- Ben Narasin, the founder and general partner of Tenacity Venture Capital, receives a lot of messages.
- He explains that he doesn’t read long emails that aren’t specific or don’t explain its purpose.
- He also advises against sending auto-generated messages and follow-up notes.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author. Read previous VC View columns.
Welcome to VC View: a column by venture capitalist Ben Narasin.
As a VC, I get a significant amount of inbound messages, and I read them all: email, Twitter DMs, and even those LinkedIn InMails.
Here are six poor form communication habits I encourage everyone to avoid.
1. Not using TL;DR
There’s a reason for the acronym. If it’s long, few people will read it.
Be short. Be concise. Write it as long as you want, then edit it back to be as short as possible or I won’t read it (though I will point you to www.pitch-ben.com to do a one-minute video pitch, which I will reply to).
2. Not being precise
Generalities are your enemy, specifics are your friend. Get to the details that matter. No “hand wavy” 10,000-foot overview.
3. Not telling me the 5 W’s:
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- Who are you?
- What are you doing?
- Who are you doing it for?
- What are they paying you for it?
- Why does it matter?
4. Sending “Congratulations on your work anniversary” notes
I despise those pre-canned push-here-dummy texts people blindly (and repetitively) send on LinkedIn.
You aren’t ingratiating yourself to me, you are irritating me. Remember, I read all this stuff so I had to open your note to get this throw away line of text.
5. Sending vague questions
Here are three pointless one liners people sent me via LinkedIn this week alone (because I accepted their LI invite?):
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- Hi. How Are You? (Really? Do you expect an answer?)
- How can I be helpful to you? (How would I know — see point #2 on being specific.)
- Congrats on your success. Do you need any help? (On what?)
6. Sending the “bumping this back to the top of your inbox” message
As I said, I read all my emails. If I didn’t respond, it’s because I’m not interested. Your sending an unsolicited email does not place any obligation on me to respond.
When I get junk mail in my mailbox at home IRL it goes in recycling. When an unsolicited email comes in that, after reading, isn’t a fit, it goes in the trash.
The exception is when I actually told you I would do something or asked you for something and am merely hopelessly behind because of all of the above.
So keep it short. Keep it precise. And keep it relevant.
And don’t take it personally if I don’t respond. Everything isn’t for everyone.
Ben Narasin is the founder and general partner at Tenacity Venture Capital. His career spans 25 years as an entrepreneur and 10 years as an early-stage investor backing companies like Dropcam, LendingClub, TellApart, Kabbage, and Zenefits.
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