[joshu]

i get a lot of cold pitches.

1. don’t play coy. lots of people don’t actually say what they are doing.

2. guess the next questions and reply to them. “can i see your deck?” often comes next, so attach the deck. explain your current state of traction. funds raised so far. link to demo. screenshots.

3. if you cut and paste, make sure you aren’t changing fonts etc.

4. don’t use bulk emailer or anything that adds clicktracking. if you are mass emailing, i can tell.

5. don’t use whatever investor database that everyone else does. about 1/3rd of the stuff i guess lists “because of your investments in X, Y and Z...” where x,y,z are always the same three obscure companies that happened to be at the top of my crunchbase profile at one point.

[1cvmask]

Have you ever invested after receiving a cold pitch?

[joshu]

yes. also, a bunch of times cold pitches i've ignored went on to do huge things.

[carpedimebagjoe]

Spaghetti: wall / money: bonfire; occasionally: winning lotto ticket makes the IRR for the fund/angel.

Don't throw out the winning lotto ticket. Oh well. ;-)

[ecesena]

> funds raised so far

Can it be $0, or do you expect cold reaching only after raising initial funds?

[joshu]

yes, i just mean “current state of fundraising, if any”