June 1, 2026
Cold Email
Tired of sending resumes into black-hole career mailboxes? Learn a value-first, 7-step cold-email playbook that bypassed gatekeepers and got replies from active founders at high-growth DevTool startups.
Get the email from Apollo, shoot that mail to your dream company/founder.
Right? You would've heard this millions of times.
Did you try it? Yes, probably yes. What are the chances you got a reply? Maybe 1, or 0.
Yes, it's real. It's 2026, and you don't get replies as easily as one used to get in 2016.
I did the same thing everyone told me to do.
It didn't work.
Same cliche line and hook.
But recently, I changed my approach, which helped me get better responses than just shooting the same email with your resume.
I am writing it down in steps so you get better clarity on how you can implement it in your case.
Step 1: Follow the same email-hunting step using either Apollo or Hunter. You get 50 free tokens, that's enough to get started.
Step 2: Get that 1-month free subscription of LinkedIn. You get 50 InMails there too. It increases your chances.
Step 3: Use Claude and get your leads catered to your needs. Make sure to double-check that the person is active on LinkedIn as well.
Step 4: Pick only 2 leads every day for the next 25 days. This is the most important step. Search the company's LinkedIn page, understand what they are building, what issue they are trying to solve, and what improvements you, as an individual, can make.
Step 5: After spending maybe an hour, you will have a very clear picture of what you can pitch. Draft a small message, make it super personalized, and use AI only to correct your grammar. Record a small 1-2 minute Loom video explaining your approach and how you would solve the issue. Shoot that email. Simple!
Step 6: Maybe there will be chances that you won't get a reply, but you will surely convert 10 leads if you pitch the solution properly.
Step 7: Repeat this, and if you don't get replies from the first 50 leads, my DMs are always open. I'll help you make your pitch better and point out what we can improve.
Bonus step: Try tracking the leads in a sheet and follow up after a week. Also, try reaching out to growth managers on LinkedIn via InMail.
In my case, I am doing an additional step of posting it publicly on my LinkedIn so that I have more chances of getting their attention.
All the Best ;)))