Julien Paltrinieri
What this sequence is for
You are the founder, you are also the salesperson, and you have maybe an hour a day for outbound. This is a sequence you can run by hand on a small list, which is exactly the situation where a small list beats a large one.
Seven messages over three weeks, split across email and LinkedIn. Each one has a single job, and no message is sent without one.
- Day 1LinkedInGet on their radarConnection request with a short note tied to something they actually did.
- Day 2EmailEarn attentionThe signal you noticed, what you do, and a question about how they handle it today.
- Day 5LinkedInBuild credibilityOne specific result from a comparable team, with an easy way to say yes.
- Day 8EmailProve it worksThe same result in full, plus an honest question that lets them say no.
- Day 12LinkedInOffer something usefulA concrete hypothesis about who they need to reach, and an offer to hand it over.
- Day 15EmailGive value awayThe list itself, no strings, tied to a change in their business.
- Day 21LinkedInClose the loopA short, genuinely low-pressure check-in that makes it easy to end it.
One message is not an attempt
A single message is not a test of your offer. It is a test of whether someone happened to be at their desk, in a receptive mood, on the day you sent it. People miss things, people read on a phone and forget, people are interested in March and not in January. None of that is a signal about your product.
So you send a sequence. The rule that makes a sequence work rather than annoy is that every message has one job, and if you cannot say what the job is, you do not send it. Three jobs cover almost everything: earn attention, build credibility, and give something away. The templates below are those three jobs, run across two channels.
If a message has no job, it is not a follow-up. It is a reminder that you want something.
The difference between research and a merge field
Almost everyone now writes some version of "Hi Daniel, I noticed you work at Northlane." Buyers read that as a machine in under a second, and once they have read it that way, the rest of the message is gone. The problem is not that it is automated. The problem is that it proves nothing, because anyone could have written it from a company name.
Strong personalization reads their situation back to them. You take something they visibly did, draw the consequence a person in their job would recognise, and ask about it. "You hired two AEs last month and you are advertising for a third, so I would guess pipeline is the constraint before headcount is" cannot be produced from a merge field. It proves a person looked. That is the whole difference, and it is worth more than any subject line trick.
- Use something they did: a hire, a launch, a raise, a new market, a post they wrote.
- State the consequence you would expect from it, in their language.
- Ask how they are handling that today. Do not ask for a meeting yet.
- If you genuinely cannot find a signal, that prospect is not ready for this sequence.
The three emails
Each email below is shown filled in for one invented prospect, a founder called Daniel Kim at a company called Northlane, so the structure is visible in a real sentence rather than as a set of placeholders. Swap the specifics, keep the order of the moves.
Note what the questions do. None of them asks for a slot in a calendar, and none of them asks whether the person is interested. They ask how the prospect handles a problem today, which is a question someone with that problem can answer in one line and someone without it can ignore without feeling rude.
Julienjulien@emailx.ai
Daniel KimFounder, NorthlaneDaniel,Greeting
you added two AEs at Northlane last month and the careers page is now advertising a third.Signal In my experience that order usually means pipeline is the constraint before headcount is.
I build Emailx, which researches each prospect and drafts the first email and LinkedIn message for B2B founders, so a small team can run outbound without hiring an SDR to do it.What you do
How are you feeding the new reps pipeline right now?Question
Julien
Julienjulien@emailx.aiDaniel KimFounder, NorthlaneDaniel,Greeting
we work with B2B founders who are still selling personally, before there is a sales team to hand it to.Who you help
One of them, Futura AI, ran a single LinkedIn account for three weeks and got 98 connections, 27 replies, six booked calls and their first closed customer from the campaign.Proof
Would that kind of top-of-funnel actually help the two reps you just brought on, or is your bottleneck further down?Question
Julien
Julienjulien@emailx.aiDaniel KimFounder, NorthlaneDaniel,Greeting
saw the Series A last week, congratulations.Signal New funding usually means a hiring push and a territory expansion landing in the same quarter, and the thing that slows it down is not budget, it is knowing who to call in the new region.
I put together 100 operations leads there, with LinkedIn profiles and verified emails. It is yours whether or not we ever speak.Reciprocity
Want me to send it over?Ask
Julien
The four LinkedIn messages
LinkedIn runs alongside the email track rather than after it. The messages are shorter, the tone is closer to how you would actually speak, and the first one goes out with the connection request so the name is familiar before the first email lands.
The third message is the one most founders skip, and it is usually the one that works. You make a confident, specific guess about who they need to reach, then offer to hand over the names. If the guess is right you have proved you understand their business. If it is wrong they will often correct you, which is also a reply.
Daniel Kim2nd degree connectionDaniel, saw your post about hiring AEs before the pipeline is ready for them.Signal
I'm building Emailx, an AI outreach tool that handles the research and the first touch for B2B founders, so a small team can run outbound without an SDR.What you do
Are you running any outbound for the new reps yet?Question
Daniel Kim2nd degree connectionDaniel, we helped a B2B team about your size get 27 replies, book six calls and close their first customer in three weeks, running one LinkedIn account.Proof
I think there is a similar opening here. Reply "yes" and I'll send you the exact sequence they used.Low-friction ask
Daniel Kim2nd degree connectionDaniel, do you already have names for the ops leaders in the new region who are picking vendors this quarter?Hypothesis
I can put together 100 qualified contacts for you, LinkedIn profile and verified email for each.Reciprocity
Daniel Kim2nd degree connectionDaniel, closing the loop on this one.Sign-off If outbound isn't the priority this quarter, that's genuinely fine.
The lead list is yours either way, just say the word and I'll send it across.Open door
Running it without it running you
Send to a small list. Twenty-five well-researched prospects will out-perform four hundred that got a merge field, and twenty-five is a number a founder can actually keep straight in their head. If you cannot find a real signal for someone, take them off the list rather than sending them a weaker version of message one.
Stop the whole sequence the moment someone replies on either channel, including a reply that is not interested. Nothing damages a founder's reputation faster than a LinkedIn message arriving three days after they already answered the email. If you are running this by hand, that means keeping the two channels in one place. If you are running it in Emailx, that is the part it does for you.
The part that outlasts the wording
The structure matters less than the discipline behind it. Every message here has one job, every opener references something the prospect actually did, and every question can be answered in a single line. Take those three rules and the specific wording below stops mattering, because you will be able to write the sequence yourself for any prospect you can be bothered to research.
Run this sequence without running it by hand.
Emailx researches each prospect, drafts both channels and stops on reply.
Updated August 18, 2026. Written by Julien Paltrinieri for Emailx.
