Imaad Merchant

Founder of for recruiters · Startup Society (builder community):

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

Every cold email tool makes the same mistake.

They keep emailing people who already replied.

So when I built GridMail, I fixed it. The moment someone answers, the whole sequence stops.

No more "just following up" after a yes.

Here's what that looks like 👇

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@EveryDayFSDev @Buildhop_io Peerlist sending the most traffic and the fewest signups is the part I'd have guessed wrong — that's the useful bit. Buildhop and nicklaunches going on the list this week, IndieAscent included. Appreciate you naming them with actual numbers instead of "submit everywhere."

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@naaavinash The link is likely the biggest one — a URL in a first touch from a young domain hurts deliverability and gives them somewhere to go instead of replying. Killing tracking was right; opens are near-meaningless with prefetching. What's the ask at the end of yours?

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@VaibhavSpark 1% of Nvidia, and it isn't close — that's enough money to buy every credit you'd ever need and a company to spend them on. Unlimited credits only win if inference stays expensive, which is a bet against the thing you'd be using them for.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@TheSpacerr The specific crime is that it's four products wearing one trench coat and none of them agree on which one owns the notification.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@dannypostma The "items might damage if done wrong" line is doing the heavy lifting — a crafting loop with no failure state is just a slower inventory screen. Does a ruined item cost you the ore, or only the time?

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@memselon Day 3 is where the novelty wears off and it turns into a commitment. Curious what happens around day 20 — does the daily constraint make the components sharper, or does it start forcing filler?

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@kylegawley The uncomfortable part is that the 10 years isn't the price you pay for the success — it's where most of the actual life happens. If you only value it retroactively, you've spent the decade either way.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@MakerThrive Half of it. The other half is working on things where you can't tell whether they're working. Effort without feedback burns people out faster than effort they don't enjoy — at least the second kind gives you a signal.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@arvidkahl The load-bearing part isn't the AI, it's that someone built 16,000 tests first. Without that the same workflow is just shipping code nobody has read. The suite is the permission slip — and most people wanting to skip the reading step don't have one.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@thejustinwelsh There's a version of this that goes wrong, though. Conviction about what you're willing to work on is the useful kind. Conviction about whether it's working is how people spend three years on something the evidence kept refusing to support.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@agazdecki Worth saying the other half of that trade too. Someone on the buy side gets a working product and skips the part where you find out whether anyone wants it. I bought a small SaaS this year — the founder got his time back, and I got two years of his mistakes already paid for.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@yashhq_22 I'd spend almost none of it. 15 manual DMs a day to people who had just started the kind of business my product serves beat everything else I tried, and it cost nothing but time. The $10k only helps once you already know which message works.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@levelsio Quark is the one that usually gets left out of these — same idea as skyr but strained further, typically 11-12g per 100g. The protein number is really just a measure of how much water they took out.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@marclou The support line is the one people skip past. Answering it yourself is the only unfiltered signal you get about the product — the moment that's someone else's job you're reading a summary of your own business.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@tibo_maker Mostly from people who've never met you and get nothing back for it. That part still surprises me too.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@benfchi The cheaper version of this: buy something already built and be wrong with someone else's code. I picked up a small SaaS for under $200 — the being-wrong part cost me weeks instead of months.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@yusukelp good morning. my CTA is not a product, it is a room: come build alongside other founders in Startup Society, my discord for people actually shipping. https://t.co/RgfHS6CTAv

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@shownotover the version of you that wanted to quit every day for two weeks is the one who earned this. pushing through the flat part is the whole game, and the graph just proved it works. do not stop now.

[Imaad Merchant @imaad_gridmail]

@Sebalg_tech the migration is less scary than it feels. the one real gotcha is mapping your existing subscribers cleanly so you do not lose entitlements or double count. test with a sandbox account that already has an active sub before you flip anything live.