Paraphrasing a conversation I most recently had on HN but have with engineers a lot. "Does cold email work?" "... Does caching work?" "Yes, of course caching works." "So caching works all the time?" "No, of course not." "Then how do you know that it works?" "... What?"
-
Show this thread
-
"How do you know that caching works?" "You can just *do it* and measure." "Have you?" "Like recently?" "Yeah." "No." "So how do you know it works?" "Other people do it and write down the results." "And you trust other people?" "Yeah, many independent folks have similar results."
1 reply 0 retweets 18 likesShow this thread -
"Is there a theory of why caching works?" "Of course there is a theory of why caching works." "And this theory, it is internally consistent and explains experimental results which are generally easy to predict in advance?" "Yes. Caching is a technology. What are you on about?"
1 reply 0 retweets 18 likesShow this thread -
"I am on about cold contact. Which is like caching."
3 replies 0 retweets 16 likesShow this thread -
People's trust objections to cold email / cold calling are a) that it feels evil and b) that it feels like hard work. With respect to it being evil: I used to be an anti-spam researcher, so I get it, but I have never once felt guilty for calling a pizza place to order pizza.
2 replies 4 retweets 39 likesShow this thread -
Why don't you feel guilty disrupting the life of the poor pizza guy telling him to drop what he's doing and put a pizza in the oven for you? Because he is in the business of answering the phone and making pizza.
2 replies 2 retweets 22 likesShow this thread -
If you are an engineering manager, you are in the business of recruiting engineering candidates. If you are in the business owner, you are partially in the business of getting pitched things. You won't say yes to most of them, and you even might be annoyed by some, but priced in.
3 replies 1 retweet 29 likesShow this thread -
There are plenty of ways to be a lot better at cold outreach than most people; it isn't *quite* as straightforward as ordering a pizza. There's a bit of art and science to it, much like caching. The people who are good at it are really, really, *really* good at it.
4 replies 1 retweet 38 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @patio11
can you throw in some examples of good cold emails ?
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @varunfatehpuria
Patrick McKenzie Retweeted Patrick Collison
I don't usually publish the contents of my inbox but sometimes people who send me things tweet them some years later, like here: https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/774309309874221056 … That is a pretty good pitch. Immediately establishes common interest, makes a clearly compelling offer.
Patrick McKenzie added,
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
Caching != rocket science.
-
-
Replying to @patio11
totally. when i look at the cold emails i sent out c.2 years back - i am embarrassed. in part because they were so long and poorly formatted and also because the content looks so intrusive and funny.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @varunfatehpuria @patio11
its as much an art as it is a science. the response rate shot up when i wrote w/o any expectation of a response and burden of a sell.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.