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Templates in the abstract are cheap; this reproduces the actual cold messages that landed real cheques and dissects why each got a reply. It includes Indian founder Dhruv Ghulati's full cold email to Mark Cuban (which pulled a 500K USD commitment) and Sina Meraji's one-line DM ('building X, raising 70k, 30k committed, interested?'), the clearest proof that an absurdly specific, tiny ask beats a polished paragraph.
5 Cold DMs That Led to Funding
From 22 Astronauts by Ilir Aliu 8 min read
- The one-line ask wins: 'I'm building X, raising 70k, 30k committed, interested?' got a next-day reply where long emails were ignored
- Ghulati's Cuban email worked because it opened by naming something Cuban had publicly cared about (misinformation) and led with hard proof (30+ AI research papers), not adjectives
- Open DMs on the 'wrong' channel (Instagram, Twitter) often out-convert a crowded inbox, so go where the investor is actually reading and reachable
