Cold outreach with no connection:

Hi <name>,</name>

I am the CEO and Founder of <company>, a company building <your elevator="" pitch="">. I am reaching out in regards to a <role> role on my core team. </role></your></company>

We are looking for our first <role> to <list the="" main="" impact="" area="" of="" contribution="">. I think your experience is exactly what we are looking for. In particular, I thought your work on (<list candidate="" company="" or="" project=""> and <list candidate="" company="" or="" project="">) was very impressive. </list></list></list></role>

 A few facts about our team and product:

• <details about="" founding="" team,="" linked="" to="" linkedin:="" company="" backgrounds,="" open source="" contributions,="" etc=""></details>
• <something about="" the="" space="" you="" are="" targeting="" and="" size="" of="" market=""></something>
• <something about="" cool="" technologies="" you="" are="" using="" going="" to="" use=""></something>
• <any details="" on="" progress="" of="" product="" you="" can="" share="" includes="" recent="" press=""></any>

If you have some time, I’d love to chat more about <company> and the impact you could have here. Let me know if there is a date/time that might work to connect.</company>

Best,

<your name=""></your>

Connection through past colleague

Hi <name>,</name>

I am the <your title=""> here at <your company="">. I work closely with <colleague name=""> and he spoke highly of your work together during your time at <company>. Thought I would reach out and see if you might be interested in chatting. </company></colleague></your></your>

We’ve been looking for a <role> to join our core team and I think your experience is exactly what we are looking for. In particular, I find your work on these two projects (<link to="" project=""> and <link to="" project="">) super relevant. </role>

 A few facts about our backgrounds and what we are building:

• <details about="" founding="" team,="" linked="" to="" linkedin:="" company="" backgrounds,="" open source="" contributions,="" etc=""></details>
• <something about="" the="" space="" you="" are="" targeting="" and="" size="" of="" market=""></something>
• <something about="" some="" cool="" technologies="" you="" are="" going="" to="" use="" open using=""></something>
• <any details="" on="" progress="" of="" product="" you="" can="" share=""></any>

If you have some time, I’d love to chat more about <your company=""> and the impact you could make here. Let me know if there is a date/time that might work to connect.</your>

Best,

<your name=""></your>

Email from Founder:

XYZ,

I’m the founder of <company>, a mobile search startup. I came across your profile on AngelList and was intrigued by your search background. We’re funded by prominent angels and VCs you probably know (e.g., Redpoint, etc.), won TechCrunch Disrupt, and have been featured throughout publications like the NYT, LA Times, Forbes, etc.</company>

Our mission is to create a truly mobile-first search and discovery experience for users - addressing the fragmented nature of today’s app ecosystem and sub-par search experience - by introducing a cohesive experience that uses search results as the hub into actions, recommendations, and communications. It’s a powerful model that is partially seen in the success of WeChat’s 500M+ daily users (they are also one of our strategic investors).

Some additional reads:

<link to="" recent="" news="" articles="">

<link to="" recent="" news="" articles="">

I’m looking to add a product lead that would work closely with me and our small team of ~20 in some of our upcoming initiatives this year that will impact millions of users. Thought your experience in travel and Bing search would be relevant. Wondering if you’d have any interest in chatting with us?

<founder></founder>

<candidate>,</candidate>

Hope this finds you well!

I'm a co-founder at <company>, an SF-based startup. We’re building a really powerful tool for developers that traces distributed operations in complex production systems. It helps our customers better understand how their software and systems work (or don’t work!). This is based partly on one of my co-founder's work on Google's tracing system (<link to="" article="" on="" research="">). </company>

We are looking for engineers who love learning and enjoy building fundamentally new technology. Right now our team is building out our custom data pipeline and developing new features on top of it (like anomaly detection, time series visualization, search), but generally we’re looking for people who are excited about distributed systems, programming in Go, and/or building powerful products for developers. We are 10 people right now so there’s lots to do and lots of ways to make a big impact.

Would you be up for a coffee or a phone call? Even if you are not interested in joining a startup right now, I'd love to hear what kinds of tools and tech you are excited about.

Best,

<founder></founder>

Sample of how to highlight engineering team in your pitch:

• 25% of our Engineering team are open source contributors
• 5 technical authors on the team
• 7 committers to Apache, 2 who have served on the board of the Apache Foundation
• 3rd largest Hadoop cluster in the world
• Top 100 internet property in the world
• 160+ employees
• Based in Palo Alto, CA
• Closed a total of $119MM, valuing us at $765MM

‍