Just got an email from Joseph A. Cordi (LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/josephcordi) which I first took to be generic spam but now wondering if he (or his firm) scraped the posts here and sent out more targeted spam. Anyone else get this email or know anything about him? There's no mention of how he got my email information. I guess another possibility is that he scraped DNS records I guess. Whatever the case, sounds a little sketchy. Here's the text of the email:<p>"I was looking for the opportunity to introduce myself. I helped start the New York office of Advanced Equities Inc. (AEI).<p>"AEI was established in Chicago in 1999. We are a full-service investment bank with a focus on late-stage private equity. Historically, we provide our clients access to companies seeded by the top Silicon Valley VC firms such as Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Benchmark, and Khosla Ventures.<p>"A great way to describe my firm is that we have filled the void created by the departure of Alex Brown, H&Q, Robertson Stephens and Montgomery from the private equity market. With all the rules and regulations resulting from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the $50M IPO no longer exists and companies are mandated to incubate that’s where we come in.<p>"I have a network of tech executives and entrepreneurs I work with who I keep abreast of the individual rounds of funding which we lead for our portfolio companies and give them the opportunity to invest at angel size levels on a case-by-case basis into our later-stage deals.<p>"If you potentially would have an interest in receiving access to our deal flow, call me when you have a couple minutes to discuss further or, alternatively, let me know the best time and number to reach you.<p>Joseph A. Cordi"
Yes, I've received a similar message. I do have my email address listed here in the public info. I took it to be spam, as well, and just deleted it.<p>Interesting how cold contacts are problematic in both directions; from entrepreneur to investor and from investor to entrepreneur (though I'd never heard of AEI, and it sounds like they are middlemen rather than actual investment decision makers, and so that makes me less likely to respond, anyway).
It doesn't quite sound like spam. If you're a spammer, you don't sell investment banking deal-flow; you sell herbal supplements, or something else that most people will want.<p>It looks more like he sent a cold-email. If he wants better results, he might want to customize it a little more.