Latest / The Founder's Journey with Fexingo: First-Time Entrepreneurs, Failures, and Lessons Learned / The 11th Hour Emails That Unlocked 200 Beta Users
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this founder named Maya Torres. She spent a year building an ai powered event-matching tool called GatherLoop — think smart networking for conferences. And for twelve months, she had basically zero traction. Luna: Like, zero users zero, or zero revenue zero? Lucas: Zero users. She had a prototype, she had a landing page, she had a handful of people who said 'cool idea.' But nobody actually signed up for the beta. So she's sitting in her apartment one night around 11 p.m., frustrated, and she decides to send a few more cold emails before bed. Just because she couldn't sleep. Luna: And that changed everything? Lucas: It did. She sent maybe fifteen emails that night, between 11 p.m. and midnight. By the next morning, seven people had replied. Seven out of fifteen. Compare that to her daytime send — she'd been averaging maybe a two percent reply rate. This was something like forty-five percent. Luna: Okay, that's a massive difference. But was it just a fluke? One night? Lucas: She tested it. For the next two weeks, she split her outreach: half the emails went out at 10 a.m. her time, half went out between 10 p.m. and midnight. The late-night batch consistently got three to four times the reply rate. And within thirty days, she had two hundred beta users. Luna: Two hundred from cold email alone? That's impressive for a solo founder with no budget. Lucas: Exactly. And here's the thing — it wasn't the email copy. She used basically the same subject lines and body text for both groups. The only variable was timing. So why does late night work so much better? Luna: I've got a theory. When do founders actually check their email? I mean, during the day they're in meetings, they're putting out fires, they're heads-down. But late at night, when the day's work is done — that's when they actually read stuff. Lucas: That's exactly what Maya figured out. She was targeting other founders and event organizers — people just as busy as she was. During the day, her emails landed in a full inbox and got buried or swiped away. But at night, those same people were scrolling their phone on the couch, or winding down, and they had time to actually read. Luna: So it's not just about open rates. It's about the emotional state of the recipient. Lucas: Right. Maya calls it 'inbox psychology.' At 10 a.m., you're in work mode — you triage. You see a cold email from someone you don't know, you delete it or mark it as 'to read later' which means never. But at 11 p.m., you're in a more receptive, curious state. You might actually click through and sign up for a demo. Luna: And she didn't have to change her product at all. She just changed when she pressed send. Lucas: That's the part I love. Most first-time founders think growth requires building something new — a feature, a landing page redesign, a paid ad campaign. Maya's lesson is that sometimes the biggest unlock is behavioral. She didn't spend a dime. She just shifted her schedule. Luna: But I wonder — was there also a network effect or a community aspect? Like, did those late-night replies lead to referrals? Lucas: They did. Because the people who replied late at night were more engaged. They didn't just say 'cool, I'll check it out.' They asked questions, they gave feedback. A few of them became power users who invited their own networks. So the quality of the user was higher too. Luna: So it's a twofer: higher conversion and higher quality leads. Lucas: Exactly. And Maya told me something interesting. She said the late-night send also changed her own mindset. When she sent emails during the day, she'd refresh her inbox obsessively, get anxious when nobody replied. But when she sent them at night, she'd go to sleep, wake up to replies, and start the day with momentum. Luna: That's a founder wellness angle too. She stopped watching the pot boil. Lucas: Right. And that psychological shift probably made her more confident in conversations. She wasn't coming from a place of scarcity anymore. Luna: I want to dig into the mechanics. How did she segment her list? Was she just blasting random event organizers? Lucas: She was pretty targeted. She used LinkedIn to find people who had recently organized or spoken at medium-sized conferences — think two hundred to five hundred attendees. Then she'd find their email via a tool like Hunter or just a guess based on common patterns. She sent maybe twenty to thirty emails a night, max. Very personal, very specific. Luna: So it wasn't spray and pray. It was high-touch, just at a weird hour. Lucas: Exactly. And she tested other times too. She tried 6 a.m., she tried 2 a.m. — 10 p.m. to midnight was the sweet spot for her audience. For you and me, it might be different. The point is to run the experiment. Luna: What about time zones? She's based in New York, right? So her 11 p.m. is 8 p.m. on the West Coast, 4 a.m. in London. Some of those replies must have come from people who were in different time zones anyway. Lucas: That's a great point. Her list was mostly us based, but she did see replies from West Coast founders who were still in work mode at 8 p.m. — or just checking email after dinner. So the timing optimized for her own productivity, but it also accidentally caught people in their own 'slow hours.' Luna: This feels like one of those lessons that seems obvious in hindsight but almost nobody does. I mean, how many cold emails go out during business hours because that's when we're told to be professional? Lucas: Almost all of them. There's this unwritten rule that you don't send sales emails after 5 p.m. because it looks desperate or spammy. But Maya's data says the opposite — for her audience, it looked human. It looked like another founder burning the midnight oil, not a sales robot. Luna: And that authenticity probably helped too. The email wasn't polished corporate language — it was like 'hey, I'm up late working on this thing, thought you might find it interesting.' Lucas: Exactly. Her subject line was literally 'late night thought about event networking' — and it worked. People related to it. Luna: So what's the one takeaway for a first-time founder listening right now? Lucas: Run a timing experiment this week. If you're sending cold emails or DMs, try shifting half of them to a non-standard hour — late evening, early morning, whatever fits your audience. Track the reply rate for seven days. You might find that your biggest growth lever isn't your offer — it's your schedule. Luna: I love that. It's actionable, it's free, and it takes almost no effort to test. Lucas: And honestly, if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, we'd be grateful if you considered supporting the show. It keeps things ad-free and lets us keep digging into stories like Maya's. Luna: Yeah, listener support is what makes this possible. We're at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — no pressure, just if the show's added value for you. Lucas: Appreciate that. So back to Maya — she actually built a whole second product based on the feedback she got from those late-night beta users. Luna: Oh, I want to hear about that. What did they tell her? Lucas: They said the matching algorithm was fine, but what they really wanted was a way to follow up with people after the event. So she added a post-event connection feature — automated reminders to send a LinkedIn request or email within 48 hours. That became the sticky part of the product. Luna: So the late-night emails didn't just get her users — they got her product roadmap. Lucas: Exactly. She built in public with those early adopters. They told her what was missing, she built it, they stayed. By month six, she had fifteen hundred active users and a waiting list for her paid tier. Luna: And she never ran a single ad. Lucas: Not one. All organic, all through timing and personalization. It's a reminder that first-time founders often overthink strategy and underthink execution. Maya didn't have a fancy growth model. She just sat down at 11 p.m. and hit send. Luna: And now she's got a real business. That's the dream. Lucas: It is. And the next time I'm tempted to send an email at 10 a.m., I'm going to remember Maya Torres and wait until evening. Luna: Same here. I might even set a calendar reminder. Lucas: Do it. And test it. Let us know how it goes.