One of the best-kept secrets in the start-up world is that you can access almost anyone you want to with a great cold email. Well, almost anyone… see more below.   

CEOs are remarkably accessible and easy to reach. 

Most CEOs and VCs personally read every well-formed email they get, even if they don’t know the sender. This means that if you send a great cold email to your favorite CEO, chances are it will get read.

If you don’t know the CEO’s email address, it’s easy to guess. The email address of 90% of company executives follows the company’s normal email convention. If you wanted to guess the CEO of Apple’s email address, for example, you could start with [first initial]lastname@apple.com and iterate from there. 

When I was in college in the 1990s, I would send cold emails to people like Steve Jobs, then the CEO of NeXT, and Steve Ballmer (then #2 at Microsoft). Both of them would reply within hours… to a college student. And if you’re wondering, yes, I would usually send them from my berkeley.edu email address at 3 am while in the computer lab waiting for a program to compile.

But just guessing someone’s email address does not make your email worth sending. 

If you want to start a meaningful conversation with the person you’re trying to reach, you need to write a great cold email. 

There are three things you need to do to write a great cold email:

1. Personalize and send it to the right person. 
2. Emphasize how responding will benefit the reader. 
3. Make it short and clear. 

That’s it. That’s all you need to do. 

People are really bad judges of little time.  And they often don't signal their intentions appropriately.  My friend Alexandra Wolfe pointed this out to me recently when she noted that people always say that they are running "5 minutes late" or that they will "be there in 5 minutes."

But what does "5 minutes" actually mean?

My investigation into this mystery has led me to the following answer:  "5 minutes" means anything and nothing.

When you tell someone you will be there in "five minutes," it conveys no information.   It could mean you'll actually show up in 1 minute or mean you will be there in 25 minutes.   The person who gets the message won't know if they should eagerly await you or do a sales call.  

And, by the way, it is the same thing for "20 minutes."  no information is conveyed.  "20 minutes" could actually mean "never."

So instead of saying you'll be five minutes late … tell people that you will be there at 5:06p.   That gives a definite time to the receiver and will ease her anxiety.  Plus, you'll be able to better signal your intentions so that they can follow you.

Also — never say you'll do something "in a sec."   that's likely untrue.   It is possible you'll do it in 16 seconds … but likely you'll do it some time longer in the future.  

I've found that most really successful people return calls much faster than moderately successful people.   So the question is:  are they successful because they return calls OR do they return calls because they are successful.

I'm not sure. 

But I think it is wise not to chance it.  Best bet to return calls and email quickly.  

A lot of inbound emails are for people who are trying to sell you stuff or for things you don’t want.   With those emails, my rule is that if the email is written well, takes my interests into account, and is polite and short (without big attachments), I'll email them back and at least say that I'm not interested.   That way their time can be respected and they don’t have to follow-up with me.

All people should follow this rule.

But more importantly, emails from colleagues, friends, or business acquaintances should be replied to ASAP.  If you are on a call with someone and you agree to get something to them by Wed, then you should definitely get something to them on Wed.  And if you slip, you should let them know.   And if you don’t let them know, you should at least respond to their emails asking you about why you haven't responded.   It is only courtesy.

I personally take notes on everyone I interact with on the following items:
– do they get back to me in a timely manner?
– are they on time to meetings?

For people that respect my time, I give them a star.   If that person is ever in need of anything in the future, I go out of my way to help them.   If the person does not respect my time, they get a minus sign.   I’ll be less likely to respond to help requests from those people in the future.

Being nice to those around you, especially those that are a few rungs down on the ladder, is an essential to being a good citizen.   And of the people you are dealing with, you never know who might be someone that can yield influence over you in the future … so respect their time now.

How to introduce two people so that
they both benefit

Intros are
a science.  Making introductions the
right way will massively increase utility between two people.  And doing it the wrong way can make one of
the parties look bad or alienate one or both parties from you.

The
following few paragraphs will take you through the best way to make an email
introduction between two people.  Before
we go through the mechanics, let’s first define the objectives.  As the introducer, your objective should be that
you benefit both people you are introducing. 
If it can only benefit one of the parties, you should not even
bother.   At the end of the meeting, both
parties should be happy you made the introduction, glad they met the other
person, and thankful to you.

First, before
you start, take your time.  Good
introductions take time.  If done
hastily, their impact will be minimal.  
Take the time to really think why both parties will benefit from each
other and spell it out in an email.  I’m
sure we’ve all been victims of hastily written email intros (I recently got one
that said “Auren/John – you two just HAVE to meet each other.   You two take it from here.”)

A good way
to go about it is to first email the more well-known person and ask for permission.   Make the case of why they should meet the
other dude and ask them if it would be ok for you to introduce the two of you.  Usually it will work well but occasionally
someone will say that they are too busy. 
If that’s the case, you just saved both friends a lot of trouble.  You never want to make an introduction where
both parties don’t immediately respond to each other … that will make you
look really bad.   When you email people,
you want to make sure that the weight of your email encourages both people to
quickly arrange a time to talk.  

Take the time of each person into
account.   Suggest whether they should meet for lunch,
coffee, over the phone, or just exchange emails.  Often people should just have a quick phone
call and you don’t want to waste the time of one or both people by suggesting a
lunch.    Be clear in your email
introduction what the next action should be.

Rarely
introduce your friend to someone just because your friend wants to meet her.  There needs to be an exchange of value
between the two people … they both need to come away with getting more value
than their time is worth.  Proactively
suggest who they might want to meet.  

Clearly give the location of each person.  If one person is in LA and the other is in NY,
let them know.  Maybe they are going to
be in the same city in two weeks and they can meet in person.  Or maybe they are going to arrange a call and
they will now know what time zone they are in.  

Be sure to
give their first and last name and a
quick bio of the person.  I often get
intros from people to jim@company.com – so
I know the first name of the person is “Jim” but don’t know their last name and
it makes it difficult to save the person’s contact information.  And a quick bio will go a long way in giving
context.

If you know two people have met
before, even briefly, mention it in the intro.  Often
people forget brief meetings and you don’t want to embarrass one of them.   

Only forward emails that make the originator
look good.  And, of you have to, edit
the email before forwarding.  I can’t
tell you how many times I’ve been introduced to someone by an introducer who
forwards me a semi-confidential email chain that I probably shouldn’t see.  

If you are
introducing single people of different genders, make sure there is no misunderstanding the intentions of the
introduction.  If it is a business
introduction, make sure you are clear about it. 
You don’t want to create an embarrassing situation were people have
misalign intentions.  

If the
people use their assistants, then copy the assistants of both parties if
appropriate. 

And
overall, your goal should be that both parties leave the meeting with each
other happy that you made the intro.  
They need to BOTH get value
from the meeting or you have failed.  But
when you succeed, you have the potential to massively increase the happiness of
both people.   An intro can be the best
way to help people. 

I always try to do the most efficient thing I can do in any location. On airplanes, reading is the most efficient thing to do. Sleeping on airplanes in almost always sub-optimal. Working on the laptop is good (no interruptions) but still doesn’t hold a candle to reading. There is almost no plane I get more reading done on an airplane.

My strategy for a flight is like many travelers I know … first I stock up on all the magazines I haven’t read and a I pack a really heavy bag. I try to also bring a few books along. On the place I devour the magazines first the lessen my weight and then I move to the books … always leaving behind what I finish (United Airlines has had dozens of books donated to it by me over the years).

(I’ve also found that a shady place on the beach is a fantastic place to read … I had time to experience this over the holidays … there is probably no greater vacation for me than reading under a palm tree on a hot day.)

i have given a talk many times on the value of soft assets (connections, knowledge, and reputation).   

i gave the talk again last night to SD Forum (that Chris Yeh moderated) and many people emailed me for a copy of the slides.   here they are attached …

Download connections_and_knowledge_sd_forum_070416.pdf

why send holiday cards 3 weeks late? at this point it might be better to send holiday cards for 2008 New years — at least there’s the novelty of being 11 months early.

I thought I’d give myself more time to work in December (we’re releasing some big products) so I consciously cut out holiday parties during the week. This was especially important this year since the holiday season started early due to an early Thanksgiving.

Now I love holiday parties … they’re a lot of fun. But sometimes one has to cut out some hard stuff to buy time.

how much time did I gain thus far? I estimate a gain of 15-20 hours year-over-year (2006 to 2005 comparable). That’s huge. … now I hope I don’t blow it watching all the Christmas spoofs on YouTube …

If you are like me and you keep all your home/work/life tasks in one place, you might want to consider ordering your tasks by the location you most efficiently can perform them in. Some tasks you can only do at one particular location (like I can only do laundry or dishes at home).

Some tasks, like business calls, can only be done during the day. other tasks are best done at night. some, like calling, are most efficiently done while you are driving (because you cannot do much else in the car). before driving on trips more than 30 minutes, you can have a call list of the people you want to call. sometimes, if it is a new contact, you can even pre-type the numbers in my cell phone so you don’t have to fumble while in the car.

My personal secret is to have a list of tasks do to when I am on the phone. these are generally low-CPU tasks (like cleaning up my house, reordering my contacts, typing up a business card, and other mindless tasks). Whenever I get a call I immediately switch to my phone task list and start crossing off to-dos while jabbing away.

some small things i do to increase my productivity and the productivity
of others around me:

email:
– only check email once an hour (and turn off all email reminders) …
sometimes i submit to the guilty pleasure and check email every 30 minutes
– when i get an email, i reply right away.   
– jettison IM
– don’t check email on my phone unless i need to.   
– respond to all emails before i go to bed every day.   never have
anything in my in-box before i fall asleep.   (sometimes i respond to
emails with a "i’ll get back to you on tuesday on this")
– i try never to CC other people unless absolutely necessary.   it is
unfair to waste their time.
– i speed read (or sometimes just delete) emails i am CCed on
– when i reply to emails, i try never to "reply all" as it is a waste
of other’s time.  i try to respond directly to the person were my email is
most targeted.

meetings:
– i always try to have the minimum number of people from my company in
mtgs.   if only one person is needed, then two never go. 
big waste of time.   sometimes we determine that zero people are
needed.
– phone mtgs are often better than in person mtgs.   

to do:
– i to do list everything.   in the last six months i have written
and completed 4358 tasks … that is about 24 tasks a day. 

other:
– jettison TV
– i try to be on-time to all meetings … i want to respect the time of those
around me
– I try to save time of those around you be not giving them things that are
half-baked.   i try to communicate so there is not ambiguity so
they’re not doing double work.

(my biggest pet peeve: when someone does not respect my time)

Scott Kirsner writes a great column in today’s Boston Globe:
It’s a scary time for Monster.com
(two small quotes from me in the article)

with the advent of meta listings sites (like SimplyHired) and more proactive candidate push sites (like WooMeNow and TheLadders) Monster is becomming less relevant to the passive job seeker.

and new services like H3 and KarmaOne are attracting the passive jobseeker that Monster has never been able to get its hands on.