One thing about this is you never can tell how one thing will lead to another, so even if you don’t get a good response to your cold email, if you do it well, it can still unlock doors later on that you never expected to.
To illustrate this I’m going to share a personal anecdote that actually isn’t a cold email, but it’s similar enough that hopefully it demonstrates the point. I made the crucial connection in a meeting, but it could just as well have happened from an email.
I was co-head of a startup that built enterprise saas risk software of a highly specialised type and one of our investors convinced me to take a meeting with a very successful and highly-regarded hedge fund. I was expecting a very initial call, but when I got on the phone it was just me, the COO, the chief investment officer, their head of trading and their CTO. So pretty much the top of the house.
Now, I could have just gone straight for the big pitch and tried to sell them on our solution but it was super obvious right at the beginning of the call that we were solving a problem they just didn’t have, and there was no pivot we could make that would make our software relevant for them. So I did the high-integrity thing (even though we were pretty desperate for clients) and said that to them, thanked them for their time and ended the call cordially, but early.
Years later I got a cold call from a recruiter working for two founders looking for a CTO for a fintech. Turns out she was the wife of one of the guys on the call that day and he had told her about it, said he had been impressed by how I handled the situation, so when the opportunity arose I ended up on the shortlist (and got the gig btw) for a job I would never even have known existed yet alone applied for.
The point is sometimes if you just do the thing it may not even work out in the immediate short term in an obvious way, but could have positive long term ramifications that you can’t necessarily know ahead of time, whereas if you do nothing, nothing will happen.
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!
A long time ago my mother sent a short hate mail to Mark Cuban after seeing him in a TV interview. He actually responded. Then he signed her up for the Mark Cuban newsletter. She could not figure out how to unsubscribe from it. It was honestly pretty hilarious.
Erlang is so freaking cool, I’ve been itching for a project to use it (or Elixir, especially because I’m a huge Ruby fan) with ever since I learned about it/OTP when digging into the internals of Chef (server) and RabbitMQ, followed up by the book “Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good!” (an adaption of /book inspired by another wonderful book I read called “Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!”).
Non-sequitur but I used to bike past a “Haskell Street” on the way to/from a previous job and it always made me smile.
The people who are celebrities, or public figures, or likely to receive a lot of email, also have secretaries, or PR/social media managers who open all their messages and respond to strangers.
This is why it can be so easy to find someone's contact email address, versus phoning their office and trying to get past the voicemail or front desk.
Yeah, genuinely sad when he passed. He's not the most influential person in computing, but for some reason, he was the one person I most wanted to meet. Probably the way he presented himself. Seemed like a genuinely good guy.
> Something I learned awhile ago is that most people that I consider "celebrities" really aren't that famous
Yes. I've experienced this in many fields, from reaching out to the founder of a magazine, to several big name fans (artists and writers) in fandom, to touring hip hop artists (!!!), to people steering a programming language.
The first time, you can't believe they responded. But if you pursue excellence in that same field, eventually you realize y'all are peers, and then you get someone freaking out that you responded.
I've sent cold emails to Noam Chomsky and Daniel Dennett and received prompt and friendly replies. (I had met each briefly and mentioned that in my emails ... that may have helped.) I emailed Chomsky on 9/11, asking about blowback from U.S. operations in Afghanistan. He responded the next day, apologizing for the delay (!) because he was receiving so many queries. He sent me numerous citations, including a Newsweek (IIRC) article that was very much on point, as well as his own thoughts. I remember that he wrote "there are dark days ahead".
I also recall having an email exchange with Guy Steele about Java. Of course these days you can interact with all sorts of people publicly on social media -- I've had exchanges with Andrew Kelley and Walter Bright here on HN. Back in the day the "social media" was usenet -- and I had exchanges with various prominent people, including Marvin Minsky who sent me a draft of his book "The Emotion Machine" for review.
In 1978 I was working for a client of Interactive Systems Corporation (the first commercial UNIX developer) and a friend who worked at ISC said there was an opening but they couldn't initiate interest because it would be poaching from their client, so he suggested I send a letter. I sent a glowing letter about their being an innovative company in many ways (I meant every word) -- they were impressed and arranged an interview and I got the job.
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 abandoned cover letters when I showed up to an interview and the interviewer complained that my resume was too thin. That was on purpose because a lot of the meat was in the cover letter that he never received. I just merged them and gave up on customization when ATSs started being used to cull 99% of applicants.
Well my little company has at least three employees that came back again after leaving. Two of them are still here. We are not particularly interesting ...
What I'm advocating for here is trying out new (old) methods of waving your CV/resume at an employer.
I graduated as a civil engineering technician (BTEC HND) in the UK in 1990. I did a "sabbatical" ... cough rag (basically pissed up for a year for charity is a fair description of that).
The building industry in the UK collapsed in 1991 along with a rather nasty recession.
Obviously I ended up in IT! It took a while but I completely reskilled and to cut a very long story short in 2000 me and a couple of other chaps formed a little company that is still running.
Enough of me.
Getting hired is hard but I would suggest that you don't simply rely on Linked In.
And what is your advice for the employer to actually reciprocate that interest instead of treating their employees like cattle? Both sides of the equation have changed
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.
One key turning point in my life was approaching Red Whittaker, the head of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon. I knew who he was and had met him briefly before, but this was pretty much a “cold call” even if happened to be in person. I was finishing up my degree at CMU and felt like if was going to stay in Pittsburgh, I wanted to work somewhere that was working on really cool projects. My degree was a BFA in sculpture, but I guess my enthusiasm and interest in novel mechanisms was enough for him to take a chance and make a position for me. I learned a lot from (and with) the team of PhD students and staff. The job had me starting to use parametric CAD at very early point (Pro/E 6.0). After a few years I moved on and eventually left Pittsburgh for SF, but without taking that chance, I really don’t know what path my life would have taken.
> but my dad kept saying it wouldn’t hurt to really make it clear I wanted to get into the school.
My mother convinced me to do the same after I was also wait-listed at my top choice university. I sent them an email updating them on things I had done since applying (in May, two weeks before graduating), and two days later, I got my acceptance letter.
Hold up.... you created good-tutorials in high school? I credit that site with launching one of my first 'hobbies' back in middle school and teaching me a new skill I was able to use to help friends/family for years to come. Thank you!
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.
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.
Things evolve though. Early 2000, I received a lot of reactions to cold emails (eg when organising events), but these days, it's rather rare. Even people I know might ignore my mails! One explanation I got is that there are a lot more phishing mails these days, and people have learnt to be suspicious.
I cold emailed a researcher in Japan about gut bacteria e. Americana for cancer treatment and registering my dad for clinical trials as and when they happen. And hell yea - professor replied :)
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.
> 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.
Could you share some examples? Based on my experience (and other replies here) it's exactly the opposite, and you could easily see if the message was AI-generated.
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.
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.
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.
You joined a special interest technical group which is specifically for professional networking and informal meetups and you sent a general email to the entire group which led to a hiring process. Nothing about that is “cold calling” or “cold email”.
Likewise, the posted article describes a Tweet from someone who announced they were hiring specific skilled professionals for an open position, and the author privately responded to that informal job posting. That is not a “cold call” or “cold email” just because you didn’t go through Indeed dot com.
But if you do send actual cold emails, then you undoubtedly have the prerogative to post and say that “<Company> Ghosted Me During the Hiring Process!!1” /s
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.
Almost all of them are salespeople, sometimes finding my phone number and calling me on my personal number, even early in the morning. Insane stuff. That's 90% of cold calls. 8% are recruiters (also salespeople) telling me they either know a genius candidate or they can get me. 2%, that's probably the topic of this thread.
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?
Definitely short and informal. You should have a legitimate reason to email (like, tell the person genuinely why you respect them or what about them you like), and a clear ask if there is one (asking for help, looking for a job, etc).
Don't talk about yourself, except if it's directly relevant to them.
I can easily tell when someone wrote 100 of them generically, vs when it's genuine, and I'll always respond to the genuine ones.
(And to be clear, I'm referring to the type of cold emails Zach is... people wanting a genuine connection. This doesn't apply to trying to sell something.)
Best emails I've gotten are terse (nice subject line getting to the point) and a no-nonsense body.
I think trying to make a "playful" personality turns off some people and is more work than just getting to the point. Opening with "here's the thing I want/what I'm reaching out for". then reasons. Then close out with a thank you.
Added bonus: short emails tend to get replies more often in my experience.
The most important thing is that you are really, truly engaged in trying to connect with the person. I've had great success with cold emails, but only because I write to people that I seriously want to get to know, even beyond just quick networking.
You need to provide the reason in the first sentence. Sure, once in a while a do read some cold emails but most of the time if the one-line snippet in the list of all other messages doesn't provide a reason - it goes to the trash.
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.
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.
Build up with small challenges. Not sure how old your daughter is, but, for example, our 7 year got a gift card. They wanted to know how much it was worth -- so they were the ones who had to go up to the counter to ask the employee. Just practicing going into uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations is valuable, and leads to confidence for the bigger stuff.
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.
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.
There’s such an opportunity, it has never been easier to differentiate oneself now, all you have to do is ignore whatever online advice or LLMs say and do your own thing, it’s sad that almost nobody does it.
This makes me think of an email support request I got at a job a long time ago that began with the words "Fucking cunts how fucking dare you", before gradually cooling down and gesturing broadly at what the problem was, without ever reaching for the crutch of punctuation. I printed it out and stuck it on the wall.
HN reader, now you too know what it takes to make a powerful human impression via email.
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.
That's been my biggest annoyance lately. Everyone's trying to AI these sorts of things, but for people who get a lot of these frequently, it's pretty easy to spot. Talk like a human and you can go pretty far, though.
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.
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.
"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.
One thing about this is you never can tell how one thing will lead to another, so even if you don’t get a good response to your cold email, if you do it well, it can still unlock doors later on that you never expected to.
To illustrate this I’m going to share a personal anecdote that actually isn’t a cold email, but it’s similar enough that hopefully it demonstrates the point. I made the crucial connection in a meeting, but it could just as well have happened from an email.
I was co-head of a startup that built enterprise saas risk software of a highly specialised type and one of our investors convinced me to take a meeting with a very successful and highly-regarded hedge fund. I was expecting a very initial call, but when I got on the phone it was just me, the COO, the chief investment officer, their head of trading and their CTO. So pretty much the top of the house.
Now, I could have just gone straight for the big pitch and tried to sell them on our solution but it was super obvious right at the beginning of the call that we were solving a problem they just didn’t have, and there was no pivot we could make that would make our software relevant for them. So I did the high-integrity thing (even though we were pretty desperate for clients) and said that to them, thanked them for their time and ended the call cordially, but early.
Years later I got a cold call from a recruiter working for two founders looking for a CTO for a fintech. Turns out she was the wife of one of the guys on the call that day and he had told her about it, said he had been impressed by how I handled the situation, so when the opportunity arose I ended up on the shortlist (and got the gig btw) for a job I would never even have known existed yet alone applied for.
The point is sometimes if you just do the thing it may not even work out in the immediate short term in an obvious way, but could have positive long term ramifications that you can’t necessarily know ahead of time, whereas if you do nothing, nothing will happen.
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!
A long time ago my mother sent a short hate mail to Mark Cuban after seeing him in a TV interview. He actually responded. Then he signed her up for the Mark Cuban newsletter. She could not figure out how to unsubscribe from it. It was honestly pretty hilarious.
Erlang is so freaking cool, I’ve been itching for a project to use it (or Elixir, especially because I’m a huge Ruby fan) with ever since I learned about it/OTP when digging into the internals of Chef (server) and RabbitMQ, followed up by the book “Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good!” (an adaption of /book inspired by another wonderful book I read called “Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!”).
Non-sequitur but I used to bike past a “Haskell Street” on the way to/from a previous job and it always made me smile.
Will it b possible to share the problem and the insight he provided?
The people who are celebrities, or public figures, or likely to receive a lot of email, also have secretaries, or PR/social media managers who open all their messages and respond to strangers.
This is why it can be so easy to find someone's contact email address, versus phoning their office and trying to get past the voicemail or front desk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction
Yeah, genuinely sad when he passed. He's not the most influential person in computing, but for some reason, he was the one person I most wanted to meet. Probably the way he presented himself. Seemed like a genuinely good guy.
> Something I learned awhile ago is that most people that I consider "celebrities" really aren't that famous
Yes. I've experienced this in many fields, from reaching out to the founder of a magazine, to several big name fans (artists and writers) in fandom, to touring hip hop artists (!!!), to people steering a programming language.
The first time, you can't believe they responded. But if you pursue excellence in that same field, eventually you realize y'all are peers, and then you get someone freaking out that you responded.
I've sent cold emails to Noam Chomsky and Daniel Dennett and received prompt and friendly replies. (I had met each briefly and mentioned that in my emails ... that may have helped.) I emailed Chomsky on 9/11, asking about blowback from U.S. operations in Afghanistan. He responded the next day, apologizing for the delay (!) because he was receiving so many queries. He sent me numerous citations, including a Newsweek (IIRC) article that was very much on point, as well as his own thoughts. I remember that he wrote "there are dark days ahead".
I also recall having an email exchange with Guy Steele about Java. Of course these days you can interact with all sorts of people publicly on social media -- I've had exchanges with Andrew Kelley and Walter Bright here on HN. Back in the day the "social media" was usenet -- and I had exchanges with various prominent people, including Marvin Minsky who sent me a draft of his book "The Emotion Machine" for review.
In 1978 I was working for a client of Interactive Systems Corporation (the first commercial UNIX developer) and a friend who worked at ISC said there was an opening but they couldn't initiate interest because it would be poaching from their client, so he suggested I send a letter. I sent a glowing letter about their being an innovative company in many ways (I meant every word) -- they were impressed and arranged an interview and I got the job.
Do you have the email by any chance ? That sounds like an awesome read
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 abandoned cover letters when I showed up to an interview and the interviewer complained that my resume was too thin. That was on purpose because a lot of the meat was in the cover letter that he never received. I just merged them and gave up on customization when ATSs started being used to cull 99% of applicants.
The craziest part is that this tailored approach is now a red flag, because HR just assumes your covering letter is LLM-generated.
“Damn kids, they're all alike” vibes.
Assumes? They're using an LLM themselves, and they don't read the cover letter anyway, and if they did, they don't see what's wrong with using an LLM.
Using a LLM is probably seen as a positive thing by recruiters, it shows you are an AI “Engineer”.
I feel like companies that are genuinely interesting are pretty rare.
Then you'll still get two rounds of leet code and system design.
Well my little company has at least three employees that came back again after leaving. Two of them are still here. We are not particularly interesting ...
What I'm advocating for here is trying out new (old) methods of waving your CV/resume at an employer.
I graduated as a civil engineering technician (BTEC HND) in the UK in 1990. I did a "sabbatical" ... cough rag (basically pissed up for a year for charity is a fair description of that).
The building industry in the UK collapsed in 1991 along with a rather nasty recession.
Obviously I ended up in IT! It took a while but I completely reskilled and to cut a very long story short in 2000 me and a couple of other chaps formed a little company that is still running.
Enough of me.
Getting hired is hard but I would suggest that you don't simply rely on Linked In.
And what is your advice for the employer to actually reciprocate that interest instead of treating their employees like cattle? Both sides of the equation have changed
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.
One key turning point in my life was approaching Red Whittaker, the head of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon. I knew who he was and had met him briefly before, but this was pretty much a “cold call” even if happened to be in person. I was finishing up my degree at CMU and felt like if was going to stay in Pittsburgh, I wanted to work somewhere that was working on really cool projects. My degree was a BFA in sculpture, but I guess my enthusiasm and interest in novel mechanisms was enough for him to take a chance and make a position for me. I learned a lot from (and with) the team of PhD students and staff. The job had me starting to use parametric CAD at very early point (Pro/E 6.0). After a few years I moved on and eventually left Pittsburgh for SF, but without taking that chance, I really don’t know what path my life would have taken.
Hold up.... you created good-tutorials in high school? I credit that site with launching one of my first 'hobbies' back in middle school and teaching me a new skill I was able to use to help friends/family for years to come. Thank you!
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.
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.
Things evolve though. Early 2000, I received a lot of reactions to cold emails (eg when organising events), but these days, it's rather rare. Even people I know might ignore my mails! One explanation I got is that there are a lot more phishing mails these days, and people have learnt to be suspicious.
I cold emailed a researcher in Japan about gut bacteria e. Americana for cancer treatment and registering my dad for clinical trials as and when they happen. And hell yea - professor replied :)
So yes — just do it!
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.
> 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.
Could you share some examples? Based on my experience (and other replies here) it's exactly the opposite, and you could easily see if the message was AI-generated.
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.
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...
First email, then phone. Always works for me.
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.
You joined a special interest technical group which is specifically for professional networking and informal meetups and you sent a general email to the entire group which led to a hiring process. Nothing about that is “cold calling” or “cold email”.
Likewise, the posted article describes a Tweet from someone who announced they were hiring specific skilled professionals for an open position, and the author privately responded to that informal job posting. That is not a “cold call” or “cold email” just because you didn’t go through Indeed dot com.
But if you do send actual cold emails, then you undoubtedly have the prerogative to post and say that “<Company> Ghosted Me During the Hiring Process!!1” /s
Sending an unsolicited email to a person or a group is a cold email. There's nothing to bikeshed here.
I think the point is, that sending a join message to an open mail list, is not unsolicited.
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.
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.
Almost all of them are salespeople, sometimes finding my phone number and calling me on my personal number, even early in the morning. Insane stuff. That's 90% of cold calls. 8% are recruiters (also salespeople) telling me they either know a genius candidate or they can get me. 2%, that's probably the topic of this thread.
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?
Definitely short and informal. You should have a legitimate reason to email (like, tell the person genuinely why you respect them or what about them you like), and a clear ask if there is one (asking for help, looking for a job, etc).
Don't talk about yourself, except if it's directly relevant to them.
I can easily tell when someone wrote 100 of them generically, vs when it's genuine, and I'll always respond to the genuine ones.
(And to be clear, I'm referring to the type of cold emails Zach is... people wanting a genuine connection. This doesn't apply to trying to sell something.)
Best emails I've gotten are terse (nice subject line getting to the point) and a no-nonsense body.
I think trying to make a "playful" personality turns off some people and is more work than just getting to the point. Opening with "here's the thing I want/what I'm reaching out for". then reasons. Then close out with a thank you.
Added bonus: short emails tend to get replies more often in my experience.
The most important thing is that you are really, truly engaged in trying to connect with the person. I've had great success with cold emails, but only because I write to people that I seriously want to get to know, even beyond just quick networking.
You need to provide the reason in the first sentence. Sure, once in a while a do read some cold emails but most of the time if the one-line snippet in the list of all other messages doesn't provide a reason - it goes to the trash.
I’d rather see neither but if I must choose, formal it is.
I ignore cold emails anyway.
It's the lottery, you can only win if you play
I met Zach wayyy back in 2016 via a code email to him! (hey Zach!)
See, it all worked out!
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.
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.
Build up with small challenges. Not sure how old your daughter is, but, for example, our 7 year got a gift card. They wanted to know how much it was worth -- so they were the ones who had to go up to the counter to ask the employee. Just practicing going into uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations is valuable, and leads to confidence for the bigger stuff.
My parents did this exact thing to me growing up and I hated it at the time. I now see how valuable it was and will doing the same with my kids.
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
These little stories, though not my original intention with the post, are very lovely to read!
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.
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.
There’s such an opportunity, it has never been easier to differentiate oneself now, all you have to do is ignore whatever online advice or LLMs say and do your own thing, it’s sad that almost nobody does it.
This makes me think of an email support request I got at a job a long time ago that began with the words "Fucking cunts how fucking dare you", before gradually cooling down and gesturing broadly at what the problem was, without ever reaching for the crutch of punctuation. I printed it out and stuck it on the wall.
HN reader, now you too know what it takes to make a powerful human impression via email.
"without ever reaching for the crutch of punctuation" how delightful
Hey areoform,
I just read your post on hacker news about people using The Sentence, and couldn't agree more!
Hmm...
do you have a blog or newsletter to read about this experiment once it concludes?
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.
That's been my biggest annoyance lately. Everyone's trying to AI these sorts of things, but for people who get a lot of these frequently, it's pretty easy to spot. Talk like a human and you can go pretty far, though.
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.
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.
No, it isn't different. What you're describing is a cold email that some people might not feel is spam, and one that everyone agrees is spam.
"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.
Shame to send cold emails to strangers.