cold email ft. self-made billionaire 🧊✉️🧊✉️

Another week another cold email banger

Welcome all you new peeps, to the cold email newsletter.

I’m changing up the format of this newsletter to a 1-2-3.

• 1 real cold email example

• 2 reasons why it worked

• 3 cold emailing tips

Let me know how you feel about this change.

Alright, here ya go.

1 Real cold email example

Chamath Palihapitiya, Canadian and American VC, ‘14

2 reasons why it worked:

1) The email is authentic and human. This gets past the first test of a cold email - the crocodile brain. The crocodile brain reads the email and takes 2 seconds to decide “is this a random creep on the internet?” or “is this an AI generated spam email?”. If the answer to both are no, then your cold email has a chance to be read.

2) The second test is creating a curiosity gap. Is your email interesting enough to overcome the mental effort to even answer? If you ask for “general advice” or to “pick your brain” then the mental effort > curiosity.

* bonus tip is personalization + research. “Just like when you went up and down Sand Hill and wrote that letter to VK…..”

3 cold emailing tips

• Really spend the time needed to research one person. Don’t personalize or come up with ‘similarities’ for the sake of personalizations. Try to form genuine talking points. If you can’t, you’re not researching enough.

• Give value where you can. Figure out ways to make their life easier or better. Send them their favorite socks or a present for their newborn child etc. If you’re asking for a job, try to do parts of the job without permission (in a non-confidential way). Create a list of improvements in their website for example.

• Spend 80% of your time on the subject line. The subject line needs to stand out from all the other emails. Be creative. Add emojis in there or their name + their favorite company etc. Don’t pretend to be anyone else though lol.

How did the 1-2-3 format feel?

Feel good?

Feel bad?

or worse - feel nothing?

Hit reply and tell me so I can improve these for you.

Also if you’re new, we have a Whatsapp group here to share cold emails + get feedback if you’re interested.

P.S- Know anyone who’d benefit from this email? Please do forward the email. Anyone new can subscribe to cold emails hall of fame here :)