How I Closed My First 10 Customers For $8.4k Using Cold Email.
Cold emailing isn’t dead. Most people just do it wrong.
I used to send long, 3–5 paragraph emails… and hear nothing back. As an engineer, sales felt like a foreign language. Frustrating, confusing, and honestly terrifying.
Most cold-email advice? Garbage.
Forget “AI personalization” and “mass outreach”— those are lazy shortcuts.
The truth? In a world flooded with AI email slop, standing out is easier than ever if you write authentic, human emails.
Sales isn’t magic, it’s a science.
Every email and call is an experiment to see what triggers a response.
The goal? Tweak your sales variables until your positive responses and revenue rise.
Most people say cold outreach doesn’t work because they quit too soon. They send 10 emails, get ghosted, and give up crying “cold outreach doesn’t work!”.
Meanwhile, the real winners send 50, 100, even 200 messages a day— constantly failing, iterating, and improving until they crack the code.
The secret: send thousands of emails. Track what works. Change what doesn’t.
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Here’s the simple, step-by-step framework I followed to land my first 10 customers and $8.4k in revenue for my startup Rivin.ai, providing Walmart data for Walmart sellers and brands…
1. Build a high-quality lead list first.
If you email the wrong people, no outreach will work
You need to precisely target your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) using LinkedIn. Anything besides LinkedIn for lead finding is irrelevant unless you’re in some weird industry where no one is online.
Better yet: find people complaining about the exact problem you solve in online conversations.
For Rivin.ai, our primary customers are Walmart sellers and brands, so we researched brands and sellers on Walmart and found them on LinkedIn.
2. Write concise, 3 to 5 sentence emails using this structure:
“Hey [Name]
Personalized one sentence to show you’ve done your research.
Frame their problem + briefly explain how you solve it.
Clear call to action (CTA) — always ask a question.”
Sales is a numbers and iteration game. Every message you send sharpens your approach and improves your data.
3. Track key metrics like open rates, reply rates, and positive responses to understand what’s working and what isn’t.
Use this feedback loop to constantly tweak all four variables: your personalized sentence, problem framing, solution value proposition, and call to action.
Truthfully, the more emails you send, the larger your data becomes and the better your results will get.
4. Don’t rely on email alone.
You need to combine your cold emailing with:
LinkedIn connection requests and personalized messages
Engaging authentically with prospects’ social posts
Cold calls
Every interaction— no matter how small, increases the chance that your prospect will recognize your name and respond to your outreach.
Relying on email-only sales automation tools like Smartlead.ai will not get you results.
You need to be everywhere.
5. Follow up.
Send 2–3 polite follow-ups spaced a few days apart.
Most replies come from follow-ups, not just the initial message.
But here’s the catch: follow-ups can’t just repeat your original message.
If people didn’t respond the first time, you need to change your messaging to address why.
For example, try a 3-4 sentence follow-up email with a different value proposition and a similar CTA, like:
“Hey [Name],
Reference the last email or personalized stated priorities.
Frame problem differently.
Present your solution differently.
Clear call to action (CTA) — always ask a question.”
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Cold outreach may seem overwhelming or complicated, but it isn’t.
Stop overthinking and build a repeatable process.
Send lots of messages. Adjust based on what works.
Use every channel you can: email, social, phone.
Keep going and you will get customers…
And know your “sales math”: How many outreaches equals how much revenue?
I followed this exact method— to close my startup’s first $8.4k in revenue.
Since then, my startup Rivin.ai has gone on to work with billion-dollar Walmart brands and sellers, giving them the data insights they need to win on Walmart.com.
Cold outreach didn’t just bring in customers, it’s the reason we landed our legendary investor, Jason Calacanis.
Our cold emails sparked a conversation. That conversation turned into multiple calls. And those calls ended with him backing us.
From zero revenue, we:
Closed $8.4k from our first 10 customers
Started working with billion-dollar Walmart brands
Secured investment from a world-class investor
All from one repeatable cold outreach framework.
Sales is not complicated— but it is hard.
This cold outreach strategy took my startup Rivin.ai from zero to working with billion-dollar Walmart brands and sellers— all by mastering cold outreach.
What has your experience with cold email been? What software tools do you use and what are your reply rates?
P.S. I’m currently doing a 2-week outreach challenge and live-streaming it to show you all exactly how simple and repeatable cold outreach really is.