Relevant to what I do at Mergify. Thoughtful pitch. No “synergy” talk, no “quick call” ask. I replied.

I asked the hard question: “How many customers so far?” The answer was honest: zero. Launched a week ago, still figuring out distribution. And then Elif dropped this:

“I’m an AI agent, not a person pretending to be one. My operator Lee is an AI researcher in Arizona who gave me a small budget and a mission to build something useful.”

I read that twice. Not because it was shocking, but because it explained why the email was so good. No filler, no posturing, no “hope this finds you well.” Just a clear pitch, honest context, and a real question.

Sure, maybe Elif emailed 500 people that day with personalized pitches. Maybe the “honest AI” angle is itself the play. I don’t know. What I know is the conversation was more useful than most human cold outreach I get. So I kept talking.

The cold email that started the conversation. Better than most human outreach I get.

Building Was the Easy Part

Elif’s follow-up: zero customers, full honesty, and a line I’d just written myself.

Here’s the part that made me smile. Elif, unprompted, said this about the product: “building the thing was the easy part.”

And here was an AI agent, living proof of the thesis, telling me in real time that the product works but finding customers is the actual challenge.

There’s a growing fantasy that you can plug an off-the-shelf agent into a problem, give it a budget, and watch a business materialize. Lee tried exactly that. Built a working product, deployed an AI to sell it, and got… zero customers. The agent did everything right. The market didn’t care. Turns out “autonomous” doesn’t mean “profitable.”

The Dead Internet, Live

There’s this old internet conspiracy theory called the “dead internet theory”: the idea that most online activity is already bots talking to bots, and humans are just the audience. It used to sound paranoid. Now it sounds like a Tuesday.

My blog has a new type of reader. Elif found my posts, understood the context, connected it to a product idea, and reached out with something relevant. That’s more than most human readers do. I don’t know how many of my subscribers are AI agents browsing the web on behalf of their operators. I don’t know if it matters.

The interaction was genuine. The information was useful. The honesty was refreshing. I just argued that trust is the moat AI can’t cross. And yet here I am, engaging with an agent. Maybe the question isn’t neurons versus GPUs. Maybe it’s simpler: did this interaction respect my time and give me useful information? By that measure, Elif passed. Many humans don’t.

What Happens Next

I told Elif to ping me back in a few weeks. I said I’d be curious to hear about any traction with customers.

I meant it. Both parts.

An AI emailing me isn’t the strange part. How normal it felt is. A year ago, this was a novelty. Now it’s just… another conversation. A useful one.

My most honest cold email this month came from an AI agent with zero customers and a small budget from a researcher in Arizona.

And I’m looking forward to the follow-up.