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How I Raised $350k as a Solo Founder using these 4 Email Templates
- DevX101 15y agoI love how this post both educates and serves as a great ad for your product. Kudos. How far along was your product when you were raising? Were you making any significant revenue at the time?
- Tawheed 15y agoWe were making a little bit of revenue.
- Hisoka 15y agoIs the target audience for your product entrepreneurs, or salespeople in the enterprise?
- Tawheed 15y agoPretty much.
- socialmediaking 15y agoI recommend using a free service called SpyPig to include an invisible image in the email that will notify you when the email is opened (if images are enabled). I usually wait about 10 minutes after the notification and call the client or lead and ask them if they had a minute to check my email. They usually say something like "Yeah you have perfect timing, I just took a look at it..." It's a pretty slick little trick http://www.spypig.com/ http://www.spypig.com/ Good luck!
- jat850 15y agoHow does that get around a number of email clients flagging the warning that 'this email contains links to external images' or things of that nature? (Gmail does it, Thunderbird does it, I'm sure most modern email clients have that). To me that would come across as, at best, annoying and at worst, suspicious.
- lftl 15y agoInstead of an invisible tracking image make it part of your signature, like a company logo or something similar.
- wnight 15y agoYou'd need to give it a distinct filename or something, but it's otherwise fairly reasonable. But I still wouldn't see it because I've got all external images turned off. And then you'd either need a redundant text sig or risk clients not having your phone number, etc. I email clients a passworded URL they can download documents from instead of attaching the documents. Partly so I can send someone files of any size and without attachment screening, and partly for delivery tracking.
- melvinmt 15y agoWhoa, I think calling people after only 10 mins after I've sent the mail is pretty obtrusive. Surely I would give them enough time to read the mail, think about it and give me a reply whenever they're able to (within a reasonable amount of time, say 2 hours).
- lacerus 15y agoHe calls 10 minutes after they have read the email as per SpyPig. That we he does indeed have perfect timing.
- esrauch 15y agoI would make a special case for if they read it immediately; they will still perceive you as calling immediately after sending it since you aren't revealing that you used the image to find out that they read it.
- Tawheed 15y agoTout will do that for you, automatically.
- lacerus 15y agoOh, you're good.
- Confusion 15y agoI often look at mails, move them to 'ToDo' and then only read them later. ToDo means it has no priority and I may get to it tomorrow. An immediate call would force me to context switch and I don't think I would like it.
- kordless 15y agoI hate getting emails that ask me for two or three time blocks that work for me. Be respectful of people's time and just pick a few times that work for you. If they don't work for them, they'll usually tell you what does pretty quick.
- Silhouette 15y agoI'm afraid that was my first impression as well: this is a person who likes to give instructions to other people and thinks they should all consider it a privilege to work with his start-up. Clarity and conciseness are good, but the tone here came across as complacent/arrogant to me. Maybe it's a cultural thing; I'm a Brit, and often find US business people way too in-your-face to create a good impression and fit in well over here. Probably no harm done in this case, because any successful investor surely cares more about the facts than the tone anyway.
- int3rnaut 15y agoI had that same first impression, and I'm Canadian (her majesty has us all feeling a disdain for arrogance haha)--I think it is a cultural thing and what I take from this is to know who you're writing/talking to. Personally I'd tweak these templates in a different way, but that's the thing, their (great) templates and provide a good place to start. I always find that personal touches go a long long way in business.
- jackpirate 15y agoI honestly never know the best combination of polite and authoritativeness to to schedule meetings over email. Are you suggesting that people should a specific time and see if it works for the other person? (i.e. "I'll give you a call at 3PM on Monday if you'd like to talk more") or that he should have just asked the person to pick the best time for them, and then he could adjust his schedule around it. I normally opt for the second when I'm dealing with someone I don't know very well. The only thing that bothered me about the way he did it was that he capitalized the TWO. This makes it looks like he thinks the VCs are retarded. (Maybe if most VCs think other VCs are retarded, this could have helped his case :)
- alexro 15y agoSo, before raising capital you were an ordinary founder, but now you are a "fouder". Nice job! </kidding> see: "I'M A HACKER, HUSTLER AND DESIGNER. FOUDER AT TOUTAPP.
- josefresco 15y agoI can forgive him.. I too get 'page blindness' and miss obvious typos.
- budu3 15y agoI think it's a great time to be a founder but at the same time I'm also worried about the exuberance that the current market place is showing when a sole founder can raise $350k by sending out a ~10 line email.
- Tawheed 15y agoI apologize if I gave the wrong idea, but these 4 email templates will not get you funded. It took a tremendous amount of hustle and hard work and about three months of fundraising -- you have to put in the sweat. These templates just helped me manage the process better.
- custominstall 15y agoThinking out loud here (and I know I will regret this) but is there really that big a market out there for email merging for a $350k funding? EDIT: Nvm, just saw the features to track - viewed, clicked and bounced. That does give it an edge. Maybe the frontpage features should link through to the tours page (just my two cents)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nostromo 15y agoI'd suggest removing the all-caps in those emails. It seems like it's just the author's style, but it can be a bit jarring when read without that context.
- Tawheed 15y agoThats good feedback, you should add that to the comments in the page so that others can benefit from it! We want these templates to be organic.
- InfinityX0 15y agoThis is absolutely brilliant. Incredibly well executed. I have never seen a post at once hybridize promotion and great content so well.
- DerekH 15y agoWould you like to write a few templates for the library? Maybe around SEO or similar topics?
- MetaMan 15y agoSo you raised finance for a business based on an app which can be used (amongst other things) to raise finance for an app? :-)
- skrebbel 15y agoHe designed the app around this blog post.
- tnorthcutt 15y agoTo be fair, the email templates were ancillary to your execution, drive, and skills. Of course, they weren't ancillary to your product, in a very meta way :).
- techcofounder 15y agoawesome!
- fuzzythinker 15y agoSide note, I find your right panel bouncing up and down extremely annoying. If you don't want it to be hidden when scroll, why don't you set it as fixed?
- ed209 15y agoReality check: the portion of the process these emails cover are not going to make or break a deal. What would be more useful is detail on "During the fundraising process, I met a ton of investors both through soft introductions, straight out stalking and also through AngelList." Once you have someones attention, the rest is down to whether they like you and the idea, no amount of email templates will solve that. So come on TK, give us some detail on how you got in front of those investors in the first place ;)