Yashwanth Sivakumar

Yashwanth SivakumarSep 9, 2026

Early in my career, I cold called strangers in the US for a living. It was definitely not the most enjoyable thing to do but it also shaped almost everything I believe about sales today. On paper I was handling inbound. In reality, "inbound" was generous. People signed up for a free trial to poke around a product they had vaguely heard of, and my job was to call them. A hundred leads a month, five touches each. That is 500 calls, plus the emails, mostly to people who never asked to hear from me. The ones actually worth calling were a small slice. You know, people who actually tried using the tool after signing up for the free trial. But the system didn't let me focus only on them. Everyone got five calls, whether it made sense or not. Ninety percent never picked up. The most common answer from the ones who did was some version of "I signed up to try it myself. Please stop calling me." Some were even worse - Ugly comments passed before slamming the phone down on you. For a long time I told myself it was okay. “It’s part of the job, buddy”. I used to even have this Wayne Rooney figurine on my desk for days when I needed some inspiration 😂 But then it slowly wears you down. The funny part is it’s actually not the rejection, but the pointlessness that wears you down. You could be brilliant on the phone and it wouldn't matter, because you were just an interruption before you even said a word. So, what is even the point? That is exactly why I care so much about warm introductions and network-led selling today. It’s not a random clever growth tactic but I look at it as a more human way to sell. You can reach the same people. You just shouldn't have to become noise, or a target, to do it. #coldcalling #sales

Yashwanth SivakumarSep 15, 2026

Does this email qualify as cold outbound or a ransom note? You decide It opens with “We know almost everything about you.” Fantastic opening. Nothing gets me excited about a B2B SaaS product quite like the first sentence of a kidnapping note. “The work stuff, I mean. Nothing weird.” If you have to immediately clarify that what you just said is “nothing weird”, I have terrible news for you. It is weird. Then we get the dossier: Where I work. Where I worked before. Where I studied. What languages I speak. Okay, LinkedIn with extra steps. Then: “Your mobile: we might have it, you’d have to look.” What an extraordinary sentence. Not “we can help you find verified mobile numbers.” No. “We might have your mobile.” Are you selling prospecting data or letting me know what evidence you’ve collected? And somehow they STILL manage to escalate: “There are another 250 fields I didn’t put in here.” Bro, I didn't ask. At this point, you're not showing off your product. You're just making me uncomfortable. But my favourite part: “We’ve got all the data of your colleagues at Homie in there too.” AH YES. Because when a stranger tells me they have an alarming amount of information about me, the one thing that really puts me at ease is: “Don't worry. We have your coworkers too.” WTF?? 😂 Imagine approving this sequence internally. “What's our value prop?” “Cheap B2B contact data.” “Cool. How should we communicate that?” “Make the prospect feel like we know where their family sleeps.” “Beautiful, Ship it.” And then, after spending the entire email sounding like the villain in a low-budget cybercrime documentary: “Reply Yes.” Are you for real? 🤦‍♂️ Should I also send a photograph holding today’s newspaper? The unfortunate part is that there's probably a legitimate product underneath this nonsense, which I will never in my life be willing to evaluate or buy.

Yashwanth SivakumarSep 17, 2026

My next few weeks are absolute chaos and I'm here for it. We backed the London edition earlier this year and loved everything about it, so when David said SDR Leaders of EMEA was going on tour, saying yes to all four cities was a no brainer. These rooms are where SDR leaders actually swap what's working instead of just nodding along to slides in a very relaxed setting! That resonates so well with what we're building at Homie. Warm paths, real relationships, people who actually know each other. Backing a tour built on exactly that felt obvious. Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, London. Come find me. I'll be the one running on way too much coffee ☕ 😂