How John Kim Won His Startup Its First 100 Customers

No matter how great your product or service is, bringing it to market presents a unique set of challenges.

"It kind of hurt my head," says John Kim, co-founder of Paraform, "There are so many variables to outbound. What actually works?"

Paraform is a marketplace that help companies hire top talent by matching them with expert recruiters. Even with an innovative solution, John faced the same fundamental challenge every founder knows: how do you actually reach your first customers?

John started with an important question: What messaging works on me?

"When I reply to emails, it's not usually because the copy is stellar or because they reference my high school," says John, "I respond to emails when the timing is right, when I need that product right then."

This insight became Paraform's north star. "Because the highest intent will always be based on timing, this became our inspiration." Executing on this philosophy meant investing in the tools to target and get through to the right prospects at scale.

Here's how Paraform secured its first 100 customers using Apollo, plus tactics you can apply to your own cold email strategy.

Every email spot needs to reflect your ICP

Building lists that reflected their ICP was priority number one.

"We knew exactly what we shouldn't do is hit up someone who wasn't hiring. That's just wasting an email spot," John remembers.

They used Apollo to filter against the attributes that were most important to them in a customer:

• mid- to enterprise-level
• recently-funded accounts
• with open headcount and new job postings.

"Tools like Apollo make it easy. You can see if someone is hiring, see buying intent. There are awesome filters where you can find, for example, a high-intent Head of Talent that started their job within the last 6 months," says John.

With fresh lists of leads, they took it a step further and built custom Python scripts to further clean and enrich their target contacts.

But that was only half the battle. They had to make sure their outreach would land in inboxes too.

How to set up your inbox for maximum deliverability

As email service providers continue to crack down on spam regulations, a "spray and pray" approach or failure to set up strong deliverability foundations is a recipe for getting blocked.

"As an early-stage startup, we didn't want to get banned while we refined our volume strategy," says John.

First, John bought additional domains like, getparaform.com and useparaform.com, and started many new inboxes.

To properly warm up their email addresses, they started at a low volume: 40 emails per day per inbox.

Then, they customized their sending schedules, ensuring that emails didn't go out any sooner than 7 minutes apart.

With this setup in place, the Paraform team saw more emails being successfully delivered into inboxes, without negative impacts on their domain. It resulted in open rates skyrocketing to 83%.

Download Apollo's free deliverability checklist for a step-by-step walkthrough of setting up your inboxes.

Automated sequences that convert

As a founder, it can be a massive leap going from reaching out to your direct network to completely cold prospects.

"We got complacent with this idea that the sales motion is easy and short, but that runs out pretty quickly," says John, "I thought it was okay to manually email and didn't realize the importance of an email sequencing tool like Apollo."

John and his team queued up their leads into two automated campaigns, built around three email touchpoints with a basic formula:

• Email #1: The Value Prop
  
  
• Email #2: The Gentle Nudge. A quick "Hey just following up and making sure you got my note"
  
  
• Email #3: The Timing Check. Asking simply "Is this the right time? If not, let me know."

They found that 90% of their responses were coming from this simple follow-up format, particularly on the third email.

"The highest decision makers all send and read very informal emails," says John. "There are so many emails. Even if you just want them to read your email, you need to follow up and keep it simple."

To get them to read your email, you also need a killer subject line. John came back to his audience-first approach for their top performer: "Brex's competitive advantage".

"We knew our buyers knew Brex and thought they would want to know how they found success doing something similar to what we do," says John. "To write a good subject line you really want to think about what topics your audience is interested in."

Why cold email works: Paraform's results

Paraform started booking cold meetings in less time, a significant sign for John that his product was something that people wanted.

Additional proof was in the numbers. By focusing on timing, deliverability, and relevant messaging, Paraform saw:

• 80% open rates on their best sequences
• 5% conversion rate to new customers
• 100+ customers secured through outbound alone

Plus, a fun fact: Paraform got their angel investors via cold email, too! Including a response from none other than Andre Iguodala 👀

These results didn't come from perfect copy or advanced personalization. They came from understanding that cold email success is ultimately about reaching the right person at the right time with a message that actually gets delivered.

Start building your cold email strategy with the right tools

There are dozens of avenues and strategies to successfully bring your product to market. But in today's competitive market, investing in the prospecting layer and impeccable email deliverability is the baseline for success.

Try Apollo for free today and instantly gain access to 275M+ contacts and the engagement suite you need to build pipeline.