Good GOD this is a terrible system.<p>As a person that many people want to get in front of, I can hereby certify that this fellow would have been blocked by a bayesian spam filter by email #2.<p>The trouble here is his attitude. It's all about demanding and demanding and demanding. Gimme. Gimme some time. Gimme some attention. Then gimme some mentoring, gimme some money, gimme an investment. You know what? Ef you.<p>The solution to landing meetings with anyone you want is fairly easy and has been understood since Dale Carnegie explained it (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influenc...</a>) in 1936.<p>You have to stop demanding things from people and start doing things for them.<p>Comment on their blog posts.<p>When you find out they have a new puppy, mail them some homemade puppy treats with a nice note.<p>When they ask a question on Twitter, move mountains to find an answer and send it to them.<p>Find out what charities they work for and make a donation. Or volunteer.<p>Write a blog. Give freely of your own knowledge. I did that and went from anonymous to internet-famous in 2 years. When I wanted to raise money, everyone knew who I was, and I got meetings with anyone I wanted with a one sentence email. Not because I was lucky and not because I was blessed and not because I was in the right club, but because I had been making a contribution for years before I started demanding things.
Tread very, very lightly if you plan on going this route.<p>Be absolutely sure that your e-mails have real content in them (i.e. this is progress we've made, we just closed X deal, etc.) that can be easily digested. The goal shouldn't be to make contact and then explain yourself. The goal is to generate interest, which will lead to the contact.<p>Also, if this technique catches on and hordes of desperate entrepreneurs everywhere start spamming every VC and investor they can find, it's all over. The HN crowd, of all people, should know just how easy it is to create a filter to immediately trash messages from a specific address. This is why it's important to have excellent content in your very first e-mail.
This reminds me of Randy Pausch's method of getting someone to sit down for lunch. [1]<p>"And he asked a question. And I was like, I’m sorry did you say you were Tom Furness? And he said yes. I said, then I would love to answer your question, but first, will you have lunch with me tomorrow? And there’s a lot in that little moment. There’s a lot of humility, but also asking a person where he can’t possibly say no."<p>Although, admittedly, that's after you got them to say a few words to you and you're in front of a large group of people.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo</a> 19:40<p>Edit:<p>For those who don't know, here's the setting of this talk:<p>This talk is one in a series given at CMU called the "Last Lecture" series with the hypothetical setting of 'what if you had one last talk to give?'. Randy Pausch, a professor at CMU, didn't have to pretend. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and in August of 2007 (when he gave the talk) was told he had three to six months left to live.<p>If you haven't seen it, watch the whole talk. It's really good.
By far the best trick I've found for getting marginal meetings (where you might not otherwise) is "I'm going to be flying through <town>, could we meet up to discuss <thing relevant to them>?" Usually the artificial time/distance limit makes it happen; then you end up flying there just for the meeting.
This is only a partial answer and if you don't fully understand what's happening and why, you'll get your ass handed to you.<p>You need to know what YOU are bringing to the table and what THEY are bringing to the table. You need to have the full picture in your head. If you fully, passionately, believe that value will be created for both of you through a relationship ... all you have to do is convince the other person. If it's obvious for you, it'll be obvious for them too. They will, of course, meet with you.<p>On the other hand, if you're just bullshitting and you have nothing and you just desperately want to meet them because you're hoping that they will figure out how value will be created through a relationship ... well, they'll know what you are from the very first hello and you'll end up in the SPAM folder of their mind.
The problem with these systems is that they're okay when only a really few people do it. But imagine if you're a VC and every aspiring entrepreneur keeps spamming you every single day. The novelty wears off quickly.
This has to be one of the lamest things I have ever read on hacker news. Hacking the system? Its called persistence. Yes, sometimes it can work, other times it can get you shitlisted. Is this the kind of crap they teach Urbana-Champaign? No wonder I rarely hire a recent college graduate.
"<i>There’s always a fine line between persistence and desperation, and you don’t want to cross over into desperation.</i>"<p>I think you cross that line right about when you decide it's a good idea to email someone every day to get their attention.
The article says one of the likealittle people turned $2k into $200k? 10,000% profit?<p>Is there more of an explanation on this somewhere? That seems incredibly far fetched to me.
Anyone else noticed lots of VC's and Angels tweet when they are flying somewhere? How about driving to the airport they are flying into and waiting for them to come through the arrivals gate holding a sign with their name on. A free ride to wherever they are going in return for hearing your pitch. Considered doing this, but my gut tells me this is just too stalker like to work. Think it would freak me out if someone did it to me.
This reminds me of a story I read about Grant Achatz, the great chef of Alinea. When he started out of cooking school, he sent a resume every week to Thomas Keller at the French Laundry, until Thomas Keller finally called him in and interview him. Persistence does payoff
I was curious about who it was that Evan Reas had been emailing, and found this list:<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/the-full-very-impressive-list-of-likealittle-investors/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/the-full-very-impressive-li...</a><p>Since Andreessen Horowitz was part of their angel round, perhaps Marc Andreessen or Ben Horowitz were one of their initial targets.
One of the best methods in meeting a person of importance was show on the Crime and Investigation Network cable channel by a prolific con artist. Not only did that guy meet with almost anyone, he became friends and was invited to parties, dinners, etc.