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The person who wrote this got my email from the pioneer virtual hackathon slack channel and sent me this unsolicited email: Heya! What a Hackathon :P I arrive
by bobbyz 6y ago
The person who wrote this got my email from the pioneer virtual hackathon slack channel and sent me this unsolicited email:
Heya!
What a Hackathon :P I arrived on my own, found a team and went off hacking! Tbh, we were slightly too ambitious and 24h really isn't that much :) So, while we didn't make it to the finalists, it was tons of fun and I really enjoyed meeting new people!
And that's why I'm reaching out, I guess you also met cool people with whom you'd like to stay in touch.. but you know the story: You've exchanged emails, added them on Twitter, but.. unless your a social monster, it will be difficult to stay in touch.. just because we're busy and forgetful
I know about that because that's the problem my real startup (We're a Pioneer startup) is solving. We've built an algorithm that analyses your email interactions to figure out who you're losing touch with, that way you can always keep an eye on your gmail contacts and make sure to follow up with the people that matter.
You can try it out now if you want, happy to chat if you've got questions!!
Have a good one! (I'll get some rest now :P)
Cheers,
Not sure if they’re the person you want to go to for acquisition advice.
- nartam11 6y agoWhat type of person would you trust with acquisition advice? This is a topic I've struggled with how do you inform target users about your product without being dismisssed
- bobbyz 6y agoSomeone who has managed to acquire customers in a way that does not make me lose all respect for them.
- bobbyz 6y agoHis next blog post should be “how to ruin your reputation in less than 50 lines of python”
- jlbnjmn 6y agoDo you have any examples of outreach methods that you appreciate? Obviously when something works it's not likely it will be noticed, but I'm curious if anything broke through without offending? Also, do you pay for SaaS or are you not at all that demographic? I personally detest every email marketing attempt that is not a curated newsletter I intentionally signed up for. I also don't browse ad funded social media, so that's not reaching me. And I use ad blockers. So I guess my question is, how can someone with something that you or I would want to pay for let us know that it's available? In a way that leaves us saying "thanks for telling me"?
- throwawaygh 6y agoHackathons and conferences are good venues for advertising this particular product, and an email/slack message is not a completely unreasonable mechanism for doing so. However, 1. Do it through official channels. If you want to advertise your product by mass emailing hackathon participants, then sponsor the hackathon. 2. If are not sponsoring, then at least limit your outreach to people who you actually talked to during the event. Have genuine conversations, tell them about your product during the conversation, and ask if they'd like a "tree trial of the pro membership" or whatever. Only follow-up if they are actually interested. 3. Most importantly, communicate professionally. That means a well-structured, concise, convincing, and error-free piece of text. It helps to list next steps. The message in the OP is, to be frank, a rambling mess of a narrative with middle school-level grammar errors. I would expect better written communication skills from a high schooler. Even if I met this person at the hackathon, and even if I solicited a followup, this email would probably still make me lose all interest.
- jlbnjmn 6y agoThanks, I think I understand your perspective better. It sounds like you care more about the lack of genuineness or professionalism than the act of reaching out and selling, if I'm understanding correctly. I think the takeaway for me is to work in a space/field of genuine interest so that building relationships can be a genuine activity.
- mekoka 6y agoWhat exactly does that mean? What is it that put you off in his approach? Was it the cold outreach? If so, how would you have liked to be approached for his type of service/product?
- Silhouette 6y agoImplicit assumption error at line 1: User did not want to be approached at all.
- nathanganser 6y agoFair! My general life philosophy is that you should give things a try. It will not work in most cases, but who knows, it might! In this case, it clearly didn't. But it's not the end of the world :)
- bobbyz 6y agoIf this is your first spam attempt, how do you explain the intro in which you said you arrived at a virtual hackathon?
- nathanganser 6y agoDefinitely hard. I've tried different cold emailing approaches and the key differentiating factor was follow-ups. Lot of people ignore the first cold email, even if it's personal. But when you follow up, they appreciate the hustle and give you a chance :)
- bobbyz 6y agoDidn't you just say you were just giving spam emails a try in an earlier comment? And now you say you've tried many cold email approaches? I'm having trouble keeping track...