Essays by Ry Walker

AI outbound scales noise, not trust. Why cold outreach is saturated in 2025 and how warm, relevant paths still win.

A case for genuine positivity in leadership: it compounds encouragement, builds resilience, and avoids toxic positivity.

Why rigid metrics can slow decisions when data is noisy, and how intuition plus small experiments can guide better calls.

Old model — 1,000 cold emails to 1 deal. New model — 200 warmed prospects to 4 deals. The unit economics of outbound flipped, and most teams are still optimizing the wrong funnel.

Stop trying to make cold outreach feel warm. Start engineering touchpoints before the ask, so the email is the last step of a relationship — not the first.

A step-by-step framework for testing startup ideas: talk to users, fake the demo, iterate until you know what to build. Don't write code yet.

How fundraising really works: you'll get a pile of 'no' and a smaller pile of 'maybe.' Without a potential lead in that maybe pile, you're not ready.

Our journey through AngelPad as the first Midwest team ever accepted. From application to Demo Day, here's what the top-ranked accelerator is really like.

Should early-stage SaaS companies do professional services? Advice from Brad Feld, Hiten Shah, and other investors on the product vs. services dilemma.

Most startup advice focuses on product and marketing. Retention gets far less airtime—and that's a shame, because it's where most products die.

Build something astonishing for your early adopters. Measure their amazement across education, setup, and ongoing value—then track your improvement.