The New Rules of AI Outreach and Founder Efficiency
Welcome back to Founder Mode!
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the real work behind AI growth. Not the hype. Not the shiny demos. When creating something that customers use daily, you have important choices to make. Focus on their needs and the features they value. Regularly test your ideas to see if they work well. This approach helps you build something truly useful. At Pretty Good AI, we keep learning that success is not about sending more messages or building more features. It comes down to how well we learn, how fast we adapt, and how deeply we understand the people we want to help.
This week, I want to highlight key lessons on cold outreach, founder efficiency, and building true trust in a fast-moving market. We got these ideas from our own tests at PGA, chats with other AI founders, and by seeing what really works in the field.
Here are the insights that matter most.
The Storyteller Cold Email Is Dead
For a long time, founders believed cold emails should tell a story. We assumed rapport building would create trust. But the algorithms have changed everything. Modern spam filters kill long emails before they even reach a human.
At PGA, once we cut our emails down to one or two plain sentences, response rates increased. It turns out the person on the other side did not want the story. They just wanted to know if we could solve their problem.
Short. Clear. Direct. The shorter the message, the more it gets read.
Agentic Validation Is the New SDR
One of the biggest shifts at PGA this year was replacing hours of manual research with AI agents. We used to have people checking websites, profiles, and tech stacks. Now we have AI doing all of it at scale.
In practice, it looks like this. Scrape websites. Let an AI agent scan them for specific tools or workflows. Filter the results. Then sendan email.
The result is higher accuracy, lower cost, and better lists. The lesson is simple. If your Ideal Customer Profile depends on hidden details, let an AI agent be your researcher. Humans should close deals, not dig through websites.
Outbound Economics Are Ruthless
Most cold outreach does not fail because the leads are bad. It fails because the product is priced too low.
Cold traffic only works if you have a high ticket offer or a high lifetime value. If your price is tiny, your margins will get crushed by the cost of meetings, follow-ups, and churn.
At PGA, we had to learn this the hard way. Once we focused on high-value outcomes and priced based on results, outbound became profitable.
Outbound is a megaphone. Only use it when the math works.
Engagement Beats Audience Size
Everyone loves bragging about follower counts. But followers do not buy. Commenters do.
If a competitor gets two thousand comments on a post, those people are raising their hands. They have a problem. They are searching for answers. They want a solution.
It’s always been more successful to scrape commenters than followers. A smaller list of engaged people is worth far more than a massive list of passive ones.
Async Validation Beats Onboarding Calls
Technical founders waste a lot of time on long onboarding calls with agencies. I used to think those calls were required. They are not.
A better way is to hand over the exact prompts and validation steps we use inside PGA. Then tell the agency to bring back a sample list. No call needed.
This simple shift saves hours and keeps engagements focused on the only thing that matters: the quality of the data. If the list is good, continue. If not, stop instantly.
The Urgency Gap Is Normal
As PGA grows, I notice a natural gap between how I work and how the team works. Founders move fast. We operate before the sun is up. The team works in a more steady rhythm. That tension is healthy.
The founder pushes speed. The team pushes quality. You need both. If you are not arguing about timelines, you are probably not moving fast enough.
Automation Should Feel Manual
The best outbound does not look automated. It looks like a single thoughtful email sent from a real person.
Templates inside Gmail outperform fancy HTML blasts. No banners. No buttons. No unsubscribe links. Just clean text.
This style matches how I naturally communicate, and it creates replies that feel human. Automation should scale the human touch, not replace it.
If Your Ops Are Not Breaking, You Are Not Growing
I used to panic when our CRM looked messy or our onboarding docs fell behind. Now I see it as a signal. Growth creates chaos.
When PGA went from a trickle of leads to a real pipeline, things broke quickly. That was a good sign. It meant we finally had demand.
Your job is not to keep everything perfect. Your job is to fix the pieces that block revenue and let the rest catch up later.
Weaponize FOMO With Redacted Benchmarks
One of the highest performing outreach tactics we have used at PGA is sending anonymized results. Telling a clinic, "A group like yours cut call time by X percent," builds credibility right away.
This flips the conversation. Instead of asking “Who are you?” they start asking “Why am I behind?”
Peer pressure is a growth engine. Use it wisely.
Do Not Burn Your Waitlist
A big waitlist looks impressive until you ruin it with the wrong messages. If you email people who don’t fit your ideal customer profile, it can hurt your domain reputation.
At PGA, we treat waitlist segments separately. They get high-level updates, not deep outbound messaging. I learned this the hard way. Protect your domain, protect your list, and focus your strongest messaging on the people who are actually a fit.
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5 Key Takeaways
- Short emails win. Keep cold outreach tight and valuable.
- Let AI do the research. Save human time for conversations that matter.
- Outbound needs high LTV. The math decides what is possible.
- Engagement beats followers. Talk to the people already raising their hands.
- Treat growth as messy. Broken systems mean you are scaling.
Final Thoughts
AI provides great chances, but the companies that succeed are the ones that stay disciplined. At PGA, our biggest breakthroughs happened when we simplified and tightened our loops. We used AI to boost leverage without adding noise.
Cold outreach is no longer about clever words or fancy tech. It is about focus, precision, and respect for the customer’s time. The same principles apply to building AI products and building trust.
The more I build, the more I believe this. Consistency beats genius. Clarity beats cleverness. Trust beats contracts. And month to month value beats any long-term promise.
See you on Friday,
-kevin
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