Ask HN: Why is it so hard to get responses from founders over email?

[preston-kwei]

I’m currently building a B2B product for SMBs and doing sales myself. The target users are early-stage founders.

I can usually get meetings through warm intros, but cold outreach over email has been inconsistent. My emails often get ignored, and I rarely receive replies.

For people who’ve sold products founder-to-founder: what actually changed outcomes for you?

[brandonb]

Can you paste an example title and email here? I'm a founder and get 100's of emails per day. I often reply to cold emails, but honestly, with 90% of them, I can't really tell if they will solve one of my top 3 problems.

[preston-kwei]

Totally. Here is what my emails typically look like:

Re: quick scheduling question

Hi [name],

I’ve followed [company] for a while and the scale you’re operating at is impressive. With customer and partner meetings, plus internal meetings, I imagine your calendar gets pretty full.

I’m working on a way for founders to cut down the email back-and-forth of scheduling without hiring or managing an EA.

Is scheduling something you still handle personally at all?

– Preston

[floxy]

What magnitude response rate would you expect? 1%? 0.1%? 0.01%? Have you ever benefited from following up on a cold email?

[preston-kwei]

Very low, like 0.01%. And oftentimes these people just say no. I try following up, but that usually doesn't do much.