If I had to start a brand new SaaS or AI company from absolute zero, knowing everything I know from building 3 software companies to over $35M in combined ARR, this is exactly what I would do.
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Why Most Founders Fail
Founders fall in love with their idea instead of their customers’ problems.
They build something for 12-18 months before talking to anyone. That’s why 90% of startups don't make it to $1M ARR because all they had was an idea, locked themselves in a room with their co-founders, built for a year and a half, and then showed up waiting for the world to buy it.
But that’s not how this works.
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Discovery Before Everything
Before writing a single line of code, I'd commit to 50 discovery calls minimum.
Your only goal is to find people who will pay you for something that you haven't built yet, and I'm talking about actual prepayment, not just “Yeah, that sounds interesting.”
My favorite story about this is Barkbox, which is now publicly traded.
Matt Meeker owned a Great Dane and lived in NYC. All the dog stores sold tiny toys for tiny dogs. (This was 2010, pre-Amazon Prime)
Matt took a Photoshop image, showing a monthly delivery of 5 large toys for $29. He went to Washington Square Park and showed it to every large dog owner. When they said they were interested, he literally swiped their card for $29 with a Square reader hooked to his phone.
He got 50 purchases the first day before he even had a website.
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Getting Those First Calls
I'd start with my personal network on LinkedIn. People who actually match my ICP.
Andy Mewborn uses this message for his company: “Hi [first name]. I was at Outreach(.)io, and now I'm building a Highspot and Seismic competitor, 3x cheaper and 10x more user-friendly, and we have around 4,000 active users that love us. Would you be open to giving honest feedback?”
He compensates them with a $100 gift card (and yes, this still works)
You could also offer paid advisory roles to director-level people in your ICP or go to industry events with just a notepad.
Alina Vandenberg, founder of Chili Piper (now $40M ARR), would go to sales meetups and find the most influential people. She'd approach them with a notepad drawing of her product and ask, “Would you buy something like this? And if not, what would we have to change?”
How do you find influential people? She’d look for who’s getting hugged. The person receiving the hug is the one you want to talk to.
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What I’d Ask On Those Calls
I'd lead with my sizzling one-liner that makes people's eyes light up.
For RB2B, it was “person-level website visitor identification.” Before us, there was only company-level. When people heard person-level, they got excited.
Then I’d ask 6 questions:
1. Do you understand the problem I'm trying to solve?
2. Do you have this problem?
3. How are you solving it today?
4. Would you pay for this solution if I could get it to you tomorrow?
5. What else would it need for you to pay for it?
I'm thinking of charging X per month. Would you pay that?
The goal is to understand their pain so deeply that you can solve it better than anyone.
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Stay Manual As Long As Possible
I’d only build what's needed to deliver the core value proposition. If it takes more than 4-6 weeks, I'm building too much.
Everything I want to build but could do manually, I'd do manually at first.
With RB2B, we manually sent spreadsheets over email for 5 months before we even put up a website. We could have built automation tools, but we didn't.
Staying manual kept us incredibly close to customers. We learned things we'd never discover with automation, and we iterated 10x faster than competitors trying to automate everything.
Manual processes are your unfair advantage.
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3 Signals I’d Look For
1. At least one referral per week from paying customers.
2. Customers would be genuinely upset if I took the product away.
3. Organic growth without doing any marketing.
If I don't have all 3, I don't have PMF yet. And until I have these signals, I wouldn't do anything else besides try to get PMF.
Nothing else will work without it.
Once you start seeing organic traffic, you need to know who's visiting your site. That's when you'd want to see exactly who's checking you out.
Start identifying your website visitors for free here.
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Build In Public From Day One
I’d post on LinkedIn from day one. Share the building journey in real time - wins, failures, pivots.
This creates awareness so that when I start outreach, people already know who I am.
With RB2B, I spent months building in public on LinkedIn before we even launched. By launch, we had a 1,600-person waitlist and 300 meetings booked.
That early content let us hit $1M ARR in just 6 weeks post-launch.
And all that content drives traffic to your website. But if you don't know who's visiting, you're leaving deals on the table.
See who's visiting your site with RB2B (free to start)
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The Magic Triangle
Once I have PMF, I'd activate 3 channels: Content, outreach, and retargeting.
Each channel feeds the other two.
Content drives awareness and generates web traffic.
Outreach converts those warm website visitors.
Retargeting brings back people who weren't ready yet.
Content alone is too slow.
Outbound alone has terrible conversion rates - cold email is basically dead.
Retargeting alone doesn't generate a new pipeline.
But together, they create a compounding engine.
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How I’d Do Outreach
2 types of outreach:
1. Cold outreach only to people in my ICP. I'd use Apollo for lists of founders and marketers at SaaS companies from 5 to 200 employees. 3 people per company.
2. Warm outreach to people visiting my website. That's why I built RB2B.
After you install it, RB2B identifies your anonymous website visitors at the person level. First name, job title, LinkedIn profile, business email.
Instead of cold outreach, you're following up with people who already showed interest.
For email, I'd use Instantly or Smartlead and rotate hundreds of domains. 2 inboxes per domain, sending 2-10 emails per day from each. This low volume lets emails sneak past spam filters.
For LinkedIn, I'd connect with 10-20 prospects daily. Connection requests with no messages - acceptance rates are high, especially for website visitors.
After they accept, I'd wait for them to engage with my content. Once they like or comment: “Hey [first name]. Thanks for the like. How are things going at [company]?”
Response rate is usually north of 60%.
I'd never sell on LinkedIn. Just build rapport to get them on a call.
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Retargeting Ties It Together
I’d install pixels from LinkedIn, Meta, Google, and Twitter. Create custom audiences from website visitors and lookalike audiences from paying customers.
For ad creative, I'd use the who, what, why, how framework:
Who are you?
What do you have?
Why do they need it?
How can they get it?
Keep it authentic. Selfie videos I record on my phone actually perform best.
This is what makes the magic triangle work.
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Start Here
You can start using RB2B completely free. We'll identify your anonymous website visitors and send their LinkedIn profiles straight to your Slack.
Get started with RB2B.
Adam