| name | cold-email |
| description | Write short, personalized cold fundraising emails to investors (VCs, angels) plus a polite follow-up sequence. Use when a founder says "write a cold email to an investor", "draft an outreach email to <fund/partner>", "help me email a VC", or wants to improve an existing cold email. Enforces real personalization and truthful traction — refuses spray-and-pray. |
Cold email to investors
Write a cold email that earns a reply by being short, specific, and obviously
researched. The bar: the investor should feel you wrote it for them, it
should be skimmable in 15 seconds, and the ask should be trivially easy to say
yes to.
Read shared/references/outreach-ethics.md first. If you can't ground the email
in something true and specific about this investor, it isn't ready — go research
(use the investor-targeting skill) before drafting.
Gather before drafting
Ask the founder for whatever is missing:
- Who you're emailing — name, firm, and the specific reason they fit
(a recent deal, a stated thesis, a portfolio company like yours). This is the
personalization hook; without it, stop.
- One-liner — what you do, for whom.
- Traction — the 1–2 hardest, truest proof points (revenue, growth, users,
notable design partners/LOIs). Use the founder's numbers verbatim.
- The ask & the raise — stage, how much, and what you want from this
email (usually a 20–30 min call, not "let's talk").
- Credibility — anything that de-risks the founder (relevant background,
notable existing investors/advisors — only if real).
The anatomy (keep it ~75–125 words)
See references/email-anatomy.md for the deep version. The shape:
- Subject line — 3–6 words, concrete, no hype. Offer two A/B options.
Good: "Seed round — for " / " + our
". Bad: "Game-changing opportunity!!!"
- The hook (1 sentence) — the specific, true reason you're emailing them.
"I saw you led 's seed — we're building the version for ."
- What you do (1 sentence) — crisp, jargon-free, the wedge.
- Traction (1–2 sentences) — the proof that you're worth 20 minutes.
Numbers > adjectives.
- The ask (1 sentence) — one specific, low-friction request. "Open to a
20-min call next week?" Optionally offer the deck/data instead of attaching.
- Signature — name, role, company, one link (site or deck). No giant
attachments on a cold email.
Hard rules
- One specific personalization per email. No find-and-replace
{{firstName}} mail merge. If you're drafting for several investors, write a
distinct hook for each; share only the middle.
- Truthful traction. Never inflate. Don't imply investors/customers you
don't have.
- Short. If it doesn't fit on a phone screen without scrolling, cut.
- One ask. Multiple asks = no reply.
- Plain text feel. No images, no heavy formatting, no tracking-pixel theater.
Follow-up sequence
Most replies come from follow-ups, not the first email. Draft a polite,
value-adding sequence (see references/email-anatomy.md for templates):
- Follow-up 1 (after ~4–5 business days): brief bump + one new piece of
info (a fresh metric, a new customer, a milestone). Not "just checking in."
- Follow-up 2 (after ~7 days): shorter still; restate the one ask, add a
graceful out ("if it's not a fit, no worries — a pointer to who might be
right would mean a lot").
- Then stop. Two or three touches total. More is harassment and hurts your
name. Honor any "not now / not a fit" immediately.
Output format
Deliver:
- 2 subject-line options
- The email body (ready to paste)
- Follow-up 1 and Follow-up 2 drafts
- A one-line personalization checklist: the specific true fact you used, and
a reminder to re-verify it before sending.
Bilingual / China market (中文)
If the founder is raising in the China market or asks for Chinese
output, use references/zh-talk-tracks.md and first read
shared/references/china-market-playbook.md. Don't just translate the English —
China's primary channel is WeChat (微信), not email, etiquette and forms of
address differ, and a warm path matters even more. The zh file gives WeChat
opener + email versions, follow-ups, and a personalization checklist in Chinese.
Refuse / push back when
- The user wants one generic email to blast to a list → offer instead to write a
reusable frame plus per-investor hooks, and point them to the volume note in
the ethics file.
- The traction described seems inflated or fabricated → ask for the real numbers.
- There's a warm path available → suggest the
warm-intro skill instead; a warm
intro beats the best cold email.
