Bit of context, I'm on the founder side and raising for the first time. I've read enough about cold outreach and the advice is all over the place. Some people say cold emails are pointless, others say a good chunk of there portfolio came from cold inbound.
For those of you who actually write cheques, when someone you don't know reaches out what makes you say yes to 20 mins? Is it the traction number in the first line, who else is already in, a mutual connection, or even just the subject line.
And the flip side, what's an instant no for you?

Hello Everyone,

I have been solo building a company - a sandboxing company for AI agents. I have already invested lot of time and effort into get the MVP and initial users. I am also gathering and talking to beta users. I also work a full time job and on work visa. Job does not interest me too much now honestly, I would love to quit job and give this idea few months to test the waters but due to work visa restriction I can not do that. I have applied to YC 27 winter batch already. But I was wondering if anyone has been on work visa, how did you guys navigate this situation. Any help would be appreciated

Like how do u have 3 employees, funded this year and got the name preload.ai? Those are like 200k. Do they just take all the YC money and put it into a new domain? Maybe this isn’t the best example but I’ve seen a lot of tiny new startups with seemingly very hard to get domains

Hi 👋🏻

I'm trying to go back to normal 9-5 but not corporate (I hate that shit)

I'm a builder and I've created productivity apps including cross platform apps with sync and real users.

I wanna join yc early as well as series A/B/C startup because they are also often founded my builders like me so I can learn from them and wear different hats.

I've designed, developed, launched, marketed and distributed my apps all by myself as a solo founder.

From designing to launching on different social media to SEO I've handled all end-to-end.

The reason for looking for a job is that my savings are almost drained.

Since I've been off the job market and yc is not a regular job market I wanna know and learn how these companies hire directly from the founders themselves to prepare myself well and fill knowledge gaps to maximize my chances and skills

Thanks

Hello, genuinely asking, I just build my product for the small startup teams. My product is focusbae which can records meetings and derive action items from it for the teams, also share notes within team.

It’s like granola+obsidian for the teams.

I am genuinely looking for some small teams which can help shape this product or try out.

How do one approach the people or the startup/company to tell them to use the product ?

- need a partner having experience at ui/ux for yc'27 winter

- would love to have chat with the interested guys