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The guide to getting a job with cold email - next play | Ben Lang
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Thankfully, the list of things you (generally) shouldn’t do in a cold email is pretty simple.If you can follow the list below, you can eliminate many of the reasons a founder may not reply to you.Feel free to use this list in the future, after you’ve written a cold email, to double-check you haven’t made any mistakes. “This isn’t just a good rule because founders are busy, it’s a good rule because almost nobody wants to read an unsolicited sales letter in their email inbox from someone who they have never heard of.” Do not use fancy words.Think you’ve removed all the buzzwords from your email? Do it again. There are layers to this. “Executed on key initiatives” might be reduced down to “drove impact”, but “drove impact” might be reduced further to “helped increase ARR by $1M in 3 months”. A good rule of thumb is to read your email out loud before you send. Ideally you’d read it to a person, but to yourself is okay too. Does it sound like you? Do yousound like a human? (It’s true that there are founders who themselves use too many fancy words, but in my experience, plain language works better even on these people. It’s just a better way to write emails.)
In your email, say: “Who you are.” Why you are reaching out.
Two, cold email works for real people to land real jobs—it’s not just a thing people like me write about. “Three, cold email is much more likely to be effective if you are competent at something valuable and have demonstrated that competency in the past.” And, finally: there is a huge chasm between an effective cold email and an ineffective cold email, and this essay is designed to help you stay on the right side of that divide.
Two, cold email works for real people to land real jobs—it’s not just a thing people like me write about. “Three, cold email is much more likely to be effective if you are competent at something valuable and have demonstrated that competency in the past.” And, finally: there is a huge chasm between an effective cold email and an ineffective cold email, and this essay is designed to help you stay on the right side of that divide.