Nailing your investor outreach can be the difference between landing that crucial meeting or being ignored. Here are some essential dos and don’ts to keep your emails sharp and effective.

🫵🏼 Pick the right investors. Screen your VC list according to your investment thesis: geography (where you are chartered), verticals (SaaS, biotech, web3..), maturity (MVP, PMF, scale) and ticket size. Emails that land to investors outside of your investment criteria are emails that go to waste. 

✍🏻 Write an impactful subject line. Keep it short. Mention a thesis fit for the VC. For an AI company, use ‘AI for fintech’. Include some signal of the project’s awesomeness. Maybe its growth (‘40% MoM growth’), maybe its signal (‘lead investor secured’), maybe its team (‘2x exited founder’). List your funding stage and company name.

🎃 Remove the nicety. Go straight to ‘Hi X.’ (If it’s a general email to a person at a general address, it’s best to go with: ‘Hi VC team’.)

🤐 Apology is not necessary. No need to say ‘Sorry to bother you’ or ‘Thank you in advance for reading’. Simply start. Write compact paragraphs. Keep it easy to read. Use bullet points. They help VCs quickly scan your email. Keep your signature short and sweet.

🐤 Don’t be too specific in describing your company. It’s better to say: ‘We’re a mobile app that connects drivers and passengers safely and conveniently’ than some complicated explanation.

🐞 Be precise with your metrics. ‘MRR has grown 30% MoM over the past 6 months’ vs ‘the growth has been impressive’. Don’t bullshit about growth. Don’t ever claim 20x growth if you’ve just gone from 1 to 20 users.

🏃🏻 Finish with a powerful CTA. Go with ‘Looking forward to demonstrating how XXX will transform YYY’ as an alternative to ‘We hope you stay tuned.’ 

Finally:

• CEO sends the email. Always.

• No links or images.

• You can send your pitch deck straight away, but in our experience it’s better to see if an investor gets hooked from your initial email. Pitch deck sent too early might result in a refusal. 

Example emails

👹 Bad example

Hello,

Hope you are well! I’m John, CEO and Co-founder of COMPANY.

The art market is currently facing significant challenges: 85% of creators struggle to monetize their work effectively, while over 1 billion art enthusiasts encounter barriers when attempting to purchase art. We’ve heard from hundreds of individuals that existing platforms only cater to 15% of artists and a mere 3-4% of buyers. Despite contemporary art outperforming the S&P 500, the majority of investors remain excluded from this lucrative market.

At COMPANY, we are pioneering the integration of deep learning, AI, and Web3 technologies tailored specifically for the art world to bridge these gaps:

1K+ artworks & 300+ artists onboard: We’ve validated the demand and confirmed the readiness to pay.

$450K raised in pre-seed funding from four angel investors.

Experienced Leadership: Our team is led by a military veteran with an NYU Stern MBA who previously led MarTech strategy for Amazon Games, and our Co-Founder is at the helm of a leading global apparel brand, Arctix.

We are currently raising $5M in seed funding for an 18-month sprint focused on enhancing user experience, advancing our technology, and building a robust community.

Attached is our teaser deck. If it resonates with you, we’d be thrilled to explore this opportunity further!

Warm regards,

John Happy Founder,

COMPANY

🤩 Good example

Hi [NAME],

My name is John, CEO & Co-founder of COMPANY - an AI-driven art investment platform that turns local art into globally tradable assets. We are the first mover in integrating deep learning, AI, and Web3 tailored for art. Our team is led by Amazon PMTs, investment bankers, and NYU Stern MBAs, focusing on the underserved ‘red-chip’ art segment overlooked by competitors. We’ve validated the demand with 1K+ artworks and 500+ artists onboarded.

We are raising $950k to get to PMF with 150k users and $1M+ in revenue. I would love to have a quick chat next week and see if it’s something that might be of interest to [fund]. Given your investment in [company], I think COMPANY can be an excellent addition to your portfolio.

Kind regards,

John Happy