How to write an outreach email

Reaching out to people is an essential skill for founders. Some of your first tasks as a founder will be reaching out to potential customers, people in the market, and potential mentors. Here are a few tips for writing good outreach emails:

Keep them short

A few sentences or short paragraphs, max.

Talk about them, not about yourself

Copywriting 101. People don't care about your problems. They care about theirs. Do not go on about yourself and how you're this founder doing this thing... talk about how you're interested in their problems, and are seeking to learn more about them.

Show that you respect their time

This is a technique from Jason Cohen: offer to pay for their time.

I realize your time is valuable, so I'm happy to pay whatever you think is fair for half an hour of your time.

Ultimately, your email is going to be asking for their time in some way. To answer questions from you, to have a phone call, etc. Everyone is busy. So by explicitly saying you'll pay for the time, you show that you respect that their time is valuable, and they'll appreciate it. No one asked Jason to pay, and in the several times I've tried this, no one has asked me either.

Be direct about your ask

This is more for seeking mentorship and comes from the Sam Parr Indie Hacker episode. Be direct, be clear about you want, and make an effort to minimize the amount of time they need to engage. If they're open to helping, a quick phone call will possibly be easier and faster for them than typing up a response to your questions.

And so, what I learned early on is you have to ask these questions really specific stuff and you have to be very direct with them. So, it’s like can I call you on this day at this time. It will take 15 minutes. I’m going to ask you these three questions because I’m struggling. If you want to do this, just say yes. And put your phone number and I’ll do all the work. You don’t – just pick up your phone and that’s it. And I think that kind of helped a lot, too.

Ask for money, you'll get advice; ask for advice, you may get money

I can't remember exactly which indie hackers episode this was from, but it's worked well for me. Instead of coming in guns blazing and asking people for money (this generalizes to situations where you're promoting yourself too), simply ask for advice. People will be much more willing to engage, since everyone likes to sound smart. If you're lucky, they may actually be interested in your thing and support you.