📋 Template companion to Chapter 2.3b · What to Say. Build the 30-name list first in 2.3a · Where to Look, then run this template Monday morning. 10 calls in your calendar by Friday.

Find 10 People With the Problem - The 2026 Outreach Sequence Template

Reddit + LinkedIn + Clay + Lindy + paid panels = 10 interviewees by Friday.

📋 Quick-ref checklist - copy this into Notion before you start:

• Written problem hypothesis - “I think [persona] does [task] in [painful way] and would pay $X for [better way]”
• 4 tabs open, 2 hours mined - Reddit, LinkedIn, one Discord/Slack, G2/Capterra. 30 verbatim pain sentences captured.
• ICP list built - 80-120 rows from Clay or Apollo. Six-filter dimensions applied. 50 names queued for send.
• 3-email sequence live - Smartlead or Instantly + Lindy + Calendly. Day 0/3/7 messages pasted below.
• Paid panel backup running - User Interviews or Respondent screener live. Running in parallel with cold outreach.
• Smoke-test page live - Carrd or Framer waitlist. $100-200 ad spend. Target: 5%+ email signup rate.

Why this exists

A consumer-app founder we spoke with last month spent a full week messaging her LinkedIn network. She sent 60 polite DMs, booked 3 calls, and two of the three were old colleagues showing up to be nice. She had one real conversation, and that founder ghosted on the reschedule. Same week, same hypothesis: she pivoted to the stack below on a Monday morning - two hours on Reddit, an Apollo list of 80 contacts, a 3-email Smartlead sequence with a Lindy agent reading replies, and $400 on a User Interviews panel as a backup track. By Thursday afternoon she had 12 calls booked. The point isn’t that her network was wrong. It’s that her network was 3 contacts deep when she needed 10, and the next 7 were strangers she had to find on purpose. The template below is what she ran.

How to use it

Run this on a Monday morning, alone, with a credit card. Budget: 4 hours of your time on Monday + $200 to $500 in tools and panels across the week. Outcome: 10 booked calls by Friday afternoon.

Before you start, you need one thing: a written problem hypothesis. One sentence: “I think [persona] currently does [task] in [painful way] and would pay $X to do it [better way].” Module 0 routed you here because the worksheet flagged you don’t yet have 10 conversations on this. The sequence below is how you get them.

Run the three tracks in parallel, not in sequence. Cold outreach, paid panels, and the smoke-test landing page fail differently - running all three means even if two flop, you have a real Friday number.

The 5-step sequence

Step 1 - Mine where they’re already complaining (Monday, 2 hours)

Open four tabs. Read for two hours. Don’t write a single message yet.

Reddit. Search the exact words your prospect would use. For a typical B2B SaaS founder ICP, productive subreddits are r/SaaS, r/startups, r/Entrepreneur, plus one or two niche subs for your buyer (r/sysadmin if IT, r/marketing if CMO, r/smallbusiness if owner-operator). Sort by Top - Past Month. Read the top 50 posts. Note the exact wording of complaints and existing workarounds.

LinkedIn. Type the problem in quotes. Filter to Posts - Past Week. The 1% of LinkedIn willing to complain in public is also the 1% willing to take a call.

Discord and Slack. Indie Hackers Discord, Lovable Discord, No Code Founders Slack, plus one industry-specific server. Read the #help-and-feedback channels. The daily question is “has anyone else hit X.”

G2 and Capterra reviews. Pull every 2-star and 3-star review of the closest competitor or workaround tool. The text is the language of pain a stranger willingly typed for free.

Write down 30 specific sentences in their language. That bank is the raw material for the messages in Step 3. Don’t paraphrase. Use their words.

Step 2 - Build the ICP list (Monday, 1 hour)

Two tools matter in 2026.

Filter on six dimensions:

1. Job title - the buyer OR the user, not both. Pick one.
2. Company size - 50 to 500 employees is the sweet spot (small enough to reach a decision-maker, big enough to have the problem).
3. Industry - one vertical first. Expand later.
4. Geography - one timezone, so calls are bookable.
5. Technology used - if your product replaces or integrates with a specific tool, filter for it.
6. Recent funding or hiring signal - companies with momentum reply faster.

Export 80 to 120 rows. Send to 50, hold 30 in reserve, drop the bottom 40. For consumer founders, Apollo and Clay don’t help much - skip to Step 4 and Step 5 instead.

Step 3 - Run the sequence (Tuesday morning)

Three tools, one workflow.

3-email sequence (copy and paste):

Day 0 - intro

Subject: quick question about [their exact workaround]

Hi [first name],

Saw your post on r/SaaS last week about [the exact thread, paraphrased in their language]. I’m a [your role] looking into the same problem and trying to understand how teams like yours [the specific painful task] today.

Not selling anything. I’m 20 minutes from launching a [thing] for this and I want to make sure I’m building what people actually need. Would you be open to a 20-minute call so I can ask 5 questions about how you handle [the task] now?

If yes, here’s my calendar: [Calendly link].

Thanks, [Your name]

Day 3 - bump

Subject: re: [their workaround]

Hi [first name],

Bumping this. 20 minutes, your time of choice. I’m not pitching - I’m asking how you do [the task] today and what breaks when you try. The 30 founders I’ve already spoken to have made the [thing] meaningfully better, so the call is genuinely useful on your end too.

[Calendly link]

Thanks, [Your name]

Day 7 - close

Subject: last try - 20 min on [topic]

Hi [first name],

Last note from me. If this isn’t your problem, no worries - I’ll stop. If it is and you just haven’t had a chance to look, here’s the link one more time: [Calendly]. I’m running interviews through next Friday.

Thanks either way, [Your name]

LinkedIn DM openers (3 variants - same sequence pattern, shorter form):

1. “Saw your post yesterday on [exact topic]. I’m 20 min from launching a thing for [task] and want to make sure I’m not building the wrong thing. Open to 20 min so I can ask 5 questions about how you handle this today? [Calendly]”

2. “Read your G2 review of [competitor] - the bit about [exact frustration] is exactly what I’m working on. 20 min to ask you 5 questions about what would actually help? [Calendly]”

3. “We’ve never met but you commented something useful on [post] about [problem]. I’m researching it from the founder side - 20 min so I can ask how you currently handle [task]? Not selling, asking. [Calendly]”

Cold-email subject lines (3 variants):

1. quick question about [their exact workaround]

2. [their company] + [the painful task] - 20 min?

3. re: your r/[sub] post on [topic]

Reddit “I’m researching X” comment (1 variant - post AFTER you’ve added value to the sub for a week):

“I’m a founder researching [exact problem in their words]. Not promoting anything yet - just trying to understand how 10 people who hit this currently solve it. If you’re up for a 20-minute call this week or next, my DMs are open / here’s a Calendly: [link]. Happy to share back what I learn from the calls in a follow-up post here.”

Calendly booking page copy:

“20-minute research call - [your name]

What this is: I’m researching [problem] from the founder side. I’ll ask you 5 questions about how you currently handle [task], what breaks, and what you’ve tried. No pitch, no demo.

What you get: I’ll send you a 1-page summary of what the 30+ people I interview say. You’ll see the patterns before anyone else.

Bring: Nothing. Show up, talk for 20 minutes, hang up.”

Step 4 - Backup via paid panels (kick off Tuesday in parallel)

When your ICP is too niche for Clay or Apollo (a specific executive role, a regulated industry, a consumer audience), pay for the panel.

Write the screener questions tight. Three screening questions filter out the wrong panel and you pay only for fit interviewees. Run paid panels in parallel with cold outreach, not as a replacement - the two channels select for different people, and both samples are biased in opposite directions.

Step 5 - The parallel smoke-test landing page (Monday afternoon)

While Steps 3 and 4 book calls, Step 5 measures whether strangers will give you their email for the thing you described.

Page anatomy: headline (problem in their language, from Step 1) + subhead (solution in one sentence) + one CTA (“Be first on the waitlist”). Email capture only. No pricing, no signup, no fake product screenshot.

Drive £100 to £200 of paid traffic from Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads, targeting the keywords you searched in Step 1. Aim for 200 to 500 visitors over 5 days.

Signal you want: 5%+ email signup rate. Below 2% means the headline or offer is wrong - rewrite both. Between 2% and 5% means directionally right, wording isn’t sharp. Above 5% means strangers find the problem real enough to give you an email for a product that doesn’t exist yet.

The signups become the warmest opener for Step 3 follow-up: “You signed up for the waitlist on [page] last Tuesday - would you be up for a 20-minute call?” runs 60%+ reply rates.

What good looks like vs what bad looks like

The Day-0 cold email

Bad: “Hi [first name], I’d love to pick your brain about your industry and the challenges you face. Do you have 30 minutes for a quick chat sometime next week?”

Good: “Hi Marcus, saw your r/sysadmin post Tuesday about spending 2 hours every Monday reconciling Datadog alerts across 4 accounts. I’m 20 minutes from launching something for that and want to make sure I’m not building the wrong thing. 20 min so I can ask 5 questions about what you do today? Calendar: [link]”

The bad email could go to anyone in any role at any company. The good email could only go to Marcus. References his specific public post, names the exact painful task, sets a tight ask, drops the calendar link. Reply rate goes from 1-3% on the bad version to 25-35% on the good one.

The Reddit research comment

Bad: “Hey r/SaaS! I’m a founder building a new tool for [generic problem]. Would love some feedback! DM me if interested.”

Good: “I’m a founder researching [exact problem from a post in this sub last week] - not promoting anything yet, just trying to understand how 10 people who hit this currently solve it. If you’re up for a 20-min call this week, my DMs are open / Calendly: [link]. I’ll share back the patterns in a follow-up post.”

The bad comment gets auto-removed by mods and reads as recruiting traffic. The good comment is a question with a clear ask, offers value back to the sub (the follow-up post), and matches an existing thread the sub already engaged with. The self-promotion on Reddit rules guide covers the karma floor and timing that keep you out of the auto-removed pile.

What to do after

• Score responses Wednesday afternoon. Aim for 25-35% reply rate by mid-week (same benchmark the well-crafted Day-0 example produces). If you’re under 10%, the Day-0 subject line is generic - rewrite it referencing a specific public post and resend Thursday morning.
• By Friday, hold 10 booked calls across the next 2 weeks. Cold outreach should give you 5-7 of them. Paid panel fills the other 3-5. The smoke-test landing page is a signal track, not a booking track.
• Move to the Mom Test interview script (Chapter 2.1). The script tells you what to ask once they’re on the call. The wrong questions waste the conversations you just booked. The Mom Test reference at momtestbook.com is the anchor; Chapter 2.1 ships the JT-curated 5-question script.

What to do tomorrow

Three actions. Block the morning before email.

1. Write your one-sentence problem hypothesis in a Notion doc: “I think [persona] currently does [task] in [painful way] and would pay $X to do it [better way].” If you can’t fill the blanks, the rest of the sequence is premature.
2. Open four tabs and read for two hours. Reddit (Top - Past Month in your two niche subs), LinkedIn (problem-phrase + Past Week), one Discord, and 10 G2/Capterra 2-3 star reviews. Capture 30 verbatim complaint sentences in your doc.
3. Open Clay or Apollo and pull 80 to 120 rows filtered on the six dimensions in Step 2. By tomorrow night you have the list. Tuesday morning the 3-email sequence ships.

Built by JetThoughts as part of the From Idea to First Paying Customer curriculum.