>highly targeted, outbound cold emails...

...are neither scalable nor calls, in my mind. Here's my opinions:

1) I am currently manually building my own unsolicited email list for the purpose of marketing my b2b service. I have good, quality data sources with no bounce rates and right personas, but it is neither cheap nor simple to enter this data manually

2) even if I send these people highly targeted and well-crafted emails that are friendly and insightful and pithy, it is a slow process with diminishing returns...

3)... because most people add me to their spam filter these days. It is trivial to do so.

I would infinitely prefer to invest my time in creating excellent, viral content and offering users a free entry level service with few restrictions.

I would then spend all my time obsessively devoting myself to those users who have a big budget and greatly desire to receive communication from me.

Lastly, I dare say that someone who responds to a cold email will probably just end up kicking tires.

Tire kicking is automated away with my free demo.