What's up, it's Zayd.

Standard pipeline math treats a “No” as a zero. It goes in the CRM, gets a “Rejected” stamp, disappears into a folder nobody opens until quarterly report time, and you feel like a failure for like four whole minutes.

A few months ago, we stopped doing that and started paying our “No's” instead. 20% of lifetime revenue for anybody who likes what we built but can't be the one to buy it. It gives the same energy as going on a date, realizing that you’d be better as friends, and then ending up marrying their cousin.

It's become one of the quieter growth levers we have, and almost nobody at our stage bothers with it, so this week I want to walk through exactly how it runs.

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My favorite finds of the week

The way we initially realized this was by thinking about what a “No” has already cost us by the time we heard it. We had already sourced them, qualified them, wrote to them, replied to them, showed up to a call, prepared for that call, and probably followed up twice. That’s so much work to ultimately let them die without another thought.

It would be different if they had never engaged to begin with; their “No” is pretty worthless, but a “No” from someone who sat through a demo and enjoyed it is a completely different asset. The first can go in the trash, but the latter is more like…recycling.

When I go through our “Reject Pile, the reasons cluster into a short list:

All of those reasons are objectively super fair, and none of them are verdicts on our product. “It’s not you, it’s me.” “Right person, wrong time.” etc. The person on the other end often likes the thing, believes it works, and simply can’t be the buyer this year.

Complete guide to LinkedIn optimization for cold outreach:

What we usually do if someone gets to the end of a conversation, clearly likes Valley, and isn't a fit right now is, rather than closing the thread, we offer them the affiliate program. 20% of lifetime revenue on anyone they bring in.

Essentially, they get a link, they get tracking, and they get the same messaging examples we'd hand a customer so they have something concrete to send. It’s really that easy and unsexy.

It makes a lot of sense though…somebody who evaluated us properly and passed often knows our ICP better than a filtered list ever will. They sat through the demo. They know precisely which of their peers has the problem, because they just spent thirty minutes deciding whether they had it themselves.

The gap between cold and warm is huge (obviously). Cold replies land somewhere between 1% and 3%. Warm replies run 15% to 47% on the same message. A referral sits at the far end of warm, and it costs you nothing until it produces revenue, which makes it the only channel on your list with genuinely zero downside risk.

All of that being said, not everyone should be handed a commission link. Some people are a real fit at the wrong moment, and those go into a different lane.

Every positive reply we get on LinkedIn, we open an email thread and restate the conversation there. Multi-channel makes people take it seriously in a way a single DM never does. For the reach out later crowd, that email carries the fifty-lead offer, so when their budget does unfreeze they already have a campaign sitting in their inbox with their own ICP in it.

Btw, Valley now has a free trial. See how warm outbound actually books meetings.

You can build a version of this in a week with three lanes and no software.

The whole thing takes a few hours to set up and then compounds without you. Every no becomes either distribution or a dated appointment, which beats a closed-lost stamp by a fairly wide margin.

Here's what's inside:

Watch the video: here