21–30 of 31 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever invested after receiving a cold pitch?
yes. also, a bunch of times cold pitches i've ignored went on to do huge things.
Don't throw out the winning lotto ticket. Oh well. ;-)
How not to write cold emails to investors -- lessons from a serial founder whose companies have raised $150MM+. TL;DR Don't chase. Be chased. 1. Don't write cold emails to investors. You automatically give the investor the upper hand by chasing them. It's counter intuitive, but it comes off as desperate. VCs write checks into companies that they have a fear of missing out, or that other VCs are backing, not those tha…
I like the "don't chase, be chased" recommendation below. But when it comes to how to achieve that, the "get traction" recommendation could have been expanded on just a bit more. So let me try to offer a very similar but slightly modified recommendation: get into YC. How is "get traction" different from "get into YC"? Instacart and Airbnb will give you a clue. Neither had material traction when they applied to YC, an…
YC is probably the easiest way to get VCs to notice you. But given how selective it is, that could be tougher than traction. Maybe throwing out a third then -- get people in your network to introduce you to VCs. Also hard, but startups just aren't easy I guess.
YC gives up equity. If you don't have any prior experience, it's good, but not for experienced enterprise founders in b2b saas startups. The latter should make demo videos and blog about their progress once they've exited stealth. While in stealth, they need to approach alpha/beta users, who may well invest and/or m&a.
How not to write cold emails to investors -- lessons from a serial founder whose companies have raised $150MM+. TL;DR Don't chase. Be chased. 1. Don't write cold emails to investors. You automatically give the investor the upper hand by chasing them. It's counter intuitive, but it comes off as desperate. VCs write checks into companies that they have a fear of missing out, or that other VCs are backing, not those tha…
i get a lot of cold pitches. 1. don’t play coy. lots of people don’t actually say what they are doing. 2. guess the next questions and reply to them. “can i see your deck?” often comes next, so attach the deck. explain your current state of traction. funds raised so far. link to demo. screenshots. 3. if you cut and paste, make sure you aren’t changing fonts etc. 4. don’t use bulk emailer or anything that adds clicktr…
Can it be $0, or do you expect cold reaching only after raising initial funds?
How not to write cold emails to investors -- lessons from a serial founder whose companies have raised $150MM+. TL;DR Don't chase. Be chased. 1. Don't write cold emails to investors. You automatically give the investor the upper hand by chasing them. It's counter intuitive, but it comes off as desperate. VCs write checks into companies that they have a fear of missing out, or that other VCs are backing, not those tha…
150MM? That's a trillion, yes?
How not to write cold emails to investors -- lessons from a serial founder whose companies have raised $150MM+. TL;DR Don't chase. Be chased. 1. Don't write cold emails to investors. You automatically give the investor the upper hand by chasing them. It's counter intuitive, but it comes off as desperate. VCs write checks into companies that they have a fear of missing out, or that other VCs are backing, not those tha…
150MM? That's a trillion, yes?
I like the "don't chase, be chased" recommendation below. But when it comes to how to achieve that, the "get traction" recommendation could have been expanded on just a bit more. So let me try to offer a very similar but slightly modified recommendation: get into YC. How is "get traction" different from "get into YC"? Instacart and Airbnb will give you a clue. Neither had material traction when they applied to YC, an…
“Don’t chase, be chased” assumes you have the capital or team to execute. Many startups don’t have both and most successful startups require both. Investment alleviates the former to then help solve the latter.
“Get into YC” is hysterical advice because the % of companies who are accepted into YC is around ~2%. One does not simply “get into YC”.
How not to write cold emails to investors -- lessons from a serial founder whose companies have raised $150MM+. TL;DR Don't chase. Be chased. 1. Don't write cold emails to investors. You automatically give the investor the upper hand by chasing them. It's counter intuitive, but it comes off as desperate. VCs write checks into companies that they have a fear of missing out, or that other VCs are backing, not those tha…
This works when your product is something that is B2C or a very B2B direct-sale/SaaS kind of thing. It does not work as well, IME, when you are selling something more enterprise-y or selling through a channel, where the social media and viral marketing approaches basically do not work.
Lest you think this is some kind of humblebrag, this hasn't turned into any investment yet. Just giving a scenario under which it could work.
It's in these enterprise folks' interest for us to have investment as it reduces their risk in adopting our product.
i get a lot of cold pitches. 1. don’t play coy. lots of people don’t actually say what they are doing. 2. guess the next questions and reply to them. “can i see your deck?” often comes next, so attach the deck. explain your current state of traction. funds raised so far. link to demo. screenshots. 3. if you cut and paste, make sure you aren’t changing fonts etc. 4. don’t use bulk emailer or anything that adds clicktr…
> funds raised so far Can it be $0, or do you expect cold reaching only after raising initial funds?