2 ms·

Isn't it more efficient to just write to the `random named person with checkwriting authority`? I'm sure said person can see that you cold emailed the person n

• nostrademons 8y ago
  The problem is that responding to e-mails is usually a threshold game: you need to meet the threshold of interestingness. That threshold is higher if the recipient gets a lot of e-mails (as rich & prominent people usually do), and lower if the sender is someone the recipient knows well. If you are a founding CEO and you e-mail another founding CEO of a related but non-competing industry, there are lots of ways you can make yourself interesting enough to be worth having lunch with. Sharing market knowledge, sharing hiring tips, referring promising candidates that would've been better-suited for the other company, explaining your experiences with particular technology the other company is thinking of adopting, etc. If you then ask the other founder for an intro to their VCs, it's a relatively small ask, and you've already delivered value to them. That founder, in turn, is someone well-known to their investors, who has already delivered significant value to them. If an intro comes through them, it is far more likely to meet the threshold of interestingness than a cold-email from a random person seeking money, particularly when they get a lot of cold emails seeking money.