Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Make Your Cold Email to VCs Just Awesome

29 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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0:52

Excerpt from a YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin (Feb 29, 2024) offering founder-focused fundraising advice. Lemkin draws on personal outcomes (three seed-stage companies that became unicorns; his early investments returned ~15x) to stress that founders who deeply know their market and customers can convey that passion and knowledge even in a cold email. He advises sending a clear, metric-backed email and deck — if the pitch is compelling and he thinks he can help, he will often reply the same day.

Chapters

And I can read that we've been doing this for a while and I will tell you, I've done now three seed unicorns. My first investments are like 15x. I'm no bill Gurley, but that's pretty good. And I can tell you that, however I met the founder the first time, they stand out in every way, not just as individuals, but even in that email. Like the best. If you know your space so passionately, if you know your customers, if you know your strengths and weaknesses and you can put that together into an email, you can explain it to the whole world. And you can sell, you can sell, because selling stock is the same thing as selling a product. So if you want me, for whatever quirky reason, email me. Give me your deck. The best email in the world, all the metrics, and if it's awesome and I think I can help, because I only want to invest if I can help, I will email you back. Probably the same day. Probably the same day. I get so many emails. Here's the last trick on fundraising.