This was extremely effective – so much so that buyers became inundated with emails, cold calls and LinkedIn messages (and then stopped replying). The overall volume of outbound has ballooned; it’s harder and harder to make manual BDR/SDR teams economical, especially if a startup hasn’t fully honed its ideal customer profile (ICP) and messaging.

An alternative would be to steadily build an audience interested in your product and to ungate the waitlist in batches. Building an audience is increasingly achievable through social media along with owned channels like newsletters. Unlike PR, these channels are person-centric rather than brand-centric; they require personality and authenticity in... See more