---
name: Founder & CEO Outreach
slug: founder-outreach
description: How to write cold email to a founder/CEO at a B2B tech company — peer-to-peer, direct, no vendor speak, no over-promising.
category: outbound
---

# 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?