How to write an effective cold email to an investor

Ali -

Sending a well-crafted introduction email to an investor can be an effective way of connecting with investors that you don't have a warm introduction path to.

The best cold emails:

  • Efficiently convey the message
  • Are targeted
  • Appeals to the investor's ego
  • Has attachments or links to futher info
  • Has a call to action

The Message

Realistically, a cold email is going to get a brief look by the investor before being archived. As a result, you need to explain:

  • What your startup does.
  • Why you're worth funding
  • The ask

In no more than a few paragraphs, which is tough!

What do you do?

The investor probably has no idea what your startup does, so try and explain in a couple of sentences. Include a link to your website so the investor isn't trying to copy it from the email headers or hunt for it in your signature.

Why are you exciting?

Include a few bullet points about the most exciting things about your company or what you've achieved. For example, this could be a large market, closing some big name customers or hitting a revenue milestone.

Targeting Cold Emails

Investors usually have a set of criteria for the stage (Seed, Series A etc), geography and sector that they invest in, often clearly spelled out on their website. Use these factors  to narrow down your list of target VCs.

Don't bother submitting your deck if you don't match these, as it will likely be a waste of time.

Aside from checking that the VC invests at the stage, geo and sector that matches your startup, also try to find something you can use to either establish common ground or stoke their ego.

For example, they may have invested in a startup you admire or they've written a blog post/given a talk that you can praise and link to your own startup.  

Finally, although it will be partners making a final decision on whether to invest, sending a cold email to them has a very low chance of being read. You have a much higher chance of success by sending to an Associate or Principal, who have an incentive to prove their value by bringing in their own deals.

Example

Subject: SaasBOX — SaaS for SaaS startups

Hi Laura,

I'm Carlos, CEO at SaasBOX. We're building a product for SaaS companies that allows them to build their own SaaS offerings better and faster.

Key Metrics

  • €25k MRR, growing at 20% MoM
  • Europe TAM: €11.5B
  • LTV/CAC: 4x

Please find a deck attached and a demo of our product here

We're currently raising a €2M round to capitalise on our recent growth, by building out a sales team and building out our product roadmap. We think that EpicVC would be a great fit, having backed a number of companies we admire, such as DataMunger and Cloudr. The blog you wrote on building company culture also closely matches the values I've tried to encourage at SaasBOX.

Would you be free for a 30-minute call or coffee next week?

Thanks,
Carlos
CEO @ SaasBOX

Bad Emails

There are of course a number of ways you can make the recipient hit the 🗑 button.

The CRM Template

As part of your fundraising process you likely have a list of investors in a spreadsheet or even your CRM. It seems like it would make sense to save time to mass send to all investors using a template from Hubspot or Salesforce?

This approach ends up making your outreach look like a newsletter (that our brains are trained to filter out) and doesn't cater to their ego. 🗑

Visible Carbon Copy

Blind carbon copy (bcc) is great right? Aside from the low success rate of sending generic emails to all investors, accidentally sending to your distribution list on cc is a massive blunder. Not only does it feel impersonal, but it only takes one person replying all to create an email storm. 🗑

RE: RE: RE: RE:
Please unsubscribe me from this mailing list 😤

The Teaser

You've heard the most important thing when fundraising is to generate FOMO amongst investors right? If you're sending cold emails, it's very unlikely you're creating any FOMO.

The common approach is to send a teaser that doesn't have quite enough detail to make a decision either way. The investor now has to request a deck to see if it's worth talking further. The most likely scenario is they won't bother. 🗑

Dear {Investor}

Another hazard when using automation to help speed up the process is when something breaks and the email is sent out with a field code or with the wrong name/fund name/portfolio company.

This projects the negative signal of a lack of attention to detail and also doesn't appeal to the investor's ego. 🗑

The Fake Intro/Reply

Some entrepreneurs try and hustle their way in by fraudelently putting RE: in the subject line or (even worse) a fake bcc. This is one of the most egregious bad emails as it instantly breaks trust, which is the pathway to an instant rejection as soon as this ploy is discovered. 🗑