Cold Emails to Series-A Founders, Weekly

The PROMPTS

Every week, find founders who have just raised a Series A in [category — e.g. developer tools] and draft a cold email to each one. Scan [funding sources] for rounds announced in the last [7] days. Keep only companies in [category], headquartered in [region], with [employee count range] employees. Skip anyone already in my sheet. For each company, research before writing: the round announcement and its date, open roles on their careers page, what the product actually does from their docs or changelog, and anything the founder has published recently in their own words. Then draft an email of under [120] words with: a first line referencing one specific thing that changed at their company, one sentence on the repetitive work [product] removes for a team at their stage, and a single low-friction ask — [ask, e.g. "worth a look?"]. No flattery, no "I came across your company", no more than one question, no attachments. If you cannot verify anything specific about a company, skip it and say so. Do not write a generic email to fill a row. Put each one in the Google Sheet at [sheet URL]: Company, Founder, Round Date, Signal Used, Subject Line, Draft Email, Status. Set Status to Draft and send nothing. Tell me how many you drafted and how many you skipped for lack of information.

A Series A is a narrow window. For roughly a quarter after the announcement the company is hiring fast, replacing the tools that got them here, and the founder is still reading their own inbox. Reach them in that window with something specific and you get a reply; reach them six months later and you are competing with every vendor who bought the same funding list. The problem is that the window opens on a different set of companies every week, and keeping up with it by hand is a research job nobody has time for.

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What this recurring task does

Sai scans the week's funding announcements in your category, keeps the companies that fit your criteria, researches each one, and drafts a cold email built on what specifically changed there. The output is a sheet of drafts with the signal each one used, ready for you to edit and send. Companies already in your sheet are skipped, so the routine only ever surfaces what is new.

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What each draft is built from

Personalisation is a research problem, not a writing problem. A first line only earns a reply when it references something the founder knows is true and recent.

★ WHAT EACH DRAFT IS BUILT FROM

Input	Where it comes from	What it changes in the email
Funding event	The round announcement, with its date	The opening line, and the reason you are writing this month
Open roles	The company careers page or job boards	Shows which function is under load right now
Product surface	Docs, changelog, or the pricing page	Keeps the claim specific to what they actually ship
Founder's own words	A recent post, podcast, or launch note	The one line that proves the email was not mail-merged
Stack signals	Public integrations and engineering posts	Decides which repetitive workflow to name
Nothing verifiable	No usable public information found	No draft — the row is skipped rather than padded with filler

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What lands in your sheet

One row per founder: Company, Founder, Round Date, Signal Used, Subject Line, Draft Email, Status. Signal Used is the column that repays attention — after a month it shows which angle actually gets replies, which is the difference between tuning your outreach and guessing at it. Nothing is sent; every row arrives as Draft.

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What happens on the second run

Only newly announced rounds are picked up, and any company already in the sheet is skipped, so the same founder is never emailed twice by the routine. Rows where research came up empty are recorded as skipped rather than filled with a generic email, and they are retried the following week in case coverage of the round improves. Round Date keeps each week's cohort separable, so you can see how reply rate decays with time since announcement.

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Where this fits with the rest of your outbound

Write drafts only for people worth writing to. Keep the candidate pool filling with a weekly prospect list appended to the same sheet, rank it with your weighted lead scoring rubric, and if you meet founders at events, match their names to LinkedIn profiles before writing. Inbound deserves the same discipline — see clearing your company page inbox weekly. Anything you send has to clear the CAN-SPAM rules for commercial email, including a real address and a working opt-out.

Draft a cold email to every founder who raised this week

Platforms this prompt works across

What this recurring task does

What each draft is built from

What lands in your sheet

What happens on the second run

Where this fits with the rest of your outbound

Stop doing repetitive tasks. Let Sai handle them for you.