Best methods to find initial customers
I recently quit my full-time job as a VC to go all in on my recruiting startup. I built a recruiting agency in 2021 that scaled to $200k/yr, solely using cold email. However, times have changed. I'm building another recruiting firm, focused solely on AI engineers. I've sent thousands of cold emails this year and haven't managed to close a single new client from it. We've built custom technical vetting and other stuff that I believe makes us better than any competitors. I try to get that across in our cold emails, but my guess is that the people I'm targeting are so flooded with similar emails that it gets lost in the noise.
The clients I have today have been the result of massive luck. A VP at Google filled out the form on my landing page. He said he found us through AI search. I'm trying to replicate that, but so far I've had no luck with it. Then, I'm working with some startups, where I met the founders in-person at events in SF.
Now that I'm full-time, I want to really focus the majority of my time on business development. However, I'm not sure where to focus my energy. Nothing I've tried has worked, and everything that has worked has been luck-based. I really want to find a solution to this, as my tendency is to dive into product/code and neglect active sales. I know that's a road that leads to nowhere though.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.