
He hit $1M ARR by sending 500,000 cold emails—then raised a $25M Series A in 6 days. | Mark Hughes, Co-Founder of Solidroad
From A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders by Mistral.vc
June 1, 2026 · 43 min · Season 5 · Episode 38
About this episode
Mark Hughes shares his journey from zero product usage to achieving $1M ARR through cold emailing and successfully raising a $25M Series A.
Mark was running a startup out of a tiny annex office in Dublin with zero product usage. Then one customer turned it on and overnight he saw usage spike to thousands of simulations. He got to $1M ARR 100% through outbound, by sending 500,000 cold emails. A few months ago he closed a $25M Series A. In this episode, Mark breaks down the pivot from sales roleplay to customer support that unlocked his first real traction, the cold outbound playbook that took him to $1M ARR (500K emails, 250 meeti...
People in this episode
Guest: Mark Hughes
Topics covered
- cold emailing
- startup growth
- fundraising
- customer support
- outbound sales
Keywords
- cold emails
- ARR
- Series A
- startup
- outbound sales
- customer support
- traction
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Solidroad
Places: Dublin
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