I was looking at Hacker News today, and saw an article entitled “Why I Finally Joined Mixergy“. I was only vaguely familiar with Mixergy, where Andrew Warner interviews entrepreneurs and others in the startup world, and the post piqued my curiosity:
After a year or two of coming over now and then, consuming content and looking around a bit, I decided to take a look at his interview archives.
Jiminy Cricket! There’s almost 700 interviews in there. While “getting rich quick from your startup” has been done to death, 700 hours of interviews with successful founders is something I’d really like to take in. Even if their advice never directly makes a difference in their startup, just listening to their stories can help me get a better sense of context for where I am in my startup. And that’s worth money.
Sounds like something I should take a look at. I went to the site and added my email address, and minutes later received this email:
A great email gets action. Here’s what I like about it:
- A direct, human-sounding subject line: “Can I ask you a question?”
- An immediate question that resonates and challenges me to look at what I need to improve upon
- A call to action that can’t be ignored
- Challenging reinforcement with “Don’t let your inner weakling keep you from doing this right now.
- “Don’t let me get away with sucking,” followed by links to rate the email itself.
