A college dropout built a network of millionaire entrepreneurs and VCs through cold DMs. Keep messages to two sentences, reference something specific from their recent posts, add humor, and send lots of them without expecting replies. Done right, it's a cheap way to meet people who can change your career.
3 years ago, I was a broke dropout. Now I work with millionaires every day in startups and venture capital. The way I got here? Cold DMs. Sending cold DMs is the fast track to your career. Let's talk about the art of sending cold DMs. There's a few rules that I like to live by. Keep it short, keep it funny, keep it personal, and do your research. So why do you keep it short? You keep it short because people's time is valuable, especially if they're in a place of power or wealth. You want to show that you respect their time. They don't have the time to read a very long paragraph with your life story. You want to keep it short, usually 2 sentences max. This goes against the grain of what everybody tells you, where you want to be detailed and all that stuff. It's just not true. You want to keep things short and to the point. Number 2, do your research. It's really easy to turn on a cold DMing software with AI or whatever, but AI doesn't do the research into somebody's background. Maybe AI will grab the username, but it doesn't actually read any of their posts, learn what their company is, or whatever. When you want to send a DM, you want to make sure you're doing research on the person. So that means going through Twitter, LinkedIn, looking through their blogs, looking through everything you could possibly find so you could reference it. You want to say, oh, that was a great article, this is what I learned, this is what I took from it. The best cold DMs I've gotten are from people who have read my blogs and brought up specific posts and how it's helped them. And number 3, if possible, make it funny. This doesn't always work. I've had DMs where I completely flop, but sometimes it really works and it shows that you're a real person you're genuine, and that you're worth talking to. The last thing I want to say about cold DMs is not to be upset if somebody doesn't reply. You want to just send cold DMs to as many people as you can. Don't worry if they don't reply. People are busy. They might not see things. If you don't hear back, on to the next one. One more thing. If somebody doesn't respond to your cold DM, don't keep DMing them over and over again. That's how you get blocked. If you do it right, sending cold DMs should be fun. You never know who's going to respond. You never know who might change your life. So go out there and send some cold DMs.
