Cold outreach is the discipline of writing to a stranger and earning a reply. The math is brutal — a 10% reply rate is unusually good — so every word has to do work. The templates below cover founder-to-founder pitches, agency outreach, event-triggered emails, and the follow-ups that actually convert. None of them use 'just circling back.' All of them respect the recipient's time.
Three patterns repeat in the templates that work: specificity (the recipient should believe you've done your homework), low-friction asks (one question, easily answered), and graceful exits ('reply with later if it's not the right time'). The templates here are starting points; the work is in editing them so they sound like you, not like a sequence.