preston-kwei

Hi everyone,

I’m building Persona, a platform to delegate email scheduling to AI. Lately, I’ve been working hard to get those first users on board, but it’s been quite challenging.

I’ve already tried the typical strategies that everybody talks about: cold email, LinkedIn InMail, careful targeting, decent copy. It’s mostly been a dead end. Low open rates, almost no replies.

At this point, I’m not looking for the usual advice you see in blog posts or on reddit. I’m specifically curious about unconventional or non-obvious things that actually worked for you early on, especially things that felt a bit scrappy, weird, or counterintuitive at the time.

If you’ve been through this phase, what genuinely worked and got you your first users?

I’m currently building a B2B product for SMBs and doing sales myself. The target users are early-stage founders.

I can usually get meetings through warm intros, but cold outreach over email has been inconsistent. My emails often get ignored, and I rarely receive replies.

For people who’ve sold products founder-to-founder: what actually changed outcomes for you?