Look at the YC application. One of the questions essentially asks to give an example of your exceptionalism. There are lots of ways to get there but if a founde

Look at the YC application. One of the questions essentially asks to give an example of your exceptionalism. There are lots of ways to get there but if a founder has no notable previous accomplishments it's difficult to make the leap as an investor that suddenly they will have success. Most VCs don't want to take founder risk because it tends to be negativelty, not positively correlated with large outcomes. Cold email someone and in one to two sentences mention factual impressive academic or professional accomplishments of you and your team. Also it's fine to email associates. They do a lot of the screening work since partners are trying to spend more time with an existing portfolio, networking, and startups further fown the funnel. If you can't impress an associate it's unlikely that you'll have impressed the partner.