PVML’s Cold Outreach Playbook: How Two Technical Founders Landed Enterprise Customers Without a Single Warm Intro

PVML’s Cold Outreach Playbook: How Two Technical Founders Landed Enterprise Customers Without a Single Warm Intro

Every technical founder launching an enterprise startup hears the same advice: you need a network. Warm introductions. Relationships. Investors who can make intros. Without these, you’re supposedly dead in the water trying to sell six-figure contracts to Fortune 500 companies.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Rina Galperin, CTO and Co-Founder of PVML, a data access platform that’s raised $8 million, proved this conventional wisdom wrong. Two first-time founders with zero startup connections landed paying enterprise customers in six months using nothing but cold outreach and a deep understanding of buyer psychology.

Starting from Absolute Zero

The starting position matters because it reframes what’s possible. PVML didn’t have a modest network—they had no network. “We both were quite new to the whole entrepreneurial world, first timers, two techie people, and we really just went door knocking,” Rina explains. “We had close to zero inside connections, and we’re new to the startup ecosystem. We just started reaching out to people on LinkedIn and email and just trying to get meetings booked.”

No warm intros from VCs. No ex-colleagues at target accounts. No Stanford alumni network. Just two technical founders with a problem worth solving and the willingness to face rejection repeatedly.

This starting point creates an important data point for other technical founders: if PVML could land enterprise customers from this position, the network excuse loses its power. The question shifts from “do I have the right connections?” to “do I understand my buyers well enough?”

The Real Research: Understanding Humans, Not Companies

Most founders approach early customer research by studying companies. They analyze org charts, read 10-Ks, map out decision-making processes. PVML went deeper—they studied the individual humans who would ultimately sign contracts.

“We spent a lot of time digging into the problem domain and understanding the pain of not only our potential clients, as in the companies, but specifically the buyer in the company, what drives and motivates him, what sets him back, and so on,” Rina shares.

This distinction is critical. A company’s pain point might be “data security compliance.” But the buyer’s pain point is “I need to not get fired for a data breach” or “I need to look innovative to my boss without taking career-ending risks” or “I have limited political capital and can’t afford to champion a solution that fails.”

Understanding these individual motivations changes everything about outreach. You’re not pitching features to an abstract company—you’re addressing specific fears and ambitions of a real person who has to justify their decision to skeptical colleagues.

The time investment paid off. “So it really helped us target our ideal customer profile very well and lend our first clients,” Rina notes. Six months of research and outreach converted into paying customers because the targeting was precise and the messaging resonated at a personal level.

The Psychology Beneath the Tactic

Cold outreach templates are worthless without understanding why people respond. The tactical elements—subject lines, email length, call-to-action placement—matter far less than whether you’ve genuinely understood what keeps your buyer up at night.

PVML sold into data security, a category where buyers face enormous pressure. A wrong decision doesn’t just waste budget—it could lead to breaches, regulatory fines, career damage. The risk calculus is heavily weighted toward doing nothing or choosing the safe, established vendor.

For a startup with no brand recognition to win in this environment, outreach can’t be about product features. It has to demonstrate understanding of the buyer’s world so precisely that they think, “This person gets my exact situation.”

This requires research beyond what’s publicly available. It means understanding industry trends affecting your buyer’s role, regulatory pressures they’re navigating, internal politics around data access decisions, and career incentives driving their choices.

When PVML reached out on LinkedIn and email, they weren’t sending generic “our product solves X problem” messages. They were demonstrating understanding of the specific challenges facing their buyer’s role at their specific type of company—the kind of understanding that only comes from deep research.

The Six-Month Timeline Reality

Six months from first outreach to first paying customer sounds long to founders used to product development velocity. Ship code, get immediate feedback, iterate. Sales, especially enterprise sales, operates on a completely different timeline.

But six months for two first-time technical founders with zero network selling complex enterprise security solutions is actually remarkable. Most advisors would say it’s impossible. The fact that PVML did it reveals something important about the tradeoff between network and understanding.

A warm introduction might accelerate that first meeting. An investor intro might get you past the initial skepticism filter. But once you’re in the room—virtual or otherwise—you still need to demonstrate that you understand the buyer’s world better than they do. You still need to address their specific concerns. You still need to build trust.

PVML’s six-month journey suggests that deep buyer understanding can compensate for lack of network. The research time they invested understanding buyer motivations replaced the credibility borrowed from warm introductions.

What This Means for Technical Founders

The PVML playbook challenges a pervasive assumption in startup advice: that enterprise sales requires an extensive network. Their experience suggests an alternative path that’s available to any founder willing to do the work.

First, buyer-level research beats company-level research. Don’t just understand the company’s pain points—understand the individual buyer’s motivations, fears, and career incentives. What drives them personally? What sets them back? What would make them look like a hero internally?

Second, time invested in research compounds. Six months feels long, but “we spent a lot of time digging into the problem domain” created targeting precision that no amount of spray-and-pray outreach could match.

Third, network can be compensated for with understanding. Warm introductions are valuable, but they’re not the only path to enterprise customers. Deep, specific understanding of buyer psychology creates its own form of credibility.

Fourth, the willingness to face rejection is a competitive advantage. “We really just went door knocking” with “close to zero inside connections” requires emotional resilience that many founders lack. That resilience becomes a moat—most competitors won’t do the unglamorous work of cold outreach at scale.

The Underlying Principle

Behind PVML’s tactical approach lives a more important principle: companies don’t buy products, people do. And people respond to feeling understood far more than they respond to feature lists or even warm introductions.

A cold email from someone who deeply understands your specific challenges beats a warm introduction from someone who’s pitching generic solutions. The former demonstrates they’ve done their homework. The latter often just demonstrates they know someone you know.

For technical founders intimidated by enterprise sales, PVML’s journey offers a path forward. You don’t need an MBA. You don’t need sales experience. You don’t need a powerful network. You need genuine curiosity about your buyers as humans, the willingness to do deep research on their motivations, and the resilience to hear “no” repeatedly while you figure it out.

The network excuse loses its power when you realize what PVML proved: understanding buyer psychology beats knowing the right people.