Hi Preston, I took a look at this and here's my comments:
- Wrong ICP, "early stage founders" is not a buyer. They don't have enough email spam problems. Later-stage founders who do already have an EA.
- You're assuming the pain. People generally don't have problem with email scheduling. And if someone were truly spending 6+ hours a week on it, they would have already delegated.
- The messaging framing hurts you. The moment Persona is compared to a human EA, you lose on judgment, context, and trust.
What could work though,
- Narrow to a pathological edge case. One role, one moment, one acute pain.
Examples: solo VCs without EAs, boutique bankers mid-deal, lawyers coordinating multi-party calls under time pressure, founders actively fundraising without support.
- Reframe away from scheduling. Don’t sell logistics or efficiency. Sell control. This is a way more powerful messaging instead.
- Stop outbound. Insert parasitically into their workflow. Live where the pain already exists. Gmail plugins, CRM edges, investor update workflows. Be an appendage, not a destination.
- Accept that this may not be a standalone company. It may only survive as a feature inside a larger assistant or email client.
I know it's a bitter fruit but think about this and digest it. This isn’t about tactics. The problem doesn’t hurt enough for the people you’re targeting, at the moment you’re targeting them.
I worked on a language learning site and in order to try to onboard tutors, I wrote a script that scraped the Preply tutor list, which gave first names, pictures, and a YouTube account link.
From there I made a spreadsheet and spent hours googling names and trying to match up pictures to faces, sending messages asking if they'd like to be a part of a pilot program on my platform.
Got quite a few people willing to try it out :) but sadly the startup didn't succeed. Fun times though.
Interesting! I bet now with AI, you can create an agent to do this. I'm glad that worked, however, we're targeting founders of b2b saas companies who are early stage, and that is quite a broad search.
> First time founders are obsessed with product. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution.
I have personally grown an app from zero to 100k+ users, with no marketing budget. I don't have a magic formula, but i can say in hindsight that the first 5 users were harder to get than the next 999,995.
Here was my secret: I begged. Finding 5 people to actually use my product was soooo freakin hard. Once I got to ~100, organic growth started to take over, but things like responding to emails, fixing bugs and looking into new features right away make early users personally like you and more likely to tell their friends.
The hard part is finding the right people at the right time. I googled "Persona email scheduling" and found https://usepersona.app/, so I'll assume that is you. I don't know much about your product, but i assume you are targeting people who need to schedule lots of meetings. I have a few notes:
1) Your pricing is crazy. $660/year is a lot for automated meeting scheduling. Your comp should be Calendly which is closer to $10/month.
2) What problem are you trying to solve? Calendly seems pretty close to the perfect solution for one-on-one meetings. This seems to be for scheduling larger groups. Make that clear at the top of the page. If you are directly competing with Calendly, then just make that clear.
3) I'm not the audience, but think about who really has this problem. For me, 90% of my group meetings are scheduled within my company and we use Google calendar to find times that work. I dont do this enough that I'd feel compelled to try out a new product. Sales people schedule lots of 1-on-1 calls, but not sure that group calls is a big issue. So think about who this is really for. In general, just about the only time i will try a new product is if it provokes my curiosity (not gonna happen for a meeting scheduling bot) or it is solving a problem I need solved right now. Some products are really great, but finding the right person at the right time is a huge challenge. This is why I brought up the quote at the beginning. The right product with no distribution is very hard to get off the ground. I'd say that your early goal should be to find power users if possible... if you try to spread too wide of a net, you will probably fail. Better to have a few people who love your app than a larger group of people who think it's nice.
4) Let's say you do get a few users. Well, you are an email scheduling tool, so distribution is actually built on. On your free or basic plans, you can have a banner at the bottom of outgoing emails that says "This email was drafted by Persona, the tool for automated emails". Now you have free marketing on every email that goes out. Same way that my calendly link is free marketing for calendly. If people want that banner removed, they can upgrade their plan.
Again, take this advice for what it's worth, which is very little, since 1) I dont know your market well, and 2) what worked for me may not work for you.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I really like that quote -- hopefully I start another company and think about distribution straight off the bat. Can I ask what the product was? Even just a general idea. And, how did you find the emails.
I've found myself procrastinating a lot when it comes to trying to acquire users. It's a lot more fun to build features than it is to do cold outreach. Yes, you found the site :).
1) Understandable, let me reply to the other 3 points to see if pricing makes sense after that.
2) We’re not trying to replace Calendly. Calendly is great for link-based 1:1 scheduling, but many execs still operate primarily over email and actively avoid sending links. Persona is an email delegation layer that handles inbound scheduling end-to-end: proactive follow-ups, coordinating across long threads, and dynamically rescheduling when higher-priority contacts come in. That distinction should definitely be clearer on the landing page.
3) Fair point that you’re not the audience. We’re focused on founders and execs who spend a meaningful amount of time coordinating meetings over email. For them, the pain isn’t finding a time once, it’s the constant back-and-forth, follow-ups, and reshuffling priorities. Not everyone can afford a human EA, and link-based scheduling tools can’t handle that level of personalization (talking to an investor is very different than a friend). Research we’ve seen shows execs still spend 6+ hours per week on scheduling.
4) That’s a good point, and we’re thinking along similar lines. Since Persona operates directly over email, there’s a natural distribution loop there, similar to Calendly links, and we plan to lean into that more deliberately. Would you be bothered if you were on our 23/mo plan and still had a banner there? Also, do you think there should be a free tier beyond the 14 day trial?
Software for teachers. Teachers tend to talk to each other, which is great for distribution. On the other hand, they have very little spending power. But back on the other hand again, they don't get as many cold emails as execs do.
> Research we’ve seen shows execs still spend 6+ hours per week on scheduling.
Be very careful not to delude yourself here. No one is spending 6+ hours a week on scheduling who is willing to use your tool. That's almost a full workday. If you are at this point, you probably have a human assistant who handles this.
> Would you be bothered if you were on our 23/mo plan and still had a banner there?
Probably not. But if i were, i'd probably just upgrade to a higher plan.
Hi Preston, I took a look at this and here's my comments:
What could work though, Examples: solo VCs without EAs, boutique bankers mid-deal, lawyers coordinating multi-party calls under time pressure, founders actively fundraising without support. I know it's a bitter fruit but think about this and digest it. This isn’t about tactics. The problem doesn’t hurt enough for the people you’re targeting, at the moment you’re targeting them.I worked on a language learning site and in order to try to onboard tutors, I wrote a script that scraped the Preply tutor list, which gave first names, pictures, and a YouTube account link.
From there I made a spreadsheet and spent hours googling names and trying to match up pictures to faces, sending messages asking if they'd like to be a part of a pilot program on my platform.
Got quite a few people willing to try it out :) but sadly the startup didn't succeed. Fun times though.
Interesting! I bet now with AI, you can create an agent to do this. I'm glad that worked, however, we're targeting founders of b2b saas companies who are early stage, and that is quite a broad search.
if someone annoyed me with ai like this, i wouldnt even waste the energy on an AI summary.
On the other hand, im probably not good enough at anything to even be worth the waste of energy to annoy me.
I went through the same funnel, but no response
I like this quote:
> First time founders are obsessed with product. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution.
I have personally grown an app from zero to 100k+ users, with no marketing budget. I don't have a magic formula, but i can say in hindsight that the first 5 users were harder to get than the next 999,995.
Here was my secret: I begged. Finding 5 people to actually use my product was soooo freakin hard. Once I got to ~100, organic growth started to take over, but things like responding to emails, fixing bugs and looking into new features right away make early users personally like you and more likely to tell their friends.
The hard part is finding the right people at the right time. I googled "Persona email scheduling" and found https://usepersona.app/, so I'll assume that is you. I don't know much about your product, but i assume you are targeting people who need to schedule lots of meetings. I have a few notes:
1) Your pricing is crazy. $660/year is a lot for automated meeting scheduling. Your comp should be Calendly which is closer to $10/month.
2) What problem are you trying to solve? Calendly seems pretty close to the perfect solution for one-on-one meetings. This seems to be for scheduling larger groups. Make that clear at the top of the page. If you are directly competing with Calendly, then just make that clear.
3) I'm not the audience, but think about who really has this problem. For me, 90% of my group meetings are scheduled within my company and we use Google calendar to find times that work. I dont do this enough that I'd feel compelled to try out a new product. Sales people schedule lots of 1-on-1 calls, but not sure that group calls is a big issue. So think about who this is really for. In general, just about the only time i will try a new product is if it provokes my curiosity (not gonna happen for a meeting scheduling bot) or it is solving a problem I need solved right now. Some products are really great, but finding the right person at the right time is a huge challenge. This is why I brought up the quote at the beginning. The right product with no distribution is very hard to get off the ground. I'd say that your early goal should be to find power users if possible... if you try to spread too wide of a net, you will probably fail. Better to have a few people who love your app than a larger group of people who think it's nice.
4) Let's say you do get a few users. Well, you are an email scheduling tool, so distribution is actually built on. On your free or basic plans, you can have a banner at the bottom of outgoing emails that says "This email was drafted by Persona, the tool for automated emails". Now you have free marketing on every email that goes out. Same way that my calendly link is free marketing for calendly. If people want that banner removed, they can upgrade their plan.
Again, take this advice for what it's worth, which is very little, since 1) I dont know your market well, and 2) what worked for me may not work for you.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I really like that quote -- hopefully I start another company and think about distribution straight off the bat. Can I ask what the product was? Even just a general idea. And, how did you find the emails.
I've found myself procrastinating a lot when it comes to trying to acquire users. It's a lot more fun to build features than it is to do cold outreach. Yes, you found the site :).
1) Understandable, let me reply to the other 3 points to see if pricing makes sense after that.
2) We’re not trying to replace Calendly. Calendly is great for link-based 1:1 scheduling, but many execs still operate primarily over email and actively avoid sending links. Persona is an email delegation layer that handles inbound scheduling end-to-end: proactive follow-ups, coordinating across long threads, and dynamically rescheduling when higher-priority contacts come in. That distinction should definitely be clearer on the landing page.
3) Fair point that you’re not the audience. We’re focused on founders and execs who spend a meaningful amount of time coordinating meetings over email. For them, the pain isn’t finding a time once, it’s the constant back-and-forth, follow-ups, and reshuffling priorities. Not everyone can afford a human EA, and link-based scheduling tools can’t handle that level of personalization (talking to an investor is very different than a friend). Research we’ve seen shows execs still spend 6+ hours per week on scheduling.
4) That’s a good point, and we’re thinking along similar lines. Since Persona operates directly over email, there’s a natural distribution loop there, similar to Calendly links, and we plan to lean into that more deliberately. Would you be bothered if you were on our 23/mo plan and still had a banner there? Also, do you think there should be a free tier beyond the 14 day trial?
Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
> Can I ask what the product was?
Software for teachers. Teachers tend to talk to each other, which is great for distribution. On the other hand, they have very little spending power. But back on the other hand again, they don't get as many cold emails as execs do.
> Research we’ve seen shows execs still spend 6+ hours per week on scheduling.
Be very careful not to delude yourself here. No one is spending 6+ hours a week on scheduling who is willing to use your tool. That's almost a full workday. If you are at this point, you probably have a human assistant who handles this.
> Would you be bothered if you were on our 23/mo plan and still had a banner there?
Probably not. But if i were, i'd probably just upgrade to a higher plan.