Founder / CEO outreach

Founders read fewer emails, more carefully, and at weirder hours than anyone else. They trash 90% of cold emails in the first sentence. The 10% they read have one of three things: a relevant trigger they care about, a specific take on their business they didn't expect, or a peer-energy email that doesn't sound like a vendor pitch.

We do the third one. Peer-to-peer, direct, no over-claims, no fake intimacy.

Mindset shift vs. emailing a sales leader

• Strategic, not tactical. Sales leaders care about pipeline coverage. Founders care about the system producing pipeline.
• Time and headcount, not features. Don't pitch features. Pitch how this changes the shape of their hiring plan.
• Skeptical of vendor pitches. They've seen 1000 of these. Don't sound like one.

Voice

• Peer-energy. Like another founder/operator emailing them, not a vendor pitching them.
• Normal grammar and capitalization. Don't drop the "I". Don't go all-lowercase.
• Short sentences. One thought per sentence. Email 1 is 3-5 sentences max.
• No bold, no bullets in email 1. Email 1 is prose. Bullets are vendor-coded.

Hard rules

• No "quick question if you have 30 seconds" or other fake-intimate openers. Just say what you mean.
• No made-up URLs. If we don't have a writeup at that URL, don't reference one.
• No invented metrics. Don't claim "3x reply rate" or "saved 20 hours" without case study.
• No price or timeline in email 1 or 2. Decide on the call.
• No "dealroom" or other employer name unless explicitly approved per campaign — let "I was head of growth at a Series A B2B before this" do the work.
• No "worth a 15-min chat?" as the closing line — too generic.
• No em dashes anywhere. Use commas, periods, colons.
• End email 3 cleanly. "Stepping back" or "close the loop or keep you on the quarterly note?" — not another pitch.

Canonical sequence (use this as the template)

Email 1 (T+0)

Subject: GTM for {{companyName}}

Hi {{firstName}},

Congrats on {{companyName}}'s recent {{round}}. I help teams build out
their GTM motion, everything from outbound infrastructure and
automation to AI agents and CRM workflows.

Last team I built this for: 68 meetings in the first month, $150K+
pipeline, 30 campaigns across 5 reps.

Curious if you've explored using automation to scale your sales team
at {{companyName}} yet?

Best,
Peter

Email 2 (T+3)

Subject: re: GTM for {{companyName}}

Hi {{firstName}},

We build whatever your GTM motion needs: outbound systems, lead
enrichment, AI agents, CRM workflows, content engines. Runs inside
your existing tools, your team just reviews and approves.

I was head of growth at a Series A B2B before this, built the same
infrastructure for our own team. Happy to send a case study if useful.

Best,
Peter

Email 3 (T+7, breakup)

Subject: re: GTM for {{companyName}}

{{firstName}}, no worries if the timing is off. I put together a short
doc on what the GTM infrastructure would look like for a team like
{{companyName}}. Let me know if you'd like me to send it over.

Peter

Variables

• {{firstName}} — first name
• {{companyName}} — company name (use real casing as found, e.g. "Stripe", "Acme")
• {{round}} — most recent funding round (e.g. "$8M Series A", "$2M seed", "Series B")

Personalization beyond mail merge

The canonical examples above use only 3 variables. The agent CAN vary lines based on signals it has, but it should never invent specifics. Acceptable swaps:

• Email 1 second sentence can swap the chore list to match what's most relevant ("sourcing, qualification, sequence drafting" → "inbound triage, lead scoring, follow-up drafting" if the company has heavy inbound).
• If recent round is unknown or older than 6 months, drop "Congrats on the {{round}}." and open with Hi {{firstName}},.
• If the company is clearly past Series B (e.g. 200+ employees), drop "before they get to selling" and use "before they get to closing".

The agent should NOT add:

• A peer name they didn't actually verify
• A statistic they didn't actually measure
• A URL that doesn't exist
• A specific job posting reference unless they have actually scraped the careers page

Edge case: sole founder, no sales leader

If Hunter finds no separate sales/growth leader at the company (often true for seed teams under 15 employees), only send the founder sequence. Don't manufacture a second persona. The qualification step in agents/sourcing.py handles this.

Anti-pattern check before sending

• [ ] Does this read like a peer email or a vendor email? If vendor, rewrite.
• [ ] Did I drop the subject "I" anywhere? If yes, fix.
• [ ] Are there any em dashes? If yes, replace.
• [ ] Are there any URLs? Are they real? If made up, remove.
• [ ] Am I claiming a specific number, percentage, or timeline? If yes, soften or cut.
• [ ] Email 1 word count under 80 words?
• [ ] Did I close email 3 cleanly without re-pitching?