1. Pick one task, not a platform
Buyers do not pay for 'an AI agent'. They pay to stop doing a specific job, like reconciling invoices, qualifying inbound leads or triaging support tickets. Write one sentence: 'My agent does X for Y so they stop spending Z hours on it.' If you cannot fill it in, you are not ready to sell.
2. Name the job title that owns the pain
Find the person who does the task by hand today, not the CTO. For a support agent that is a Head of Support at a 10 to 50 person SaaS company. For a bookkeeping agent it is an operations manager or a small accounting firm owner. Write down three titles and stick to them.
3. Find them where they complain
Search Reddit communities like r/sysadmin, r/smallbusiness, r/Accounting or r/CustomerSuccess for phrases like 'so tedious', 'every single week' or 'anyone automate'. On LinkedIn, search the job title plus 'hiring' to find teams drowning in the task. Save 30 real people with a real complaint.
4. Lead with control, not autonomy
Trust is the main objection right now, especially after public worries about agents taking actions customers did not intend. Say clearly what your agent can and cannot do, that it asks before acting, and that every action is logged. A human approval step often closes the deal faster than more autonomy.
5. Send a short, specific message
Write to each person directly. Example: 'Saw your post about spending Mondays tagging support tickets. I built an agent that drafts the tags and you approve them in one click. Can I run it on last week's tickets and show you the result? Free, 20 minutes.' No deck, no link to a landing page.
6. Do the first run by hand with them
Get on a call, run the agent on their real data, and fix problems live. Stay close to it, even doing parts manually if needed. You are learning what they actually need and proving it works on their mess, not your demo data.
7. Ask for money at the end of the pilot
Agree before you start: 'If this saves you time in two weeks, it's $200 a month.' At the end, show what it did and ask plainly. A small price paid is worth more than a large one promised. If they hesitate, ask what would need to be true for them to pay.
8. Repeat daily until it works
Send 10 to 15 targeted messages every day and track replies in a simple sheet. Hulby, an AI cofounder, does this search and outreach work daily for founders who would rather spend their time building.
People asking this right now
Real, public posts from the last few weeks. Each one is somebody you could help today.
Mistakes to skip
- Selling a general-purpose agent instead of one task for one role.
- Hiding what the agent can do on its own and losing trust.
- Demoing on fake data instead of the buyer's real workflow.
- Running long free pilots without agreeing on a price upfront.
Want this done for your AI agent, every day?
Hulby finds the people asking for what you built, writes every reply and email, and keeps you on it until they pay. Free to start.
Find my first customersQuestions
How much should I charge my first customer?
Enough that it is a real decision, often $100 to $500 a month for a small team. Tie it to time saved, not tokens used.
Should I offer a free trial?
Offer a short, scoped pilot with a price agreed in advance. Open-ended free trials rarely convert.
What if buyers worry the agent will make mistakes?
Add an approval step and a full action log. Let them start with read-only or draft mode, then expand.
Do I need a polished product first?
No. You need one workflow that works on their data. Fix the rest by hand while you learn.