Starting a new business is one of the most exciting things you can do, and one of the hardest. I've launched multiple products, and there's one thing I’ve learned that separates success from struggle: early customer development.

Getting your first 20–50 real conversations with potential customers is the single most important thing you can do to find product-market fit. But here's the challenge: your personal network is limited. On average, most of us have only 200–300 people in our LinkedIn or social network. And only a tiny fraction of them will be relevant to your product, especially if you’re solving a niche problem.

Let’s say you want to have 30 face-to-face video calls with prospects. Based on typical conversion rates, you’ll need to reach out to at least 600–1000 people just to get those meetings.

That means hours and hours of manual outreach, writing messages, sending connection requests, following up… And all of that just to arrange the meetings. As a founder, that’s not the best use of your time.

But talking to people is still non-negotiable. In today’s world, “getting out of the building” means jumping on Zoom calls, not just reading forums or doing surveys. This is how you uncover insights, spot patterns, and discover the one feature or angle that makes your product click.

This is exactly why we built Wayy.ai.

We needed a tool that could help us, and other founders, do smart, high-volume outreach without burning hours every day. Wayy is an AI agent that handles everything from message writing to follow-ups on LinkedIn and sends up to 200 targeted connection requests per week.

I used it myself when testing the very first version of our product. Every week, Wayy reached out to 200 people with variations of my pitch. In just one month, I had enough meetings to identify the killer feature and pinpoint a niche of highly interested customers.

It felt like magic. I set it up once, and the next week my calendar was full of customer calls. No chasing. Just talking to people who were already curious.

LinkedIn Premium lets you send 800 connection requests per month. If you do it right, those 800 messages will give you a clear signal on where your product stands. To make this work, you need to answer four questions:

1. What product or service are you offering?
2. What problem does it solve?
3. How is it better or different from other solutions?
4. What’s the “hook”, the quick value someone gets if they respond?

Craft a few message variations based on your answers, and send them out.

If nobody books a call, one or more of these is wrong:

• You have the wrong product (no product fit)
• You’re talking to the wrong people (no market fit)
• Your message isn't landing (no attention, no clarity, no urgency)

And that kind of feedback? It’s gold.

It can save you months of wasted work and help you pivot fast. Instead of guessing what people want, you're testing in the real world. You're hearing objections, learning language, and discovering the real problems worth solving.

Ask yourself: what conversion rate are you aiming for?

For lifestyle businesses or niche B2B services, your benchmark might be different. Maybe 3% of people booking a call is your win.

The key is to set a clear goal, run your 800-message test, and adjust based on real data.

We believe early customer validation shouldn’t be painful. Wayy.ai automates the exact process I described: messaging, connecting, and following up. While you stay focused on talking to warm leads who already know what you do and are interested.

We still use it ourselves, and our calendar is booked with calls every week.
If you’re building something new and want honest feedback, or you're trying to grow your first customer base without losing all your time, this is one of the fastest, smartest ways to get moving.