The Cold Message That Built a Startup
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When Caitlin Leksana's finger hovered over the send button, doubt crept in. "I was scared. Seriously, it's nerve-wracking," she admits about those first cold messages to 100s of CFOs. Her simple pitch: "I'm not trying to sell anything; I'm looking to learn if you'd be willing to spare a few minutes."
"We knew we were industry outsiders," Caitlin explains. "Neither me nor my co-founder were accountants. Our only two solutions to learning more were to become accountants ourselves or talk to industry professionals—and the second just sounded more efficient."
What happened next surprised her. Replies appeared—not just one or two, but dozens. CFOs weren't just responding; they were eager to talk.
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"Every cold email someone responded to energized me even more," Caitlin recalls, "because it meant we were finding a problem without a solution—the perfect place for a startup to be building."
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Those scheduled 20-minute calls transformed into passionate conversations. "I waste three hours every Friday just handling invoices," confessed one CFO.
"It's like we've got spacecraft that can land themselves, but I'm still manually tracking payments like it's 1995."
Those scheduled 20-minute calls transformed into passionate conversations. "I waste three hours every Friday just handling invoices," confessed one CFO. "It's like we've got spacecraft that can land themselves, but I'm still manually tracking payments like it's 1995."
One moment stands out vividly: "I was asking a CFO how she handles a specific process, and she looked at me funny and said, 'You mean dunning?' I was so embarrassed I didn't even know the right terms." Caitlin laughs. "What's funny is that dunning is now a core feature of our platform."
The most memorable reaction? A CFO's simple plea: "Please build something that solves this! 😫"
These conversations became the foundation for Fazeshift, an AI agent revolutionizing accounts receivable. When Caitlin and her co-founder launched during Y Combinator, those same frustrated CFOs became their first customers.
To hesitant founders, Caitlin offers this: "What's the worst that can happen? Someone doesn't respond. What's the second worst? You talk to people and disprove your startup idea. Either way, you've made progress."