Cold outreach and intros

Starting a startup or any venture often means beginning with zero connections and plenty of cold outreach. Rather than showing you some videos, this time we are sharing tips from our community members.

First, our friend Teemu Rautavalta from TRES shared his insights while on his visit to the Silicon Valley.

Emailing

• People usually respond in 10mins or not -> don't be scared to send follow ups
• People generally know the Nordics much better than Finland or Tampere -> check the person's background, if from Finland use Tampere, if from Nordics use Finland, else use Nordics
• Intros are way more important than you think it is -> try to find if you have a common connection in LinkedIn before sending a message

Intros

• People are way more likely to respond and agree to meetings if you're introduced to them by someone that they know
• When asking someone for an intro make it as easy for them to do as possible -> write the intro yourself so that they can then just forward it
• Double blind intros (don't know how common but may be useful to know)

Taking about intros and double blind intros, check Introductions and cold outreach by Startup-säätiö. There is a very good example of how to do intros.

Next up, one startup founder showed me how he helped a sales person to write better sales outreach message for videography service. Language is in finnish (you can use translation services to check it). Basically the moral of the story is you have to properly explain the what customer problem are you solving and how and you they can answer with an easy yes or no.