Hi! I’m glad you’re here. You’ve made it to issue #103 of VC Demystified🪄.

^{My personal mission is to open as many doors as possible for other people and this newsletter is just one avenue to do that. As always, I will continue to post VC insights daily for free across my socials. This newsletter may contain paid partnerships or affiliate links.}

As a Principal at an early-stage fund, I get a lot of cold emails from people trying to break into VC. I read every single one. And I would love nothing more than to reply to all of them. But it's just not possible.

But a few actually made me stop and write back. I replied to 3 cold emails from VC candidates in the last year. I saved them. The pattern was so clear I'd be doing you a disservice not to share it.

Here's the patterns I saw in the ones I didn't write back to, and what the 3 that got replies did differently.

These show up in my inbox constantly. I read them. I genuinely appreciate that someone took the time. But there was nothing for me to grab onto:

"I'm really interested in learning more about VC and would love to pick your brain..."

I wanted to help, but there was no specific hook.

"I have X years of [banking/consulting] experience and I'm looking to transition into venture..."

A resume summary didn't give me anything to respond to.

"I'd love 15 minutes of your time to hear about your career path..."

This one was tough because the intention was good. But an open-ended ask with no anchor was hard to say yes to. The more specific the request, the easier it was to actually help.

None of these were bad emails necessarily. They just didn't give me anything to act on. The 3 that got replies did something different.

The emails I replied to each did something different. None of them necessarily did all three things but every single one had at least one of them. In this issue for premium subscribers, I'm breaking down all 3 with the exact language that worked and why each one landed.