VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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Cold emails to investors seem to be all the rage right now.
I can’t say whether or not this is effective for the founders out there, so I’m curious to hear your take if this has been effective for you. Let me know if you’ve gotten a meeting out of a cold email, or even better, let me know if you’ve gotten an investment out of a cold email.
I actually don’t mind getting these cold inbound emails from founders. I understand there are thousands of seed funds out there. How could you possibly reach them all? I’m empathetic to the amount of work that it takes for a founder to expand their network and try to find a new funds to talk to.
Most pre-seed and seed funds have a pitch us form or an intake form or some sort of form on their website. I’m not so high and mighty that I don’t mind spending 30 seconds reading your email and figuring out if you’re a fit for me. In fact, on our form we specifically state what we’re not looking for so that we don’t waste your time.
So, if you want to send cold emails, I’m fine with that. But I don’t think that all other funds are. It’s just the state of the market right now.
The cold emails that I’ve been getting for the last few months have gotten a lot better. There are three things that I’m looking for in a cold email:
Number one. What is this business? Number two. Is this for me? And number three, is this interesting?
It may seem funny that my first question is what is this business? But let’s come back to my fundamental fundraising principle: don’t make me think don’t make me work. Tell me right up front, very succinctly and very clearly, we are X business that does Y to serve Z customers.
The more succinctly that you can explain what your business does right at the beginning, the better job that you’ve done to set the stage for the rest of the email. And drop all the jargon, just state it plainly. When you’ve set the stage clearly for what your business is. Then I can evaluate the next two things.
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