My Inbox Is Getting Weird
For whatever reason, the amount of strange in my inbox has reached new levels lately.
Don’t get me wrong, I love when people get in touch; but, first and foremost, I like to be treated as a human being.
Women VC’s get together to talk, and yes, we talk/ laugh/ lament about all you jabronis who send nonsense to us.
I want to share pieces of my email collection with you as a cautionary tale for said jabronis and as a means of catharsis for myself.
Also, I hope that seeing clips of these emails will illuminate how absurd some of the phrasing and intentions are and eventually the level of weird in everyone’s (read: women’s) work email will go down.
I know some of you John Smith’s out there may be thinking, “But Jacqueline, what could you possibly mean by nonsense in your inbox!?”
Well, John Smith, such nonsense includes but is not limited to:
- Sexism
- Misogyny
- Moderate to Severe Unfriendliness.
These may seem like vague drug side effects, so I’ve directly copied some pieces of emails as a sort of identification guide.
In a relationship building business like VC, the following salutations are not appropriate if you’d like to build a professional relationship with me:
- “Yo”
- “Hey beautiful”
- “Sorry for the cold email, I’m not trying to talk to you but Fred didn’t respond to me so I figured you could make the intro”
- “Hey I’ve been waiting outside the building for a couple days hoping to run into someone” -yes, more than one person has written this and no, it’s not endearing. There’s hustle and there’s scary.
For future reference, a simple “Hi Jacqueline” is a great idea!
Next, the body of the email.
I’d like to hit the highlights and address a few groups in particular:
- Disheartened private equity associates
I like getting together with career driven folks like you, but here are a few lines that I find off-putting:
- “After being in private equity and banking I’ve decided I don’t want to work as hard and keep my salary so VC is a good fit for me, and I think you can help me get a job.”
- “I don’t really like tech but I’ve known I wanted to be in VC my whole life and work at USV. How did you do it?”
Instead Try This:
“I’m [name], I’ve been working on [something] and I’d appreciate talking to you about [common interest we have both demonstrated]. Let me know if you have time for a chat.”
2. General industry folks
Trying to establish a power dynamic immediately is not enticing:
“You may recognize me from the young guns in VC newsletter and I am reaching out so you can help me.”
“If you forward me to the partners I can introduce you to all the important people you need to know in this business, so you can choose if you want that opportunity.”
FYI, I don’t like important people, only extremely unimportant ones appeal to me.
Instead try: “It would be great to chat because we are both interested in [something we are both interested in] and I think we could combine forces.”
3. The blatantly sexist
I’ve included my typical responses next to these remarks. If you fall in this category you can save yourself the email and book yourself a therapy session:
“I looked at your background and realized that if you got hired, then someone with my background could definitely get hired so I think we should talk.” — yikes.
“The boys at usv are good investors.” — I’ll be sure to let the boys know you’re a fan.
“Since you’re not technical you probably won’t understand my deck, but if you could forward it to someone who can that would be great.” — I would love to, but technical things like “forwarding” are too hard.
“I’m creating an app because I realized women are a lot more desperate to get married than men are.” — Thank you for your charity work!
“Clearly USV was trying to make a statement by hiring two girls. What do you talk about with the partners?” — Thanks! Mostly I talk to the partners about lady things, like menstrual cycles. And then, if we get to it, investing. But I only like to keep it to a few syllables at a time.
Ah, I could go on with this forever.
And ever, and ever, but I do have a point.
Email etiquette is important.
I don’t always get it right, but I try to be conscious about the correct etiquette to avoid it all going horribly wrong.
As an analyst, I respect that you’re trying to bypass me and get to the partners. That’s how it should be!
But, don’t be a topic at the next jabroni roundup.
