As a founder, you will find yourself emailing busy people on a regular basis - investors, potential clients, actual clients, actual clients who haven't paid their invoices... and so on. Hopefully not too many of the latter.
Here are some good advice from Jason Freedman of FlightCaster on the etiquette of emailing the kind of ultra-busy person who literally gets a thousand personal, non-spam emails a day. In short:
- Keep the subject line concrete and very descriptive.
- Use your company email address.
- Remind the receiver of the context.
- Limit your mail to five sentences - or, ideally, three.
- Make it clear and explicit what you're asking for.
- Respond immediately if he answers.
- Include a short, professional signature with the relevant details.
