I kept timing myself writing cold emails (20 min each), so I built a tool to fix it

Ari Shechtman — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 18:43:46 +0000

About a month ago I started timing myself every time I wrote a cold email.

The average? 20 minutes. Sometimes more.

Research the company, find something relevant, craft an opener, write the value prop, land the CTA, keep it under 150 words, proofread... it just adds up. And I was sending a lot of them.

So I built a tool to fix my own problem: ColdPitch AI.

You enter the company name and the prospect's role, pick a tone (professional, friendly, bold, or witty) and a goal (book a meeting, get a demo, explore a partnership), and it writes a personalized cold email in seconds.

It uses Claude under the hood and actually tries to reference something real about the company — not just a generic "I noticed you're in [industry]" opener.

Try it free: https://coldpitch.ai (3 emails, no credit card)

Pricing after that is $15/mo for 50 emails or $25/mo unlimited.

Would love brutal feedback — what would make this actually useful for your workflow?

How I Got My First US Tech Client as a Remote Developer (The Cold Email System That Works)

Ari Shechtman — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:13:25 +0000

I spent a long time on Upwork. Long enough to know that the race-to-the-bottom pricing isn't a bug — it's the whole model. You're not really competing on skill at that point, you're competing on who's willing to charge less.

So I started trying to reach out directly to US startups. And I failed for about three months straight.

What I was doing wrong

My first cold emails looked something like this:

"Dear Hiring Manager, I am a skilled full-stack developer with 5 years of experience in React and Node.js. I believe I can add value to your team..."

I got nothing back. Not even a polite no.

The embarrassing part is that my actual work was solid. The problem wasn't my skills — it was that the email read like a form letter from someone who'd never had a real conversation in English. US tech people get hundreds of these and they can spot them instantly.

What actually started working

After a lot of trial and error, the pattern that got replies looked nothing like a traditional pitch:

Reference something specific about their product. Not "I love your company" — something real, like a specific feature or a gap I noticed.
One sentence on what I do. Not a list of technologies, just the outcome I help people get.
Short. Like, uncomfortably short. Under 150 words.
A low-pressure ask. "Does it make sense to chat for 15 minutes?" not "Please consider me for any opportunities."

The tone shift alone made a significant difference. American startup culture is casual and direct — formal emails read as a red flag, not professionalism.

The targeting problem

Even when I got the writing right, I was still wasting a lot of time figuring out who to actually email. The right person at a 30-person startup isn't always obvious, and sending to a generic contact@ is basically sending to /dev/null.

I started using ColdPitch.ai to solve this. You give it a company and it finds the actual decision-maker and their email. It also drafts the outreach in the right tone if you need it, or rewrites what you've already written.

Honestly the email finder alone saved me probably an hour a week of LinkedIn archaeology.

Where I'm at now

I send maybe 10-15 targeted emails a week instead of 50 generic Upwork proposals. The conversations I get into are with people who actually have budgets and know what they want.

It took me longer than it should have to figure out that the platform isn't the only path. Direct outreach feels weird at first — but it's just a skill like any other. The first few times are bad and then it gets easier.