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.
For nearly all the 800 or so, I started with something very short, e.g., an executive summary or an elevator pitch. I gave a sample below at
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15283099
and will repeat it for you here:
--- 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.
That pitch or anything like it, just that, or with more below, as text in e-mail or in a nicely done PDF foil deck, revised dozens of times, polished, etc. is a non-starter. No VC in the country will touch it with a pole 5 miles long.
My other posts to this tread today have some guesses just why.
When I first considered VC funding, I had some projects that needed some equity funding. No VC wanted to fund those projects.
So, I cooked up my present project with planning that I could take the project to live on the Web, good revenue, plenty of revenue for rapid growth, with that growth plenty of revenue for much more rapid growth, ..., all the way to a very successful company and, maybe exit and lots of financial security for myself and my family, all as 100% owner with no equity funding at all. Well, I'm nicely on track for just that, with the software in alpha test and essentially ready to go live.
I just didn't want to depend on VCs or report to a BoD.
I still have some interest in VCs as, say, backup in case of some financial emergency or just as sources of feedback.
But I've found that VCs essentially, it's easy to conclude, just really hate everything about my work! Everything! Really hate!
I wasted a LOT of time contacting VCs, for all the projects I've tried including the present one. My view is that VCs have Web sites that mislead entrepreneurs, get the entrepreneurs to contact, often strain to contact, VCs, and then the VCs, finally apparently with perverse pleasure, just ignore the entrepreneurs. The claims on the VC Web sites are 90+% total BS.
So, I didn't get pissed -- I got way beyond pissed.
But I've mostly gotten over being pissed -- I just accept that VCs are a bunch of losers that, on average, actually are not making much money.
So, here on HN, in response to the OP, I am responding to warn other HN entrepreneurs that mostly VCs are just a waste of time. Even if you get their check, you have to put up with them on your BoD, and that's not going be a picnic either.
> 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.
VCs almost certainly hear this kind of claim multiple times a week and are thoroughly experienced in how frequently this turns out to be true (practically zero) - hence without some kind of demonstration or hook they can anchor themselves to, it's going to go straight in the bin.
* It needs to be specific on what you are building. The Stripe blog post talks about that and gives good examples.
* Avoid flowery prose like your first sentence, and "BTW speak" such as inside the parentheses.
* Avoid talking about or implying the need for an NDA such as inside the parentheses. That is the fastest way to get ignored.
* Avoid unrealistic claims like the company being worth $1T. In fact, avoid talk about company worth all together however saying my market is X and the market is worth Y is good as long as the numbers are based on research.
Now, imagine what your priors are as a VC. Do you (a) believe this person's claim that he's capable of making a trillion dollar company soon, or (b) think he's a supreme bullshit artist, delete the email, and never think about it again?
How many long, unsolicited, rambling emails that don't get to the point do you bother reading?
I feel that may need to be rectified
