

How to Ask for an Introduction - webwright
http://www.tonywright.com/2010/how-to-ask-for-an-introduction/

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webwright
Normally I feel tacky submitting my own stuff to Hacker News but I think
(hope) this will help anyone in the fundraising stage out.

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dotBen
"When we were talking to investors, we created custom (private) pages for each
investor we were courting giving them a ton more to dig through and get
excited about if they wanted. The emails were short and sweet with a “want to
learn more” link at the end. We used Google analytics to track which people
clicked through and which individual pages they clicked on so we could know
what to focus our discussions on when we met them."

This is fucking brilliant, Tony.

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patio11
It really is a low-cost high-ROI touch, and is applicable to many, many of the
types of things we do as programmers. I'm amazed that people spend umpteen
hours customizing their resume and cover letter and can't bother to make a web
page for the decisionmaker. What's up with that? With your MVC framework of
choice you can take a few building blocks, customize them on a per-target
basis, snap them together, and get feedback on what works. Trackable and A/B
testable, too, although if you're savvy enough to do this you're probably
going to get hired before that A/B test returns statistically significant
data.

(Although you can always make "Hey decisionmaker, I am A/B testing this page."
a selling point for yourself. It is theatre which suggests to the
decisionmaker that you're the kind of guy who would A/B test his freaking
resume.)

You can do this for pitch emails, for contacts with the media ("Hey ABC News
we prepared a press kit just for you!", "Hey New York Times we prepared a
press kit just for you!", etc), for pitches to bloggers (take the Peldi email
and twist the knob to 11 by customizing a post on why Bob's File Format Blog's
readers would benefit from hearing about your service), for your YC
applications, for resumes, for requests for contract work, etc etc.

I think I remember having an example of one which would transition potential
investors from the elevator pitch in the email to a deeper engagement with
your company at a web page you control
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=814827> ), and from then it is just a
wee bit more work to get them to actually talk to you. Sure beats doing what
everyone else is doing, since what everyone else is doing fails 90% of the
time almost by definition.

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DenisM
Practical advice from a man in the trenches. Recommended.

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mosburger
Thanks for this - I probably would've thought it tacky to suggest what to
write for the introduction... like I'd be expecting you to read from my script
and putting words into your mouth. It's good to know that you'd actually
appreciate help with what to say.

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edwilliams612
You don't ask for an introduction... you make one. Brightly colored suits and
killing an endangered owl always helps.

~~~
todd3834
Dumb and Dumber! I love that movie!

