I remember as an undergrad I was writing a paper and was confused about something in an academic paper. Emailed the author and he responded within minutes. To academics this is probably a routine, obvious thing to do but I felt the world open up a little.
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Academics are great this way. Often they have all this expertise and are dying to share it w someone outside their community.
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I emailed
@paulg when I dropped out of school and had no job and was trying to make it in the Silicon Valley and was looking for advice. Still have those emails saved. I couldn’t believe he responded. -
What exactly did you ask for? Directly for any openings? Or went with explaining your situation?
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Explained how I had gotten rejected by 70ish companies and landed 2 offers and wanted his input on how to decide between them. With busy people you don’t know, always go in with pointed, low-investment questions that build off action you took. Over time, ask more.
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Sounds perfect, thanks. Will try cold emailing if I visit San Francisco next month for Draper, to meet a few people.
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I think this works for VCs too.
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Fine, we'll get you on the podcast soon
@joelgrus@Adversarial_LThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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One time when I was (much) younger I sent a cold pitch to Chris Andersen from WIRED, who I had been reading for years. He replied very graciously and turned me down, but it was still the highlight of the entire year and made me feel like I could do anything.
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I think I was 21 maybe? Total idiot kid and he knew it, but he was so kind and thoughtful. He gave me the bravery going forward to feel comfortable cold calling which in retrospect enabled my whole career.
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Yup, when I was in high school working on a quake 2 mod,
@ID_AA_Carmack graciously responded to my silly question about integrating FMOD for streaming mp3 playback via gamex86.dllThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Conversation with such a person is one of the fastest ways to begin to accurately interpret their thoughts; but one has to be careful to make it worthwhile for the person you are speaking to, and not just be a drain on their energy and time.
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My response ratio, even from medium-well known people, is surprisingly high.
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Steve Jobs called up Hewlet
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So what'd you learn and who from?
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I feel like sometimes this even does actually works for really famous people/VCs
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I've done this a few times!
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you're revealing my super power please stop
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