I will not promote, What actually worked for me(technie) doing cold outreach at early stage

Spent the last few months testing outreach channels for idea validation and design partner recruiting calls. Week 1 finally clicked: 3 calls from Reddit ( out 24 outreach, ~3 hours), 2 from LinkedIn(out of 10, ~2 hours), 2 more from local meet up ( big time sink, 8 hours in total because we have to be there the whole time). What didn't work: Cold email through Apollo. 200 emails, 7 replies, 0 interested. The database is stale and the targeting falls apart for SMBs and startups. Paid ads. Fine as a quick gut