Here are 14 cold emails sent to VCs. 100% real, all sent via OpenVC in 2022.
These examples are amongst the best we've seen - and for a good reason: they follow our guidelines for a top 1% cold email.
This is an excellent material to find inspiration when writing your own cold email to potential investors. It's also useful for benchmarking purposes. Think about it: your email will end up in the same mailbox as these guys. Do you have what it takes to stand out and get a reply?
Big thanks to the 14 founders who kindly agreed to publicly share their cold emails!
Table of Contents
1. API/Devtools - Exited founder - Preseed w/ top angels
Hi [REDACTED]
I'm a second time founder (acq.) and engineer having worked in fintech, devtools and SaaS over at Lantern, LinkedIn, Dialpad and more.
My team and I built Archetype (https://archetype.dev), which allows developers and companies to publish and monetize APIs in minutes. We recently launched a beta a month ago and have a bunch of companies using Archetype.
Our key insight is that marketplaces suck and engineers hate spending months building the infra to monetize APIs.
We've gotten commits from founders at [FAMOUS FINTECH], [OTHER FAMOUS FINTECH], and folks like [FAMOUS ANGEL].
I would love to share our insights in APIs and developer tools. What's the best way to chat?
Behailu
2. B2B2C Bank - Exited founders, 6k waitlist - US - Pre-seed
Hello Team [REDACTED],
I’m Erno, an experienced fintech founder from New York with a track record of building successful companies before - deep domain expertise in cash back. My co-founder Shlomi, has also a track record with exits and domain expertise in MarTech.
My last company gained $3B in gross transaction volume with over million merchants - I have deep industry insights - now we are building Benjamin Capital: “Banking made for merchant rewards” to help merchants get more customers and revenue while enjoying free fully-featured banking.
Highlights:
- Over 6,400 sign-ups to waitlist in less than 2 weeks1 million merchants onboard, legacy from last company
- $55,000 investment reservations from friends in 5 days
- $50,000 investment from Expert Dojo accelerator, California
We are seeking pre-seed funding up to $1M, starting from $250k using SAFEs.
If you are interested, please get back to me and we can do a call!
Br,
Erno
3. B2B mobility services - 10k customers - Africa - Preseed
Hey [REDACTED],
I am Fleuri, CEO of Ayanna. We help mobility entrepreneurs in Africa protect their business and grow their income by accessing a digital, instant smartphone financing solution.
Quick facts :
- The two-wheel ride hailing market is an $80B opportunity
- Kenya is our first market with 1 million of boda boda (motorcycles drivers)
- 100 smartphones sold with 90% repayment rate
- 10 000 drivers in the waiting list
- Signed partnership with Lami Insurance for smartphone and motorcycle insurances
- Ongoing partnerships with Bolt Africa and Uber Africa
Smartphone financing is the entry point. Our endgame is to become a super app with a lot of services (smartphone financing, 4G data bundles, insurances and equipment) for all mobility entrepreneurs in Africa.
I am raising a pre-seed round of funding at Ayanna so we can improve our solution, hire talents, sell more smartphones and propose new services.
Would you be open to having an introductory conversation ? I’d be happy to connect.
Best,
Fleuri
4. No-code SaaS for SMBs - Experienced team - SG - Preseed
Hi [REDACTED],
I am Kenneth, CEO of Dasht (http://dasht.io/).
Dasht is a no-code business management platform for the growing number service-based SMBs & solopreneurs globally. Through our platform, current and budding entrepreneurs will be able to start, grow and operate their businesses all within Dasht.
We're integrating off-the-shelf SaaS functionality with no-code, to give entrepreneurs software that works for them while lowering the costs and inefficiencies of a large SaaS stack needed to run a service business.
Some details about us:
- Built & launched alpha in 2 months, and already in the hands of our first X alpha users,
- Waitlist of X registrants, purely by referrals and $0 on user acquisition,
- Experienced co-founding team of software operators, management and builder
We're raising an angel round to capitalize on our current momentum and positive feedback from our users. At the same time, we want to speed up development, which has been 100% done within the co-founding team thus far.
We are really excited at the prospect of speaking with yourselves, especially since we're building an ambitious product for a large market that is currently underserved in our opinion, which fits in well with [REDACTED]'s belief in taking on challenges with daunting odds.
We hope this has peaked your interest, and we look forward to showing you how Dasht will make starting and running a service business easier around the world.
Best,
Kenneth
5. SaaS Onboarding platform - Early revenue - US - Pre-seed
Hi there,
I wanted to reach out because we feel like a great fit for [REDACTED] - a B2B SaaS product with a technical founding team (one engineer and one PM who's used to being the most technical one on the product team).
- OnboardBuddy is a tool accessible to small- and medium businesses to easily bring new hires up to speed, with an emphasis not just on the "hard" onboarding (forms, trainings), but primarily on the "soft" (institutional knowledge, culture, team connections).
- We've signed our first few paid clients with engagements beginning 4/1/2022 after a successful pilot month with 5 small businesses
- Team is currently two senior full-stack engineers and one product-marketing-everything else person (me)
We'd love to discuss further if you're interested.
Thanks for your consideration,
Erik Silk
Co-Founder, OnboardBuddy
6. Food delivery - Strong team, +30% MoM GMV - PK - Preseed
Hi [REDACTED],
We're Lettus Kitchens and we're building the largest distribution network of online food brands in Pakistan powered by food entrepreneurs and dark kitchens.
Opportunity:
- 95%+ of all local/international food brands in Pakistan are concentrated in just 3/150 cities
- 120 cities in Pakistan still don't have a food delivery service
- Food verticals such as meal subscriptions/catering/plans are not digitized
- Pakistan is one of the most affordable countries in the world to launch a cloud kitchen i.e. just $22/sqft (equipment/fixtures included)
Our platform aims to improve the distribution of great food options across 100+ underserved cities of Pakistan where millions will experience food delivery for the first time.
Lettus currently has 4 kitchens across 3 cities, with GMV growing 31% MoM.
The founding team consists of x-Careem AGM for Ridehailing and Food-delivery, two x-food entrepreneurs and an x-CTO of an online therapy platform.
We're raising $1M via a SAFE as part of a larger seed round to invest in more locations, tech and hiring.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Bilal | Founder/CEO
Lettus build the future of food
7. Sports SaaS - 25% MoM growth - UK - Seed
Hope you are well. Robert here, CEO and cofounder at RacketPal.
RacketPal is the leading racket sports app that helps people find local sports partners, coaches, clubs, compete in local leagues and track their progress.
Over the past months we’ve experienced an exponential growth (10X) in users reaching:
- 50,000+ users in London and Melbourne
- 30,000+ matches organised through the app
- 100,000+ chats between people
- 45% organic userbase
Raising our seed round of £2m to build the largest and most engaged sports community in the world. £1m committed.
The 12 months plan is to reach 500k+ users while continuously focusing on engagement and retention.
Would you be available for a quick intro call?
8. MarTech - Techstars-backed, paid clients - Nigeria - Seed
Hi [REDACTED],
Trust all is well. We're currently in our Seed round of investment and see Versus Africa as a great fit with your investment thesis.
Key Highlights:
- Techstars-backed company
- Raised over $950k to date
- Full product built and owned 100% by us. Patent (pending) & Trademark secured
- Soft launched product Aug 2021 & revenue generating
- Top brands from vast industries are paying customers: Arsenal F.C, Vodafone, Safaricom, GIZ.
Please let us know if you need any further feedback on the investment opportunity. We have also included a link to our deck.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Kemdi Ebi
Co-founder/CEO Versus Africa
9. B2B SaaS - 3x founder - Backed by Antler VC - Seed
Hello [REDACTED],
We are building a B2B SaaS middleware platform to fill the huge gap in the BAU software market for 3rd party tools. I am a 3x Founder and have already secured our first major pilot reaching 1M customers.
Integrations have never been more critical to the distribution and usage of B2B SaaS. The problem is every single integration can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars. We have built a platform that makes it 10x faster to launch 3rd party solutions to the B2B SaaS tools businesses use every day.
We are backed by Antler VC, and currently raising AU$600k SAFE note at $4M cap with 20% discount.
I understand you are looking for forward-thinking teams working on opportunities at the intersection of behavioral change. B2B SaaS technology is at the earliest stage of going through a massive transformation as the functionality decentralizes from core platforms. We are positioned really well to take advantage of this, and I look forward to tell you more exactly how.
Kind regards,
Matt - Founder, StackGo (https://stackgo.io )
10. Boating industry is still run in cash and excel
Hi [REDACTED]
My name is Paul, I'm the COO at Harba. We are modernizing the boating industry where 70% of marinas worldwide still rely on excel and cash type solutions. We are building the cloud based digital infrastructure to tap into the USD 230bn per year recreational boating industry.
We are market leaders in Denmark and have 160+ B2B customers (marinas) which brought us 27k+ users (boaters) in 19 countries.
We are now expanding further into the U.S. where we have competitive advantages and a great timing opportunity to dominate the market. Our B2B marina solution attracts boaters by the thousand almost cost free. We already have 3 paying marina customers in the U.S. and a local partner with a strong track record, we are ready to scale.
We are raising funds to deliver on our vision, I have attached a teaser deck and would be happy to send you more information or schedule a call.
Best regards,
Paul
11. Job marketplace - 2M users/4x growth - LATAM - Seed
Hi [REDACTED],
I am the co-founder of Bonded. We are a job marketplace that helps low income workers find jobs/gigs in less than 24 hours and get paid the next day hassle-free.
I came across No Such Ventures on OpenVC and loved the xy chart on your website. It sums up the industry very well.
A few highlights from us:
- We have over 2 million candidates that made more than 8 million applications to 170,000 job listings from 130,000 companies. We are big on data.
- We are the market leader in Turkey and launched in Mexico where we plan to expand into the rest of Latam.
- Our revenue grew 4x last year despite the pandemic and we are set for another 4x growth this year.
- We have achieved PMF; $1 spent on marketing is $4 in revenue.
- We are raising $4 million to support our growth in EM.
Me and my co-founder, we are missionaries set to change the future of work for the overlooked low income segment. We are confident that we would be a great fit for your portfolio.
We would appreciate it if we could have a short call to discuss the opportunity with you at your convenience.
Many thanks for your interest.
Best,
Mert Yildiz
Co-founder, Bonded
12. Quick commerce - Seed ($1M secured) - SE Asia
Hi Team [REDACTED],
My name is Jarryd Faiers, I am co-founder of AOW (est. 2018) - Thailand's first quick-commerce company.
AOW is a Thailand-based B2C platform that offers delivery in 15 minutes, changing the way people shop by opening up new categories for on-demand access. We handle everything from fulfillment to logistics, which allows us to take a larger transaction fee of 25-35% and helps streamline costs so that we can offer free delivery. We sell a wide range of categories from FMCG to F&B, but our niche focus is on the rapidly growing healthy/organics space, where we are the local online market leader.
The current iteration of what we do is called q-commerce, where we operate hyper-localized warehouses that store products that we could then bundle for quick delivery.
We have spent the past few years building up key partnerships with leading brands while improving our cost of fulfillment to establish positive-unit economics, which we are looking to scale up across Thailand as we begin mass-marketing for the first time. As such, we are raising outside capital for the first time with a 2mn USD pre-Series A round at a 7mn pre-money valuation (50% already committed).
I look forward to hearing from you and appreciate your consideration.
Kind regards,
Jarryd Faiers
13. Crypto/Paytech - $300k ARR - Seed (40% secured)
Hello [REDACTED] team,
I’m the Founder of crypto payment gateway Data Mynt, which:
1. Powers & embeds on-chain payments to & from all blockchains, all enabled wallets & all assets for traditional businesses and Metaverse builders alike;
2. Achieved $3mm volume & $90k revenue in last 2 quarters ($5mm revenue expected by end of year); and is
3. Launching in 100,000 merchants this year via distributor partnership.
We raised $1.8mm pre-seed last year (including from Coinbase Ventures), have 40% of our seed round committed, & believe Expa might be a great fit to help & challenge us.
Are you free to meet in the next week?
Thank you,
Alex Christian
CEO, DataMynt.com
Availability https://calendly.com/xxx/aaa
14. StoreCycle - DTC data aggregator - $4m in 2 months
Hi [REDACTED] team,
My name is [REDACTED], our team is from Seattle.
- We buy Shopify brands, consolidate their supply chain, optimize and develop new marketing campaigns, and leverage economies of scale.
- We've built an online tool that Shopify merchants use to get a full cash offer from us for their stores in 24 hours.
- It's a data-powered multiplier that directly connects to the store via API.
- We have over 1,000 Shopify merchants on our waitlist.
- We're ex-Thrasio brand management & supply chain ops.
It's a proven, profitable business model in the Amazon FBA space ($10bn valuation @ Thrasio), and we're joining a young and booming industry on the Shopify side of things.
We're raising a $15m seed round to finalize our backend project management solution and deploy capital for further acquisitions.
If you're interested in a quick chat, I'd love to explain how I feel StoreCycle is a good fit for the Sapphire portfolio.
[REDACTED]
Co-founder & CEO, StoreCycle Inc.
https://storecycle.io
Obviously, all these cold emails come with a great pitch deck and some form of positive signal: revenue growth, user traction, seasoned founders, committed investors, etc. There's no silver bullet, and a nicely written email usually won't be enough to get a reply.
If you're about to cold email investors, you should also check out our guidelines for writing a top 1% cold email to VCs.
Best of luck!
The OpenVC team
