How to cold email investors
How to cold email an investor, by Y Combinator's Michael Seibel: under a minute to read, what to include, what to leave out, and an example to adapt.
How do you cold email an investor?
Keep it readable in under a minute, send it from your company address, and say plainly what the company does. Y Combinator's Michael Seibel lists what investors want in that minute: the problem, your solution, whether you have launched, your growth, the market size, your cofounders, and whether you are technical.
What investors want in a cold email, by Michael Seibel of Y Combinator
Eight things to fit into sixty seconds
The problem and your solution
In plain words, before anything else.
Launched, and growing?
Whether it is live, and how fast it is growing.
How big it could be
Your view of the market's size.
The team
Your cofounders, and whether you are technical.
What you know
Something about the problem that others would dispute.
How To Cold Email Investors, Michael Seibel, Y Combinator blog, September 2019, from its published list of topics, read 9 November 2026.
Do cold emails to investors work?
Some do, though most deals start with an introduction. What a survey of 885 venture capitalists says about where their deals come from is in how to find investors for startups. A cold email is the fallback, so it has to be good.
Should you attach a pitch deck to a cold email?
You do not have to. Seibel says decks are not required, and that if you include one, it should be in a common format anyone can open. The email has to work on its own, because many investors decide from it alone.
What should you leave out of a cold email to an investor?
The long story of how you came up with the idea, jargon, a request for an in-person meeting straight away, and a run of quick follow-ups. Seibel lists each as a mistake. He also warns against the most basic one: forgetting to say what your company does.
A cold email to an investor, by Michael Seibel's list
Short, plain and patient
Do
- Readable in 60 seconds or less
- Sent from your company address
- Say what the company does
- Track whether it was opened
Do not
- Tell the long history of the idea
- Use jargon
- Ask to meet in person right away
- Send several follow-ups fast
How To Cold Email Investors, Michael Seibel, Y Combinator blog, September 2019, read 9 November 2026.
How often should you follow up with an investor?
Seibel's advice is not to send several follow-ups in quick succession. Our own rule of thumb: one follow-up after a week or two, and only with news, such as a new customer or a number that moved.
What does a good cold email to an investor look like?
Short paragraphs, each doing one job: what you do, proof it is working, why it can be big, who you are, and a light ask. The example below follows Seibel's list and takes well under a minute to read. Every name and number in it is invented, so replace each one with your own.
Subject: Scheduling for vet clinics, 31 paying, 14% month on month Hi Sam, We build scheduling software for small veterinary clinics. Their staff lose about a day a week to phone bookings, and most still use paper. We launched in March. 31 clinics now pay us, growing 14% a month for five months, with no paid marketing. There are about 30,000 small clinics in the US. At $150 a month, that is a $54 million market before we add pharmacy and reminders. I ran operations at a clinic group for six years. My cofounder built booking systems at a large airline. What we know that others miss: clinics will pay for fewer no-shows, not for nicer calendars. If this fits what you back, I would be glad to send more. Alex
What subject line should a cold email to an investor have?
Seibel's list does not cover subject lines. Our view: say what the company does and give one proof point, as in the example above. A subject that names a number gives a busy investor a reason to open it.
How do you give a cold email a warmer start?
Be someone the investor may already have seen. Founders who post about their customers, what they shipped and what they learned are easier to place when their email arrives. innernote writes those posts in your own voice from a voice note, so you keep posting through the weeks of a raise.
innernote is the #1 tool for founders who want investors to know their name before the first email.
Your usual posting days keep going during the raise, with nothing about the round in them. When it closes, innernote writes the announcement and posts it the minute the news is public. More is on funding posts with innernote.
Type one thing a customer told you this month and what you changed because of it. See the post innernote writes.
Start for free. Sign in with Google and your note is waiting in your composer.
Quick answers
Short enough to read in 60 seconds or less, according to Y Combinator's Michael Seibel. That usually means five or six short paragraphs: what you do, proof it works, the size of the market, the team and a light ask. Leave the backstory of the idea for the meeting.
Keep reading
Let investors know your name first
Tell innernote what happened this week in a voice note. It writes the post in your voice and keeps your days going through the raise.
See funding posts