1) $10k/mo is not even close to enough for most US companies that want to grow quickly. If it were enough, then way fewer founders would want to fundraise.
2) I'm a partner at Susa and I'm technical. And even if I weren't, being technical has little to do with being a good partner to technical founders. Most basketball coaches can't dunk, but they are still good coaches. Furthermore, if a founder is technical, then a non-technical VC/advisor/mentor/friend that can help in other areas can be more useful than someone who is technical. Most technical founders I work with have no problem with building tech, but many struggle with the business side.
3) Our website says we prefer warm intros. We don't require them, we just prefer them. I reply to cold emails frequently and often meet people after they cold email me. But the cold emails should be good/well-targeted, and unfortunately most are not.
4) Traction is not the only thing that matters. For example, I just did a quick calculation, and over half of our investments in the last 12 months had $0 revenue when we invested. Many of those investments hadn't even launched yet.
Source: personal experience
My experience is that VCs just ignore unsolicted e-mail. I've sent several hundred that got totally ignored. I've never had a VC give a meaningful response to anything I sent them. Again, IMHO, the VCs want traction, significant and growing rapidly, and they want to hear about the company from some solid source other than the founders, say, from an article in Tech Crunch or some such. From all my data, that's what it looks like to me. Besides, I'm a sole, solo founder and want to keep it that way, and VCs and YC don't like solo founders.
So, by the time my startup has traction, really revenue, enough to get a VC to write a check, I, as a solo founder with a startup just dirt cheap to run, will no longer want and will not accept such a check. And I will have plenty of cash for very rapid growth.
So, that's my response to the OP.
There is a time for long, flowing prose. Cold emails to people whose time is worth a lot of money isn't one of them.
I got the $10,000 a month from the OP.
I'm a sole, solo founder. So, right, my startup doesn't have five founders, each with credit cards maxed out, each with a pregnant wife about due.
And, right, my startup has no co-founder disputes. And since I'm 100% owner, I have no BoD disputes and spend no time reporting to a BoD.
Since I'm technical, I have no need to search for a technical co-founder.
To me, $10,000 a month revenue is a LOT of money for growth.
E.g., for my startup, the main opex is just my monthly ISP bill. From my ISP, my upload data rate is 20+ million bits per second (Mbps), which for my startup is a LOT (if on average half filled would amount to ballpark $4 million a month in revenue), and when I go live the only difference will be a static IP address instead of a dynamic one (from DHCP or some such). The ISP bill is less than $100 a month.
For now and well into a quite successful business, my main capex is just servers, and there, again, for my startup $1500 in parts for a server kept half busy 24 x 7 should generate $200,000+ a month in revenue.
My first server will go at my left knee. When that fills up, I will be awash ($200,000+ a month) in revenue for more and I can put a second one beside the first one. Then I can start putting servers and higher end Cisco boxes (LAN and/or router with whatever network security Cisco recommends) on shelves and/or standard racks in any of three empty bedrooms. If I fill up those servers in all three bedrooms, then it's millions a month in revenue, all still from just one employee, me. Then, sure, go rent some space, say, much of a closed factory, warehouse, or shopping mall, and start slowly hiring, first, a good office manager to interface with the lawyers, accountants, auditors, bankers, real estate people, security guard company, janitorial company, business insurance agency, payroll firm, HR consulting company, interior renovation contractor, ..., etc.
I'm "technical"? I saw the market need, designed the first good solution, an excellent one, did the crucial, core, technological advantage, barrier to entry, proprietary original applied math research, designed, wrote, ran, timed, documented, and debugged the code. Some of the AI people would call my applied math AI; to me, calling my applied math AI would be a gross insult.
To the users, the solution is just a Web site. I used Microsoft's .NET with ASP.NET (for building Web pages) and ADO.NET (for access to SQL Server). I wrote the code in Visual Basic .NET (as far as I can tell, compared with C#, essentially a nicer form of syntactic sugar and otherwise close enough to apparently Microsoft's most important language C#).
I've done serious software, mostly scientific and engineering, for a long time, but this is my first Web site. My first code for my startup is also my first production code (no throwaway prototype code), and, from the user interface to the back end servers, it all looks fine -- no need for refactoring. The code as is should be good for a major business, but then I should likely put in some code for good real time system monitoring, sharding, etc. The server farm and software architecture were designed to be scalable, e.g., via simple sharding, and some of the sharding logic is running in the code now. If the site gets north of, say, 10,000 users a second, then likely will need some more work on architecture and some more code. Then maybe, as a good Microsoft customer (Windows Server, SQL Server), I'll call Microsoft for some high end consulting -- Microsoft has lots of people who long since have been there and done that.
The code is only 24,000 programming language statements in 100,000 lines of typing (lots of in-line documentation). I wrote the code with just a good text editor (KEdit), and there have a lot of macros that help the work. E.g., in my code, at a use of something tricky from, say, ASP.NET, one keystroke opens the relevant Microsoft MSDN Web page of documentation (from pages on my disks). And the code has lots of other references to my documentation outside the code. And the code has cross-references in the code -- for a key of such a reference, I use just time and date; since I'm the only one typing the code, those keys are unique. Then I have some macros that, given a key, will go to the location with that key. Simple. So, I never used Visual Studio or any other integrated development environment. I didn't need on-line debugging -- my bugs were too few and too simple.
The server farm architecture has a Web server (sure, using Microsoft's IIS), a Web session state server (my own code, TCP/IP sockets, object instance de/serialization, and two instances of a standard, likely at most O(n ln(n)), collection class), soon to have (instead of Microsoft's solution I'm using now) a Web log server, SQL Server, and two specialized applied math servers.
All the communications among the servers are just simple TCP/IP sockets. Right, each of these servers is just software and, thus, can run on anything from one to several physical servers or virtual machines. So, sure, will get to do some load balancing and resource allocation. Likely just use the bottleneck principle: Find the main bottleneck and open up that one. Else could do some applied math optimization, likely not necessary.
All the four servers from my coding are single threaded, and the queuing is just from the TCP/IP stack -- if occasionally that doesn't work, say, from just TCP/IP input queue stack overflow or a dropped packet from a TCP error, then I'll see the evidence in the Web site log file and tweak the logic a little.
In production the main data will be read as fast as possible but written only once a week or so so can make great use of the solid state disk (SSD) drives. Originally my back of the envelope arithmetic indicated that I could provide a mature solution for the work for the world with about 150 TB of such data, and now that much data can be in maybe just one server. Then one nice, easy, simple approach to scaling is just to have multiple copies of the 150 TB.
Business experience? Done that at GE, two small companies near DC, FedEx, IBM, and some consulting. Been a B-school prof -- so, can claim to have taught business.
The problem I'm solving? Pressing for nearly every user of the Internet in the world. Fully safe for work. Squeaky clean. Culturally uplifting. Can contribute significantly to better government, alleviation of human suffering, and world peace.
Initial users, likely the Chablis-Brie, BMW, opera-going, ski challet set. So, right, good ad demographics. Later may do own especially effective ad targeting (from the unique data from the site and some of my original applied math).
For the problem, currently there is no good solution deployed. My guess is that my first good, really, excellent, solution will be a "must have", for nearly everyone on the Internet -- smartphone, ..., desktop, workstation.
For the revenue, initially all just from ads just in standard sizes, initially likely just from ad networks, I'm starting with focus just on the US. Eventually I'll go international but, to get good ad rates, likely only in the more advanced countries.
So, sure, get good usage from a large fraction of all the Internet users in the world and will have a company worth from a few old peanuts up to $1 T or so, somewhere in there.
Users need only a Web browser up to date as of, say, 10 years ago. For JavaScript, I have yet to write a single line of it; Microsoft's ASP.NET writes a few lines of JavaScript for me apparently for some usage I've made of ASP.NET; but users need not have JavaScript enabled. My site has only two main Web pages, and they send for about 400,000 bits each (with the JavaScript). The page layouts are simple -- just tables with everything positioned to the last pixel -- so, no HTML div tags. The pages use just a few, standard HTML controls and are easy to read from large fonts and high contrast. Some of the colors have been borrowed from some famous, very successful Web sites. So, the pages load very quickly and don't jump around during loading. A user doesn't need a fast connection to the Internet. The pages are simple with no icons, pull-downs, pop-ups, roll-overs, or overlays. Simple.
My site makes no use of cookies, and there are no user IDs, passwords, or logins. User privacy is very well protected.
Net, for users, it's simple, dirt simple. It's so simple a child of about seven who knows no English should be able to learn to use the only version of the site, in English, in about three minutes of tutoring or just figure it out in about 15 minutes.
But, from all I've seen, VCs and YC don't like solo founders. And by the time my traction is $10,000 a month, no way will I get a Delaware C-corporation, a BoD, a term sheet, and an equity check.
By $10,000 a month, my startup is already well up in the air and climbing rapidly when it's too late to buy a ticket.
Besides, when I wrote SUSA all this stuff in an e-mail message, it was totally ignored.
I have to conclude, VCs including SUSA (A) ignore their e-mail and (B) really want to see traction, i.e., notice the startup from the traction, not a contact from the startup.
The OP mentions accomplishments: Sure, I've got a bunch. E.g., I can literally claim to have saved FedEx from going out of business twice, once from some software with a little math and once from some math with just some calculator arithmetic. Yes, my office was next to that of FedEx founder, COB, CEO, F. Smith who remembers me; but I doubt that now he knows any VCs!
Do big stuff really fast? Been there, done that lots of times: (A) In grad school, I took a one semester reading course to study a question; in two weeks I had a solid answer to the question, with some nice, new results, that I later published. One of my results solved a problem in the famous Arrow, Hurwicz, Uzawa paper in mathematical economics -- of course, Arrow won his prize long ago and Hurwicz got his a few years ago. IIRC Uzawa has yet to win his! So, one semester, in two weeks, and didn't just study the problem but solved it with a publishable solution. Strictly, my solution would have been a Ph.D. dissertation -- two weeks, no faculty direction, maybe a record? (B) Some engineers for the US Navy were processing some ocean wave data and were confused about some points in stochastic processes. So, I got out Blackman and Tukey, got smart in a day or two, and for the rest of the week wrote illustrative software. On Friday evening I called in one of the engineers, ..., presto, bingo, our software house got sole-source on a nice development project. (C) The Navy wanted an evaluation of the survivability of the US SSBN fleet under a special scenario of global nuclear war but limited to sea, in two weeks. I saw a continuous time Markov process subordinated to a Poisson process, designed, wrote, and ran the code, had my code pass technical review by a famous prof, and the Navy got their results on time. Ah, that prof likely doesn't know any VCs either! (D) I've learned and used calculus and advanced calculus, taught calculus in a university, and published peer-reviewed original research that used calculus, but I never took freshman calculus and, instead, taught it to myself. (E) For my Ph.D. dissertation, I identified the problem before I went to grad school and worked out an intuitive solution in my head on an airplane flight. I did the solid, original applied math independently in my first summer in grad school. Then I designed, wrote, debugged, ran, and carefully timed the software -- with some stuff I did to make the software fast, it ran in about 100 seconds instead of about 64 years; otherwise I'd still be in grad school. I never really had any faculty dissertation direction. I wrote the software in two months, heavily during Christmas at my wife's family farm, and wrote and typed the dissertation in six weeks. I stood for my oral exam, and graduated. (F) As a ugrad math major, I wanted to learn general topology, got the leading book, advanced, not easy, got a reading course, taught the material to myself, and gave lectures to a prof. One week I covered a chapter, and the next week, the exercises. The prof taught me nothing. (G) From doing such math as an ugrad, my math GRE score was 800. (H) I've taught computer science to ugrads at Georgetown U and to grad students at Ohio State, but I never really took a course in computer science. (I) A computer sciences prof had written a statistics package but during testing got poor accuracy from his polynomial curve fitting code. Well, he was using the normal equations which for polynomial curve fitting are numerically unstable. So, I wrote some code using orthogonal polynomials that gave very accurate results.
Do those accomplishments count?
I still have some interest in communicating with VCs if only to get their feedback. But the main feedback I get is just silence. Again, I don't have $10,000 a month in revenue, and, again, when I do it will be too late for me to accept an equity check.
Again, I wrote something like the above to SUSA, and it was all just ignored. Totally ignored. Sorry for no "warm introduction" -- we don't know the same people.
Instead try to look at your cold email like a pitch. If you apply the advice from OP, I'm sure this post will be much shorter and actually explain the product you are building and who the customers are.
Also, a pitch is two minutes. This post took me forever to read.
I've never explained the problem I'm solving in public -- not yet. When I have an open beta, then it will be obvious, but I want to keep that much detail non-public until my beta and going live.
Sometimes I stop there. Sometimes I include some more of what I gave above. I never include as much technical information as above -- that is for an HN audience.
I wrote the above for the HN audience to explain what I can that HN could understand.
For the list of "accomplishments", some VCs, including SUSA, claim that they like to see such.
My main point is, in conflict with the OP and with SUSA's remarks on their Web site and in this thread, VCs including SUSA don't respond anything like they claim to. I wasted HUGE time contacting VCs, sent them dozens of highly polished e-mail messages, e.g., including very carefully written PDF foil decks, some with only 10 or so foils and only 250 words in total, and the response was essentially always the same -- silence. Could call, get an assistant, give her (always a female) a heads up about the e-mail, could leave phone messages, could send e-mail follow ups, etc., and in all cases, nothing significant.
My conclusions: Flatly, VCs essentially never take unsolicited e-mail messages seriously, no matter what the content, short, medium, long, highly polished, formal, informal, technical, non-technical, etc. Nothing, not even zip, zilch, zero -- phone calls, e-mail -- unsolicited counts.
Point: Don't waste your time. About all that counts is traction and publicity enough that VCs hear about the company NOT from the company. Maybe "warm introductions" count, but an entrepreneur like me just doesn't know the same people as VCs. We just don't know the same people. I know some very high up people that know me well, but those people don't know VCs.
The "warm introduction" idea is a bad joke on the VCs because the people they would really like to meet don't have the same associates as VCs.
To VCs, everything from the company unsolicited is "from over the transom" and regarded with contempt.
Now with the much lower prices of computing and Internet data rate and lots of free infrastructure software, etc., it's a new day: A sole, solo founder can bring the company to good traction alone. Then a solo founder can have such a low burn rate that by the time a VC firm wants to write a check, the founder will no longer need or want the check -- because such a check has the BoD with all the power in the company and has the founder essentially again an at-will employee.
I can rewrite my pitch anyway I want, and I can promise you that from the 100 top US information technology VCs, an unsolicited, "over the transom" e-mail contact will get a significant response from at most 2 firms but very likely none. It's just an unspoken secret of Sand Hill Road: VCs ignore unsolicited e-mail messages, no matter what is in them.
Sorry, you need to wind down your monologue and be more concise
--- Executive Summary, Elevator Pitch ---
There are about 3 billion Internet users in the world. There is a problem (I can explain very quickly but won't explain in public yet but have explained to lots of VCs) that is pressing for essentially all those users but so far solved at best poorly. I have developed an excellent, and the first good, solution, now in software about ready to go live. Ballpark, good users will visit my Web site solution a few times a week, and from simple arithmetic the company should relatively soon be worth ballpark $1 T.
Short enough?
Ballpark, there's not a single VC in the US who will touch that with a pole five miles long.
"Innovative, leading edge, disruptive, high value, low risk, low cost to start, good barriers to entry" -- has all those but no VC in the country will take even 10 seconds to look at it.
Why not? Educated guesses: (1) Most important, the VCs want traction, significant and growing rapidly. (2) The VCs hate the idea of a solo founder. (3) The key to such astounding value is some crucial, core, original applied math, and VCs have never seen a successful startup based on math, know that they don't know the math, and really hate that some math might be relevant to an information technology startup. Instead, the VCs' idea of technology is some routine C++ software or some such. (4) No one has yet built a company worth $1 T, so the VCs just reject that possibility. (5) The VCs have total contempt for anything they receive via unsolicited e-mail. For a good startup, the VCs want to hear about the company from some solid source other than the company. The VCs are totally convinced that that source of information will be plenty soon enough for their investing. (6) The VCs believe, solidly, that if my startup starts to be successful, then I will come crawling back to them, desperate for equity funding for "the big build out," the "big staff up," the "big go to market push," "the explosively rapid growth," for the necessary high rate of growth to capture the market before others do (the VCs assume that anything one startup could do other startups could easily duplicate or equal, i.e., the VCs have never yet seen anything like crucial, core, proprietary technology genuinely ahead and difficult to duplicate or equal; the VCs believe that what is crucial is just the market and any relevant technology will be routine -- false!) for their help with marketing, staffing, business acumen, more funding rounds, exit strategy, etc. Nope.
The idea that my work can get me to $10,000 a month in revenue, maybe $200,000+ a month, then that revenue could let me scale to $2 million a month, then that revenue should let me scale to $20 million a month, then that revenue should let me get a lot of office space and hire a lot of people and grow to $100 million a month, ..., to a company worth $1 T is just to be laughed at, ignored, scorned, junked, etc.
VCs are necessarily chasing things that are really exceptional, but when they hear about such a thing they reject it without even a glance because it is not what they are used to!
Maybe the VCs are jealous, already making money enough, want desperate, subordinate entrepreneurs, etc.
But they don't want me, and my startup has such low burn rate and my checkbook is still thick enough that I don't need the VCs and should be able to get to revenue of $10,000 a month at which time "no VC need call".
My Point: I wasted a LOT of time pitching to VCs, and I want to warn HN readers that VCs can be really tough to communicate with. E.g., some VCs claim that they "seek out" some really good stuff, but when send them e-mail outlining just such stuff they just ignore the e-mail.
Warning: It's a big secret in information technology VC that they take great pride in ignoring unsolicited e-mail. So, don't waste time writing them.
If you really want them, then get some traction and publicity and let them call you. Of course, if you are a solo founder with tiny opex, you may not want to talk with them!
