Hughes took 56 customer flights last year for SolidRoad
Mark Hughes · He hit $1M ARR by sending 500,000 cold emails—then raised a $25M Series A in 6 days. | Mark Hughe... · PMF Show · Jun 1, 2026 · at 35:30
Mark Hughes, co-founder of SolidRoad, discusses his heavy travel schedule for high-touch customer onboarding.
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“I have a note in my phone of all the flights I took last year for customers, and I took 56 flights”
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More from Mark Hughes
Hughes: YC internal data proves staying in SF yields higher success rates
“When we graduated from Y Combinator on the last day, they just put up, like, all the data behind, like, companies who stay in SF and companies that leave SF. Even if you go to New York, like, it just, like, the chances of success are just so much higher if you…”
Hughes: Founders must relocate to San Francisco to build a very big business
“I think honestly was, it was a really good moment for us though, because I realized that we had to move our lives to San Francisco to build a very big business.”
Hughes: Founders are either actively fundraising or not; skip casual coffee chats
“I'm a big believer in like, you're either fundraising or not fundraising. There's a lot of like, oh, I'm doing these coffee chats, and like, hopefully we'll get preempted from this coffee chat, and all these, it's like, you're fundraising.”
Hughes: SolidRoad sent 500k cold emails to close first $1M ARR
“For, like, that first millionaire order, we sent 500,000 emails. We got 5000 replies and 250 meetings booked, and then, like, a 20% conversion of those meeting booked, which was 40 customers and an ACV of 25 K to get to a million dollars air order.”
Hughes: Founders should test outbound messaging using manual, personalized LinkedIn outreach first
“I think you have to do the manual stuff at the start to kind of, to tinker the messaging. So, like, what I would be telling founders to do is, like, start with social selling on LinkedIn and, like, be as personalized as you possibly can from, like, voice notes…”
Hughes: Cold outbound emails must aim for a reply, not closing a sale
“If you actually take the mindset of like, this message is to close this customer because I need my first customer. It's like, it's never going to work. So I felt like it was almost like putting too much detail and like why we're amazing. Whereas like the goal …”