The Cold Email

Something I learned awhile ago is that most people that I consider "celebrities" really aren't that famous, and as such are generally pretty happy to respond to emails.

In ~2014 I sent an email to Joe Armstrong (one of the creators of Erlang) asking some questions about concurrency because I still didn't fully understand why Erlang was supposed to be better for it. I expected him to just point me to an FAQ or simply not respond [1], but instead he wrote a very long, detailed explanation about the rationale of Erlang's design. It was well-written and it made a lot of things "click" in my brain.

That simple act by Joe was extremely instrumental in my career, I think for the better. I became very interested in Erlang, but also just concurrency theory and distributed systems, and I would like to think I almost understand it now :)

He and I would exchange emails occasionally over the next few years and he seemed genuinely enthusiastic about programming, Erlang, and people using it, and despite me barely knowing the guy, I was genuinely pretty sad when he passed away in 2019.

I think about that a lot; if I hadn't sent a dumb cold email my entire life would likely be very different.

[1] Which, to be clear, would have been perfectly fine!

I got my first job (an IT traineeship) because after my interview, I rang them every few days to ask how I did and if they were keen to progress further. In the end they said they gave it to me because I was obviously SO keen, what withi the ringing every other day, and I had interviewed well.

Anyway my point is, as the author implies, showing interest is key. I genuinely wanted that job and I showed them that.

Sadly these days (that happened to me in ~1998) it's so, so much harder to stand out. There's a wall of bits and "employment services" between you and the person who'd hire you, and I don't know how the younger generation is going to be able to navigate that easily.

I'm probably somewhat older than most here. What OP is describing is what used to be normal and should still be!

In the past it was normal to write a CV (resume) and a covering letter that was mildly tailored to each target firm, either in response to a job advert or on spec. I'm not talking quill pens here - you'd do a mail merge and buy a really large book of stamps.

Linked In is possibly the worst thing that ever happened to HR but it was inevitable and someone else would do it instead if they did not.

The whole point is ... show interest, actual interest in an employer you are interested in and whatever they are doing. Find a way in. If they only use LLM based 'bots and can't be arsed with a 'phone call then fuck 'em!

I started to write my story here along the same lines. Perhaps more along the lines of don't be afraid to ask. Almost every job I got, and they've mostly been pretty fantastic, I got cause I called and ask for it. I was told some of those jobs just weren't available or impossible to get but I called and got them. One job the manager wasn't even thinking about it till I called but I got him thinking about it and he hired me. Two impossible to get jobs I got cause the secretary left her desk for a moment and the manager answered the phone instead. I got two half hour interviews in prime time for someone and his business cause I called someone and asked for it.

It never hurt to ask.

In the late 90s I was a huge Michael Schumacher and Ferrari fan. I found Jean Todt’s (the Ferrari F1 team principal at the time) email address and wrote a passionate email asking if there was any way I could join their team - even if it was sweeping the floor. Never got a reply :(

Previously I worked at Auth0. I joined fairly early, just a couple of years after their founding so the company was still small. I remember one of my collegues who joined around the same time got his job by sending (multiple) cold emails to my manager at the time telling how much he admired the company and wanted to join. Eventually he gave in and gave him the job. The guys stayed on long after I left so it obviously work out well for both parties.

When something like this was happening to me, I heard people were saying "Oh, he is just lucky". It kinda made me a bit mad because of how much work I've put in a particular thing behind the scenes and in general how unlucky I was with many other things.

Then I stumbled upon the concept of "luck surface area" [1] and it's kinda clicked with me. Yes, luck is a factor, but you definitely can increase your chances. Cold emails from the post is one of such instruments.

[1] https://umbrex.com/resources/tools-for-thinking/what-is-luck...

I once called the phone number on a website for an obscure local event, and it happened to be a local business magnate's personal cell phone number, and he helped me out with my request, so that was awesome.

Nice to see Zach still posting.

I have had reasonable success with cold emails. My favorite genre is every so often I email a musician or author whose works I tremendously enjoyed asking for a signed copy, an opinion, or simply to say thank you for having a profound influence on me. Some are very well known. But almost all reply with enthusiasm.

This is a great read, but I wonder how effective cold messages are in the AI era. I now receive customized cold emails and LinkedIn messages. There are several tools like Clay that make AI messaging effortless. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine if message are AI-generated or if a human actually took the time to write them and care.

I see in-person networking becoming increasingly valuable. Unfortunately, for me, I live in the Detroit Metro area. We just don’t have the tech community that other areas like the Bay do, and despite several people‘s best efforts. We don’t have the best networking opportunities and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Is human-like cold emails (with stuff like :D) better or worse than professionally written formal emails? Im a student and would like some tips. I know it depends on the situation but what would you rather see? And based on your experience, what would you respond to more?

I got my first job in the U.S by emailing the local PHP user group introducing myself. The CEO of a dev agency was on the list, and 2 weeks later I had a job offer.

Moving to a new country not knowing anyone and with barely any money, fair to say that one email changed my life.

I met Zach wayyy back in 2016 via a code email to him! (hey Zach!)

I hired someone when we were contemplating a Linux version of our product. The unsolicited email I received just radiated passion and interest. Easiest decision ever.

I read a dozen inbound cold emails every day. I used to love it. I don't anymore, because every other single email uses The Sentence. Or, The Paragraph.

Whatever model these people use, it always always puts in The Sentence (I don't want to disclose it publicly! I'm running an experiment. I'll write it up when it concludes. :) ). Or, worse, The Paragraph.

Please use models to research people and learn about them. But please write the email yourself.

It's instantly obvious. And even though I do my best not to hold it against someone, I would be lying if I didn't say that it isn't a bit annoying.

Imagine reading endless variations of The Sentence 3,240 to 4,000 times a year. It feels straight out of the Twilight Zone.

Yeah people replied to cold emails back when they received one once every 3 months. Now we get dozens a day. Straight into the garbage.

Zach is good people. I still can’t believe I met him at a random meetup in SF once and he walked up to me to say hi and I didn’t connect the dots until many hours later that he’s the Zach whose blog I’ve been reading on and off my whole career and is one of the inspirations that got me to Silicon Valley.

Zach if you’re reading this, thanks

I thought the post will be about writing cold emails :)

> You can’t win unless you skate to where the puck is going to be buying a lotto ticket.

This is why I tend to write real letters using my IBM Selectric III and send them via physical mail. I enjoy writing. Writing with purpose is time well spent. 90% of the time I get no response. I’m not actively trying to find the next recipient, it just comes naturally, so I see no reason to stop.

When is the last time you got an actual typed or hand written letter? That’s my advantage.

I agree wholeheartedly with this article and this is something I'm struggling with my daughter about: the worst thing anybody can say is no and in some cases, they already said no. If you ask (or ask again), you might get a really good answer or more.

The author is doing his article a disservice by calling this cold email. He just sent a few one-off emails to strangers. That's quite different than the BDR team at Startup Du Jour scraping LinkedIn and blasting out an enless stream of "hope this message finds you well" slop.

I'd wager that the majority of us do not differentiate between cold email and spam, especially in the AI era.

I got a cold email recently and was happy to engage, but I warned them upfront that LLMs change the game, and asked for more info about their background (to authenticate them as a human). They replied with another unnecessarily long email that was light on details and reeked of AI Voice, so I ghosted at that point, unconvinced they were acting in good faith.

Demonstrating authenticity and effort are super important in this space.

I think another aspect of this is that the author experienced positive feedback from this approach early on. Rejection is tough to deal with, but having an instance that turned out well in mind is a huge benefit.

"Cold email" - I hate this term. Call it what it is. Spam.

And no, personalizing your spam doesn't make it any less spam, especially with AI these days, but this is a hot take for a VC forum whose companies survive on spam.