Solving a problem that's verified is something else.
Back to founder led sales, this means, you, and you alone, must learn the needs from the market, and how to sell it, and get it going.
The first 100 customers is up to you. Do you know how to sell small, medium, or large customers?
Growth is about building an acquisition (marketing and sales system) that can distribute (product) something that can gain and retain customers from the market.
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