Gaurav Tadkapally
projectseverything from scratchwriteups
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cold mail → 7 interviews/week

I built a system that got me 7 interviews a week. In the worst case, 1 a month.

Before I get into what I did, cold mailing is simpler and tougher than most people think.

Before you reach out to someone, ask yourself:

“If I got this email, would I even bother opening it?”

Personally, I don’t reply to emails that:

  1. Have a long list of achievements
  2. Go too deep into a project
  3. Look generic or lazy

Most people think they need to “pitch” themselves hard to get a reply. The truth is—nobody cares, and nobody has time to read your pitch.

Cold email is like an ad banner. We scroll past them all day—on YouTube, while browsing, wherever. The goal isn’t to sell, it’s to grab attention for long enough to earn a click or a reply.

cold mail

What I did

For every email, I wanted to send something personal. Researching people one by one takes forever. Talking about their company doesn’t help either—most people don’t even feel connected to their company’s work.

So I automated it.

I wrote a long script that pulled someone’s profile, spawned a chatbot based on it, asked it a few questions, screen-recorded the chat, and uploaded it to Drive. It even added my voice in the background.

I’d just download the profiles I wanted, run the script overnight, and send the emails the next day.

When I started a year ago, it was half manual. Now I just click “send” on 25 emails at once.

Not sharing the code, but you can get the idea from the email below and this BTS video.

Example email (to Andrej Karpathy)

Subject: Made a chatbot for you

Hello Andrej,

I like building, not just talking — so I built a chatbot about you: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mkH29fYBk1rwTQLGK_I6fT9VkTqWME6n

I hope it earns me 6 minutes of your time. Here’s what I’ve built:

  1. Clone of Cursor: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ij5LJVJD6ac
  2. AI that talks to your infra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1cpF5gO9rM

If I impressed you, please consider me for PLACEHOLDER. Else, this might get your attention.

Regards, Gaurav [more about me]

The point was to grab attention. Some replies sucked, some didn’t. The point is to get a reaction.