Early-stage AI Startup Books 80 Calls In 10 Weeks - All Done Automatically 🤖

Learn how Cheetah Growth helped Early-stage AI startup find early signals of product-market fit via email and LinkedIn outreach.

1) What was this startup about?

This startup developed an artificial intelligence tool to help product managers (PMs) easily make sense of customer interviews.

The goal was to enable PMs to conduct interviews at scale without feeling overwhelmed, allowing them to gather more insights and build a product that better meets their customers’ needs.

2) What were they looking for?

The team had previously tried to bring other SaaS solutions to market but had always struggled with adoption.

For this new product, Orion Joss, the co-founder wanted to change the approach and validate the product with the entire market, but the team had a product background and needed help in bringing it to market.

The co-founder then decided it was time to find a commercial partner so that his team could focus on product development, and they started working with Cheetah Growth towards that end.

3) What did we achieve?

The team had three months to launch a working MVP and show some traction. That meant we needed to speak with as many prospects as possible as quickly as possible so we could create an MVP that people actually wanted to use.

We booked 80 conversations with ICP prospects in 10 weeks. This meant that the team could:

1. Create multiple iterations and mockups at an unprecedented rate as they talked to more people and refined their ICP.

2. Start building a list of beta users who were interested in testing the MVP and were likely to be their first paying clients.

3. Start developing the MVP sooner than expected using prospect feedback and launch a working MVP within the timeline.

4) How did we achieve such results?

We took the following steps:

1. Defined audience hypotheses

Identified two key target audiences: product managers and early-stage founders.

We established broad targeting criteria to avoid wasting time. We knew that the more people we spoke with, the clearer it would be to determine who to target and who to avoid.

2. Identified outreach channels and overall approach

We needed to reach out to people where we could easily find them so that we could start discovery calls as soon as feasible. We chose to focus on email outbound and LinkedIn outreach.

This allowed us to use a two-pronged approach. We could contact a larger number of people at once using email, and we could engage with more targeted audiences using LinkedIn.

3. Built target lists for email and LinkedIn

We used Apollo for email, which is a database with millions of contacts and emails, including PMs and founders, as well as a significant number of B2B targeting parameters - company size, region, revenue - that allowed us to further segment our lists.

For LinkedIn, we used Sales Navigator. We could easily create lists of PMs and founders using LinkedIn data, focusing mainly on 2nd-degree connections, which will be crucial in the next step.

4. Automated outreach

First, we decided to include the entire team in the outreach. This gave us access to more mailboxes and LinkedIn profiles, so we could send more emails and connect requests.

We chose Apollo again for email since we could automate multiple campaigns at the same time, A/B test, analyse results, and double-down on what worked.

For LinkedIn, we used Overloop to automate dozens of connect requests per day. It integrated with Sales Navigator, and we could automatically add founders and PMs who were 2nd-degree connections of the team to ‘connect request’ campaigns on Overloop.

The key was to focus on 2nd-degree connections, which assured a much better acceptance rate than sending requests to everyone.

5. We asked for knowledge, not money

We didn’t pitch a product in our emails or connect request messages. We just asked for their help, feedback, and thoughts on what we were trying to build, as well as for them to share their knowledge of what good looks like with us.

This elicited a far more positive response, and people were much more willing to give 15 minutes of their time to help us, especially if the outreach came from the founder.

With this approach in place, all the team had to do was host calls. Everything else was automated, allowing them to focus on product development, which was their true specialty.

5) What should I learn from this story?

A) It’s easy to get your ideas in front of others. It's really just a matter of asking for their help and asking a large enough number of people to do so.

B) Automation is your friend. Some founders are hesitant to invest money to scale their outreach since they can do some parts manually, but the time saved is well worth it.

C) Speed creates momentum, which boosts team morale. After exchanging ideas with so many people, the team was reenergized and excited again about the product.

And above all, talk to people before developing anything. Nobody can know what you want if they don't talk to you. It's the same for your customers and everyone else.

6) How can I learn more about Cheetah Growth?

Follow Nuno on LinkedIn to learn about his thoughts on SaaS marketing and growth.

Book a free consultancy call with Nuno to find out how Cheetah Growth can help you validate your ideas and find early signals of product-market fit. 🚀