Month 3. Irony Included.

We're three months into building cocorev. We make a sales tool. And every day I wake up and do sales the hard way.

That's the irony nobody warns you about when you start a company. You can have the clearest product vision in the world, a tool that helps sales teams find warmer, smarter paths into deals, and you still have to cold message strangers on LinkedIn to get anyone to look at it.

I am very aware of the irony.

What we're building (30-second version)

cocorev gives sales teams ecosystem intelligence inside HubSpot. Which of your prospects are already in a partner's world? Where do you have an edge you don't know about? Which deals should you prioritise because there's a connection your competitors don't have?

We built it because my co-founder Cathal and I spent a combined 17 years watching this data change deal outcomes. At LearnUpon, at Storyblok, in the HubSpot ecosystem. We've seen what happens when sellers have ecosystem intel. And we've seen what happens when they don't.

The product works. The beta users love it. The problem isn't the product.

The problem is getting in front of people

This is the thing nobody prepares you for. You can build something genuinely useful, have 20 beta users telling you it's changed how they work their pipeline, and still spend most of your day trying to get strangers to give you 15 minutes.

LinkedIn is noisy. Everyone's inbox is full. Every founder and their dog has an AI tool they want to show you. We're competing for attention with people who have marketing teams, ad budgets, and brand recognition. We have two founders and a CTO who's still shipping features.

So what do you do? You do it anyway. You message people. Most don't reply. Some do. A few say yes to a call. On that call, you run their data and show them something they didn't know about their own pipeline. Their face changes. That's the moment.

Then you do it again the next day.

What's actually working

I'll be honest about what's landing and what isn't, because I think there's value in sharing this stuff openly.

What works: being direct. No pitch slap, no fake personalisation, no "loved your post about Q3 results." Just "hey, I'm a founder, built something that might be useful, happy to show you what it finds in your data. 15 minutes, worst case you walk away with something useful." That message gets replies. Not a huge percentage. But the ones who reply actually show up.

What works: leading with the output, not the product. Nobody cares about our feature list at this stage. They care about the moment on the demo when they see accounts in their pipeline they didn't know had a partner connection. The product sells itself in the demo. The hard part is getting to the demo.

What doesn't work: anything that sounds like everyone else. The moment a message reads like it could have been written by an AI outreach tool, it's dead. I should know. We see enough of them.

The thing I keep reminding myself

We're building a sales tool in a market where the default is cold outbound. Our whole thesis is that there's a better way. Ecosystem data, partner connections, signals that tell you where you've got an edge.

But to prove that thesis, we have to find our own edge first. Our early users are that edge. Every founder or sales leader who takes a call and sees what cocorev finds in their data becomes someone who tells another person. That's our ecosystem. It's small right now. But it's real.

Three months in, the product is ahead of the distribution. That's either a great sign or a terrible one depending on which startup advice you're reading this week. I choose to believe it's a great sign because the alternative isn't very useful.

What's next

Month 4 is about turning our beta users into our best channel. If the product delivers what we think it delivers, the people using it should be the ones telling others about it. That's the plan anyway. I'll let you know how it goes.

If you're a founder reading this and you're in the same boat, messaging strangers and wondering when it gets easier, I don't have an answer yet. But I'll keep writing these so at least we can compare notes.

Your move: If you're building something and struggling with distribution, try this: take your best customer conversation from this week and write down exactly what made them say yes. Not your pitch. Their reason. That's your message for next week.