Jason Lemkin: Cold Email Tips; Why Only 15% of Founders Listen to their VCs | 20VC #954

Jason, I am so excited for this. I can't believe it. You know it was seven years since we first chatted, so thank you so much for joining me again today.

Wow. Well, Harry, it's just be- it, it has genuinely been a delight to watch 20VC just grow and grow over the years. And, uh, you know, it's, if, if it's been seven years, it's a good reminder that overnight success stories take a long time.

Oh my god.

(laughs)

I mean, (laughs) Jason, I feel so fucking old. I wear a hat because my hair is thinning, my friend.

I have been wondering about the hat on the TikToks. I've been wondering where that hat comes from, but, um, yeah.

Do, do you, do you know why? Fun fact, we get 28% higher engagement because of the hat. There we go.

I see. I see. I see.

Now listen, we're, we're gonna do the Algolia story here.

Okay.

So I wanna do a little bit of context setting.

Sure.

Where did you first meet the team? How did you meet them? How did that meeting go? Can you paint that picture for me?

Well, first of all, one thing that's pretty... It may be true of you to some extent because in some ways we invest similarly in some ways. Um, but I only invest, um, from inbound SaaStr super fans. Uh, every deal I've tried to go out and get, I've failed. I do nothing outbound. Every warm referral doesn't work out. Nothing works out except the high velocity inbound email. Um, "My round's oversubscribed. Would you like to meet?" Or, "I just wanna meet with you." And some of, well, some of those emails, they're soony baloney, but the really good ones break through. And every single investment I've done has been a high velocity inbound, including if we, if we're gonna talk about Algolia today, we'll talk about that, my second venture investment. Um, just, it's not that I don't think hunting is a good strategy, it's just not good for me.

You mentioned about the ones that break through.

Yeah.

What is it about those that break through that break through? Is it the traction? Is it the team? Are there elements and commonalities which stand out which make them higher signal for you?

What I learned is that the, look, there are exceptions. It's funny. The, um, we did this digital event during COVID with the founders of Monday.com, and they asked-

Yeah.

... why I didn't respond to their inbound email. And I, I'm like, "Oh my god, how did I miss the one from the Monday founders?" And, and obviously the b- and I went back and their inbound email was terrible. It was very interesting. It was a horrible two lin- they had a different name before Monday. They were, like, Harry and Jason's we- wedding rentals. I'm making it up, but it was a terrible name they, they bought Monday... They bought a great URL, right? And the email was like, you know, "We love SaaStr. We're gonna be in town for SaaStr Annual. Can you meet next week?" Those are the worst ones because I got 10,000 people coming to SaaStr Annual. So thi- it's not that this is the best strategy, but what I found with the best investments I've done, Algolia, we'll talk about Talkdesk, Sales Loft, Greenhouse, um, Gorgias, um, Pipedrive, my first investment. Like, the best founders are great communicators one way or the other, right? And so if you can write an incredible cold email, like an incredible inbound email, um, you, you can, you can judge a human being and a company just from that email if it's A plus, right? But you'll lose the Mondays. (laughs) Like, that was my, that was my big wake up moment of the limitations, which I always knew, of this strategy-