Tag: warm intro

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How to Pitch VCs Without Ever Having to Send the Pitch Deck

pitching, emotion

Not too long ago, in the sunbathed streets outside of Maison Alysée, I was chatting with an incredible serial entrepreneur backed by some of the greatest names in the venture world, who also happened to have spent some time at my favorite VR startup. All in all, he knew what he was talking about. But to respect his privacy, I’ll call him James. And James said something that was quite the head-turner.

“I never got a check for sending the pitch deck before the meeting.”

And so began my deep dive into the contrarian thinking that led to the above statement.

Why the pitch deck might not work

As an armchair expert on films I like, my favorite films have never fit my rubric of the perfect story. Rather, my rubric of the perfect story was shaped by my favorite films.

A pitch deck, like any other rubric, is a pre-ordained set of words and pictures that follow “industry’s best practices”. The problem, solution/product, why now, market size, team, traction, competitors, business model, and financial projections. Most pitch decks don’t deviate too far from the afore-mentioned order. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, rubrics are lagging indicators of what worked. They rarely serve as predictors of what will work, yet we prescribe a disproportionately high amount of trust to their predictive qualities.

“Fundraising is hard”

“You can do everything right – you go through all the steps, do the CRM, get the emails, get the introductions, give the pitches – you do it textbook, and you won’t get a dollar. Fundraising is hard.”

Naturally, I had to ask James what he did to secure funding without sending the pitch deck. James shared, “I never really think about ‘fundraising’, like I mentioned when we chatted I do try to keep track of things but that’s more so that I don’t over-email folks. I never write one email and then send it to a lot of people. Every email I write, I write personally.”

Pitch with emotion

“How do you close somebody? It’s not with spreadsheets and numbers. It’s with emotion. A good pitch gets people over the activation energy [necessary] of actually investing in your business. There are plenty of companies who are making $10 million a month and didn’t raise a dollar. There are plenty of companies who didn’t make a dollar ever and raise a $100 million bucks.”

James’ comment reminded me of a LinkedIn post from Chewy‘s VP of Merchandising, Andreas von der Heydt, recently.

Source: Andreas von der Heydt‘s LinkedIn post

Every pitch is a story. And often times, the best narrative you can tell isn’t in a 10-megabyte presentation filled with numbers and letters or a Docsend link, based on a rubric that your audience decided. There’s rising and falling action. There’s also you, the underdog, who embarks on a hero’s journey to change the world. What does the world look like today? What will it look like without you tomorrow? Against seemingly impossible odds and guided by the fortune of luck (timing, why now?) and grit, why is the future you envision, with you in it, inevitable?

Sandbox VR‘s Siqi Chen has an amazing presentation on how to pitch appealing to emotion.

You can also see it in action in their pitch that got a16z to lead their $68M Series A.

“Always bring the value”

“People are busy, especially the people you’re pitching. Teach them something. They wanna learn. They wanna walk out of that meeting and remember you and make their life a little bit better. And one way to do this is to bring value that they didn’t have before.

“This is also a self-selector. If you don’t do this, they’re not going to call you back. You want to be interesting. You want the other person to walk away thinking that was fun.

“Unfortunately, this is what a lot of founders don’t do. They treat these meetings like work. ‘We’re going to walk in with a strategy. We’re going to stick to the script.’ The other people on the other side never ask any questions. They say ‘see ya later’ and you never hear from them ever again.”

In many ways, this is what many investors call the ‘secret sauce‘. Do you know something that the other person doesn’t? Can you connect the dots in a way that the other person has never thought about? Have you inspired the other person where after the meeting and the ‘A-ha!’ moment they do something about it?

For people who are obsessed and really passionate, their passion is often contagious. One doesn’t have to be an investor or a subject-matter expert to know and feel that. And when inspired, the other person acts as an extension of the energy you brought to the conversation. It could be in the form of work, writing, invites, or intros. These second-order effects might not always come immediately. But rather eventually. This is what James calls “manufacturing serendipity”.

On asking for intros

I asked James, “Did you ever ask for the intros or did they come quite organically?”

And what he shared truly set him apart from 99% of founders I’ve met with. “People always say ‘how can I help?’ Some don’t mean it. And this works for them too because quickly, you figure who’s who. But always have an answer. Not like ‘intro me to some people.’ But ‘hey, I saw you know so and so, and I’d love to chat with them – would you mind introducing me?’ Having one to two things is the sweet spot.

“Do all of the leg work. Help them help you as much as possible. Everyone wants to be the hero that helps someone else, but people have lives – and if you’re the one that is getting the value, bring the value as much as possible.” Provide the person making the introduction with all the context and reasons for the other person to say yes.

It echoes much of my personal template I tell folks if they want an intro to an investor that consists of three parts – no more, no less:

  1. The one metric they’re nailing (ideally so much better than the rest of the industry
  2. Short 1-2 lines on what you’re building and why
  3. What makes that one investor the best dollar on your cap table – why it has to be her or him, and no one else

The metric gives the investor a reason to click open the email. The blurb shares the context. And the last, and, in my opinion, the most important part gives the investor the reason – the story – they need to be a hero. You might notice how much a founder is raising isn’t “required material”. Capital is secondary to the story you pitch. While based on some hard facts, startup investing is often an emotional decision. As James said, “Money doesn’t build products; people do.”

In closing

There’s a lesson I took from my time at SkyDeck, and have continued to preach ever since. “Always be fundraising.” And I don’t mean ask for money in every waking moment. In fact, you shouldn’t. Not only are you at risk in sounding like a broken record, you will end up sacrificing time you could be spending on building your product. But always be pitching. Always be getting other people excited about what you’re working on and why that’s so important. Not why should the world be excited about your product, but why that person in particular should be.

Build relationships. Build a fanbase before you need to fundraise. Add value in every conversation. And the ripple effects would come back tenfold. James went on to say, “I would meet with anyone, [and] still do. If they liked what I was doing, they’d intro me either to an investor that might be into it or another company that had an investor that might be into it.”

James truly has a magnetic energy. Every time we chat I learn something indispensable. After all, one of our conversations inspired this blogpost, which I imagine is the first of many more to come. So, it came as no surprise as he’s getting interest left and right on his new venture.

*Some quotes were edited for clarity and my lack of a photographic memory. Sorry.

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

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The Four Traits of World-Class Startup Founders

Proportionally speaking, I rarely make referrals and intros. Numerically speaking, I set up more intros than the average person. Frankly, if I made every intro that people have asked of me, I’d be out of social capital. It’s not to say I’m never willing to spend or risk my social capital. And I do so more frequently than most people might find comfortable. In fact, the baseline requirement for my job is to be able to put my neck on the line for the startups I’m recommending. The other side of the coin is that I’ve made more than a few poor calls in my career so far. That is to say, I’m not perfect.

I only set up intros if I can see a win-win scenario. A win for the person who wants to get introduced. And a win for the person they will be introduced to. The clearer I can see it, the easier the intro is to make. The less I can, the more I look for proxies of what could be one.

This largely has been my framework for introducing founders to investors, as well as potential hires, partners, and clients. Over the years, I realized that I’ve also been using the same for people who would like an intro to someone above their weight class.

Below I’ll share the 4 traits – not mutually exclusive – of what I look for in world-class founders.

  1. Insatiable curiosity
  2. Bias to action
  3. Empathy
  4. Promise fulfillment
Continue reading “The Four Traits of World-Class Startup Founders”
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An Underappreciated Way to Get a VC’s Attention

message, fundraising, investor list, how to get a VC's attention

It’s been a trying time for founders to fundraise in these turbulent times. On one end, you have investors who took a U-turn on plans to invest this year. On the other, you have investors still deploying or looking to deploy capital. The latter further breaks down into: (a) investors who are taking more calculated bets – raising the bar for the kind of startup that gets the capital, and (b) investors who find the opportunity to invest in the down markets. The latter cohort of the latter cohort seems to hold truer at and prior to the pre-seed stages among microfunds and angel groups.

The Tightening of the Market

Disregarding the investors who aren’t deploying capital anymore, it’s been harder than ever to raise. Here’s why:

  1. Anecdotally, more startups are looking to fundraise. Many have pushed up their fundraising schedules.
  2. The standard is much higher now than before. And that includes a stronger consideration for the problem you’re addressing. Is it anti-fragile? Is it recession-proof? If your numbers are down now, will they eventually ‘flip’ back on track post-quarantine?
  3. Valuations are taking a hit. Where before your startup may have been overvalued (especially in Silicon Valley), many startups are facing “more realistic” round sizes. And flat or down rounds are more prevalent.
  4. When investors can’t meet founders in-person, they’re resorting to data, data, data. Investors no longer have the luxury to benchmark a gut check over Zoom/email, as they would have in noticing micro-gestures and other situational context clues. Anecdotally, investors are spending much more time and putting much more weight on diligence than before.

And, that’s why founders, more than ever, should (re)consider fundraising strategies. This was something that I learned when I was on the operating side and at one point, working on the fundraising front for Localwise.

Much like when high school students apply for college, founders should have a three-tiered list – SMR, as I like to call it:

  • Safety,
  • Meet,
  • And, reach.

Safety

Safety investors are those that are definitely going to take the meeting. And will most likely invest in you (i.e. at the idea stage, this mostly comprises of family, friends, and colleagues, maybe even early fans via crowdfunding). Admittedly, they can only contribute small sums of money. Each check also carry little to no strategic weight on the cap table.

Meet

Meet investors are investors that will most likely take the first meeting, but you’ll need to do a little leg work to get them to invest. Many of these will most likely stick to being participants than leads in any round. They carry some strategic weight on the cap table – in the capacity of their network, their brand, or advice.

Reach

Your reach investors will be your greatest sponsors. The people who have the highest potential to get you hitting the ground running. These folks usually have crowded inboxes already. And you’ll need to figure out how to best reach them. Unless they reach out to you, you will most likely fall just short of their gold standard. But once you stget these onboard, your relationship will set you up for reaching your next milestone better than any other individual partnership. At the same time, they will be the ones who are most likely going to have true conviction behind your product, your market insight, and your team. They typically lead rounds, and carry great strategic value to your startup (i.e. top tier investors, SMEs, product leaders in your respective vertical). For lack of better words, your ‘dream girl’ or ‘guy’.

Your Priorities

When pitching (and practicing your pitch), go for a bottom-up approach. Safety, then meet, then finally reach. And ideally, by the time you’re pitching to your ‘dream girl’ or ‘guy’, you’d have refined your pitch that best fits their palate.

When prioritizing time and effort, go top-down. Since you have limited bandwidth, spend the most time doing diligence on your reach investors. Then meet. And if you still have time, safety.

Diligence and Reaching Out

During your diligence process, look at their team, their individual and collective experience. Is their partnership, especially the checkwriters, diverse? Were they former operators? Or career VCs? And based on what they have, what do you, as a founder, need the most right now? Also, to better understand the marriage you’ll be getting in to, talk to their portfolio startups and investors that have worked with them before. Pay special attention to the the venture bets that didn’t work out. Was there a break up? If there was, what was it like? How did the investor help them navigate tough times?

It’s easy to be positive and cohesive when things are working out, but how does that investor react when things aren’t going as expected?

After talking to the (ex-)portfolio founders, if you feel like they have a good grasp on what you’re working on and are excited for you, ask them for an intro. Focus on those founders who have gone through the idea maze in your respective vertical, or an adjacent one. If you’re defining a new vertical, or that investor has just never invested in your vertical, but has expressed public interest of pursuing investments in yours, ask founders who have the same or a similar business model to yours. After all, that’s going to be the kind of solid warm intro you want.

In Closing

Though there are other ways to get in front of investors (some more questionable and/or gutsy than others), including, but not limited to:

  • Warm intros from friend/mutualLinkedIn connection,
  • Cold email/DM,
  • Reaching out to a more junior team member (scout/analyst/associate/principal),
  • Presenting at accelerator/incubator Demo Days,
  • Presenting at a hot conference, like TC Disrupt or SXSW,
  • Volunteering at the same non-profit as them,
  • Auditing their lecture at Stanford,
  • Or, squeezing into their elevator (although most VC offices are pretty lateral)…

… anecdotally, it seems many founders overlook the means of getting an intro from a VC’s portfolio.

Photo by Marvinton from Pixabay

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#unfiltered #4 Namedropping and Intros – Why my default is to not to namedrop, Direct/Indirect Consequences, Making/Receiving Intros, and Notes on Friendship

namedropping and intros, fame
Photo by Einar H. Reynis on Unsplash

One of my buds asked me over the weekend why I often don’t namedrop, mostly in respect to this blog. Well, other than the quotes I use that already exist somewhere on the Interweb. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked about namedropping. And I usually my TL;DR response is that I want to respect their privacy and time.

My longer answer is a bit more nuanced. Here are my reasons to why:

  1. If I’m true to my emotions, I would love to namedrop at every opportunity I get. Given that some of the folks that inspire me to write specific pieces are echelons above me, it would help me get exponentially more traffic. And for a minute, I can convince myself that people come to my site for the content. Yet, in reality, there are confounding variables, part of which is whom I’m rubbing my shoulders with.
  2. Although I tell them during our conversation, I send my pieces to the people who inspire me retroactively. In receiving feedback, if existent, after I publish my thoughts, I can truly give a play-by-play cross section of my thoughts at any given time. If I believe the feedback/advice is pertinent, I will compound upon the advice in a future post. After I publish the pieces, if they want to be associated with it, they can, which leads to my third point.
  3. Fame is a fickle thing – a double-edged sword. I’m not saying my blog currently has millions of views every month, nor am I projecting that it’ll ever. Would be nice, but not a priority. But since I do write on a public blog which can be found via various search engines and browsers out there, I am cautious and respectful of people’s comfort levels in the face of the public eye. So, before they decide to have their names on my blog, I send them this incredibly intricate piece Tim Ferriss wrote about fame. On the bright side, social recognition, the opportunity to take on bigger projects, the ability to mingle with people of a similar or greater popularity, and more. On the flip side, stalkers, harassment, extortion, death threats and so on. In understanding the “disclaimers”, then I retroactively put their name up.

Because of these reasons, I’m also, to my friend’s credit, testing the question: Are these people real? The supposed elephant in the room. No matter how much I plead my case, there’s little I can do to convince you these individuals are real. I don’t host a podcast (although I may in the future), nor do I ask them to post on their social media about my content. If you don’t believe they are, they aren’t. If you do, I thank you for your confidence in me. And that’s all I can really say to that question.

Outside of the blog, I try not to namedrop, unless it becomes impossible to explain a conversation topic without using their name. I’ve had such cases before that upon using X person’s name, friends, family, coworkers, and/or acquaintances implore an introduction. After all, as my job entails, I live off of introductions. I live and breathe in a relationship-based industry. And because I do, I’d like to say I have a deep understanding with the value, as well as the risks, a person needs to take:

  • to make an introduction (which I brief in this piece),
  • but also, to receive an introduction.

The person making it is risking social capital, or in other words, their reputation. The person receiving it is risking time (and effort) allocation. And when you’re punching above your weight class, the person receiving it has to weigh the opportunity cost of taking an intro versus the projects they’re currently undertaking, as well as prioritizing a new contact over their existing network. If I do make an intro, I always shoot for a double opt-in, where both sides agree to it.

Early last year, I heard something I don’t know why it didn’t click sooner. As part of the Crazy Gremlin (CG) (long-story short, we couldn’t think of a better name) event series which I help co-host, we get in-person feedback with each and every attendee. Why? We can dig deeper than we can with survey forms, like:

  1. Understand the deeper emotional spectrum,
  2. Ask pertinent follow-up questions,
  3. And, notice macro- and micro-gestures that’ll supplement how forthcoming their answers are (i.e. Does a “9” on the NPS question really mean a “9”?).

For context, the thesis behind CG events is helping strangers become life-long friends overnight.

In that feedback process, one of our attendees told me: “I’m never going to come to your events again.”

I asked, “Why do you say that?”, assuming that we did something terribly wrong.

“You guys didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you held a better event than I imagined. But in coming to the last event, I realized I would rather prioritize my current close friends than spend time meeting new people, whom I don’t know if I’ll catch up with later.”

He made me realize that:

  1. We failed at bringing people closer together, fundamentally being comfortable with being vulnerable, at that event.
  2. There’s a giant population of folks out there who say they want a social life and to meet new people. But what they really mean is that they’re still looking for that friend or group of friends with whom they can really truly be themselves with.

To this day, I don’t think namedropping or making intros when only one party could benefit is conducive to lasting friendships. So, although it makes me giddy, and you can argue, in a myopically-beneficial sense, I proceed cautiously.

#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

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Pre-gaming Cold Emails

It’s the holiday season again – my favorite time of the year! From Glühwein to Christmas lights and decorations, it’s the perfect time of year to tackle on many things that bring us cheer. When it comes to the people around us and in our lives, the holiday season is my favorite excuse to catch up with old friends and meet new folks.

‘Tis the Season to Reach Out

Outside the exciting, but tough world of venture capital and entrepreneurship, I enjoy spending time meeting brilliant individuals outside of the technology sphere. To the point, I made a New Year’s resolution half a decade ago that I’m going to meet one new person I’m crazy passionate about every single week. I’ve stuck with that resolution ever since. Obviously, it required me to find a way to get in contact with these amazing folks every week. From cold emails to calls to handwritten letters to knocking on their front door, whether it was going to be a success or not, each week provided me with a new challenge I get excited to embark. And I’ve found that I get the highest positive response rate out of my 52 weeks a year, the five to six weeks starting from Thanksgiving week until the first week of the new year – or in this coming year’s case, the new decade. Over the holidays, it’s true that people don’t check their inboxes as frequently, but it seems that most people who plan to reach out believe that too, and often stall until the new year, at least many of my friends and coworkers do – a sort of New Year’s resolution. Of course, I’m not saying there’s any guarantee in a positive response, but chances do seem higher.

I’d like to start off by saying that in the context of reaching out to individual people that I can imagine becoming friends with, I don’t have any holistic templates for cold emails, outside of a few sentences, which I’ll share in this post. To me, writing a cold email is a labor of love, and it really pays off when I make the content as relevant to the addressee as possible. On the flip side, if the purpose is to spray-and-pray or to gain leads in a funnel, this post may not be entirely pertinent, though there may be sprinkles of fortune scattered below in how I explore the mental maze in sending a cold email.

The Warm Up

Having spent almost a decade in competitive swimming, the first, and probably the most rewarding, yet most underappreciated, exercise I learned was visualization. Visualization comes in two parts: 1) Seeing myself win the race and get my desired time, and 2) Being prepared for any possible resistance or friction to winning. Don’t get me wrong; the race itself is important, but about a year into my swimming career, I started competing increasingly with athletes that were of a similar caliber as I was, where the margin between our best times existed in the milliseconds. And arguably, what makes or breaks the race is how mentally prepared you are before your race even begins – what all the 30-40 hour training weeks will amount to.

It’s the same when I send cold emails. I used to think I was special, having gotten into an amazing university, some of the most competitive and “elite” organizations on campus, and so on. Truth is it was all bullcrap! And sending those cold emails was one element that grounded me. A cold email is nothing but another tick in their inbox – nothing more, nothing less. I’m not allocated more real estate on the virtual battlefield. In fact, in some ways, you could even say I can’t even pay-to-win. If I’m punching above my weight class, then I was and am another competitor, competing for a limited, finite resource: attention.

Jeff Bezos once said:

“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.

“At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow and we’re very stubborn. We say we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details.”

Although he said this in relation to building a company, it’s equally true in the competitive landscape of sending a cold email. You have to be willing to push your time horizon beyond any of your competitors. Or in other words, be prepared to go the distance – to play the long game.

What does that mean? Any permutation of creativity juices, like letters sent via messenger pigeon (or turtle doves for this time of year), and recurring emails works. The most important thing to keep in mind, when playing the long game, is cadence and commitment. My default is usually one email a week, usually Monday or Tuesday morning, up to three weeks, with each one showing the positive delta in knowledge acquisition compared to the past week, but still need help in their respective expertise on a particular topic.

Some of my friends and founders I met have tried more extreme versions of what I do. For example, one persistent founder I know once sent the same email every day at 9AM for three months to finally get a meeting with an executive at a major entertainment studio. Another sent the same pitch email to a well-renowned investor every week for a year, and now they’re best buds and play pick-up games every month. The disclaimer is that these may be edge cases, but do be cognizant to never overstay your welcome. If you’re asked to stop, stop.

When should I send a cold email?

On a macro scale, two overarching themes that run in my head are my personal resource availability and timing.

Personal Resource Availability

Outside of the obvious answer of trying to get in touch with someone outside of my immediate network, the question would be better phrased as: When can I not get a solid warm intro? I used to think all warm intros were the same, and that a warm intro is always better than a cold email. Truth is: it’s not always. There’s a huge spectrum to how great (or not) a warm intro can be.

Let’s think about it from the perspective of a Net Promoter Score (NPS). We may all be familiar with the question:

One a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this product to your friend?

We’ve most likely seen it when filling out a survey after you used or bought a product or service. It’s how businesses measure your satisfaction of their product or service. Although one might think that five is average, anything greater than five is above average, and anything less is below average, the truth is most people regress to filling out ‘7’. ‘7’ is a proxy for not offending anyone but at the same time, saying the the product or service was “okay.” Businesses usually measure 7’s and 8’s as okay, where the real breadwinners are the 9’s and 10’s. Similarly, when I seek or decide to give warm intros, it really comes down to: Can I get or give a 9 or 10-score warm intro? In my head, it subsequently creates a binary scale: a solid warm intro (score = 9 or 10) and a weak warm intro (score ≤ 8).

Subsequently, when should I send a cold email is answered by… whenever I can’t get a solid warm intro.

Solid Warm Intro > Cold Email > Weak Warm Intro

Now, it begs: what are the characteristics of a warm intro? This is decided in two parts: content and matchmaker.

I characterize content in three parts: the subject, the introduction, and the ask. The subject is meant to attract and describe the purpose of the email. The introduction is to explain who I am. The ask, and probably the most important bit, which has to be clear from the beginning, is what I want out of the introduction. With the first introduction, and also for the cold email, I keep it simple to one of two things, depending on the other person’s bandwidth:

  • A 20-minute call or in-person chat (Note: If I go with this option, and the person accepts, I follow up with 2-3 questions I plan to ask during the chat)
  • One burning question

To make it easier for the matchmaker, I often send them a short two to three sentences that summarizes the above, and can easily be forwarded along. My goal is to make it as easy and simple for both the matchmaker and the person I want to get in touch with.

The matchmaker, or the person referring me, is any one or a combination of the following:

  • A subject-matter expert (SME) in my respective field, defined by having a track record for success and external validation by other thought leaders;
  • Someone who knows me (and my work) well, capable of succinctly describing what I’m working on and me, and is excited for me;
  • And/or, someone who knows the person I want to get in touch with well, where the matchmaker is either the first 100 names the person receiving the introduction thinks of, or the first five names in that given field.

Timing

Timing is crucial. And to measure it, I ask myself four questions:

  1. Where are they (in life)?
  2. Where am I (in life)?
  3. What is my purpose?
  4. How can they win?

Where are they (in life)? Is the person I want to get in touch with busy tackling a new project? Preparing for a new baby? Switching careers? On a holiday vacation? If the person has a large presence on social media, most of these can be found online. Take special notice of the inflection points and outliers in their life. Some are more obvious than others. Of course, they’ll be willing to talk about the moments in their life when their second derivative was positive, but I think there’s a bigger story behind the moments when second derivative was negative. Of course, it may be something I bring up later in the conversation depending on how openly vulnerable the person I’m reaching out to naturally is. If the person has a limited presence online, it’s best to ask the matchmaker or mutual friends and connections. Sometimes, I just can’t find evidence of his/her bandwidth anywhere, so I preface my cold email ask with:

I know you’re extremely busy as is. If this does surface in your inbox and you have the time to reply, I’m grateful if you could [insert ask]. Otherwise, I’ll reconnect in one month.

Leaving room for people to not feel bad to say no, and making sure to follow up have been the two hallmarks for me to potentially get a “yes” in the future. A “no” now isn’t a “no” forever.

Where am I (in life)? Have I done all the diligence I could possibly do before I reach out? Anything that is “Google-able” is not worth asking another individual, especially if I’m looking to punch above my weight class.

What is my purpose? Why am I reaching out? What makes this person special? Why might this person be the only one in the entire world who can answer my ask? If I’m reaching out in the networking sense, can I be this person’s friend for at least the next decade?

How can they win? Always give before taking. There’s plenty of literature online, explicitly and implicitly – on social media, in the news, in their public appearances – that would help arrive at what they might need. If I have to ask him/her how I can help him/her, then I’m already wasting that person’s time.

In closing

In a saturated market of information, product-market fit is defined by attention. So keep it personal. Keep it direct. And have some fun.

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