Brass Tacks

emails i’ve sent

Published: Edited: Reading time: 8 min Tags: everblue Draft: Yes Part of: everblue notes

a curated collection of emails i’ve sent.

[in response to a kind & fairly individualized request to apply to various roles running an event called “EAGx Berkeley”]

Hi [Name], nice to hear from you!

Sorry for the late response — I was offline until Wednesday for Passover, and it's taken me a few days to catch up.

Congrats on your new position at [Organization], hope that's going well :)

I'm honored you'd reach out to me about EAGx Berkeley! Unfortunately, I don't think I'd feel comfortable committing to spend a lot of energy in the months leading up to the event — I'm running Manifest until mid-June, then intend to take the summer off before I go back to college in the fall.

But I'd still be really interested in low-background-energy/low-commitment ways that I can help out! Some thoughts:

  • I'm (almost) definitely down to help out day-of/on-site in a roughly similar capacity to my role at EAG Bay Area 2024. My impression was that the model of "hire an extra ~4 full-time competent ops folks for day-of/on-site support during the event" went extremely well at EAGBA24, and I'd be excited to replicate it at EAGx Berkeley.
  • I'll pass on a few names of folks I think would be a good fit — happy to introduce you to any/all if it'd be helpful. Note: I've spent time with them in mostly social or semi-social settings, not professional ones; you'd probably want to independently verify that they're a good fit.
    • [i proceed to list 6 names + hyperlink to their websites or linkedins]
  • Broadly, let me know if you think there is anything else that I can do to help EAGx that wouldn't take up an ongoing background cycle in my mind. Some possibilities:
    • get people from the forecasting/prediction market community to give talks
    • table IRL on-campus at Berkeley (this has historically worked surprisingly well for me for events in the past!)
    • given how niche the experience of "organizing multi-hundred-person events at Lighthaven" is, chatting with whoever is organizing EAGx Berkeley to transfer relevant context
    • give more generic, broad feedback/mentorship to the organizers
    • etc
  • I'm always happy to call (or to meet IRL!). Offer extends to you & anyone you think is relevant.

Again, honored that you'd reach out to me about this! Please keep me in mind for relevant roles like this in the future :)

Best,

Saul

[sent to the organizers of a conference]

Hello!

I just found out about the [Topic] Conference — thank you guys for organizing it! I’ve been a fan of [Topic] for a while, but before I commit to applying/attending, I wanted to make sure that I was a good fit.

I’m curious about the following:

  • what are the characteristics of someone who you think would get a lot out of the event?
  • what do you look for in the admissions process? what would make someone an obvious “yes”?

And regardless of whether I end up going, I really appreciate all that you guys do. Thank you for your work!

Best,

Saul Munn

[in response to an email list that didn’t have an ‘unsubscribe’ button]

Hello!

I’d like to stop receiving emails from this list. Thanks!

Best,

Saul

[in response to a different kind & fairly individualized email asking me to apply to a particular role doing recruiting]

Hey [Name], thanks for reaching out!

I’m touched that you thought of me, and grateful for the kind words. I'm also really excited by the thought of working at [Organization] — I've been quite impressed by the competence and warmth of the staff members with whom I've interacted, and I appreciate the work that [Organization] does for [clients]. Plus, recruiting work sounds sufficiently outside my comfort zone that I'd be learning, and sufficiently within my ability to gain skills fast.

However, as you mentioned, I do plan to return to college in the fall, and I'm working on Manifund & Manifest until mid-June. I think dropping out is within the realm of possibility, but the odds are pretty low (these odds are a bit too high, but not totally off).

Given all of the above, would you/[Organization] consider:

  1. short-term work? E.g., a few months over the summer, after my work at Manifold ends but before I go to school.
  2. part-time work? E.g. starting over the summer, but continuing while I'm at school.

I realize a lot of this is up in the air, so no worries if the answers are no. And regardless, I'm quite honored that you'd think of me — and I'm looking forward to continuing to help out at [events that Organization puts on] :)

Best,

Saul Munn

Hi Ben!

I was just chatting with Simon, [half-sentence description of Simon’s work]. He’s interested in getting a better grasp of the community surrounding [topic], and is in town for the next few weeks. I thought it might be valuable for him to chat with you, but I wanted to check with you before sending an intro email. By default, I’ll send that email tomorrow, unless you tell me otherwise before then!

Best,

Saul

[then, when Ben confirmed]

Hey all!

I was chatting with Simon recently, and thought that the two of you might find it valuable to connect.

  • Ben, Simon does [1-2 sentence description of Simon. 1 sentence description of why Ben might be interested in chatting with Simon].
  • Simon, Ben runs [1-2 sentence description of Ben. 1 sentence description of why Simon might be interested in chatting with Ben].

I'll let the two of you take over :)

Best,

Saul Munn

Hey all!

I wanted to introduce you to each other:

  • Alice works as the events director for [project], an org that runs [description of that org’s events].
  • Bob works as the COO for [org].

Alice was interested in working on some financial/legal/ops stuff for Org in line with the sort Bob has helped OPTIC before. I found Bob’s advice really helpful, mentioned that to Alice, and am now introducing the two of you.

I'll let y'all take over from here :)

Best,

Saul Munn

(PS: I think y'all are both really cool folks, and I'm also partly introducing the two of you because I really enjoy introducing two really cool people whose opinions I respect!)

[someone else writes to me:]

Hi Saul,

I'm an undergrad with a background in computational neuroscience and I'll be in Berkeley this Sunday and Monday. [friend of mine] recommended that I reach out to you about meeting up - if there's a time and place that works well for you, let me know and I can meet you there!

Best,

Michael

[i respond]

Hey Michael!

Would be happy to meet — how's 12:30pm at Strada caffe? Sent you a gcal invite, lmk if that doesn't work :)

Best,

Saul

[in response to william sending me a warm intro to adele, where william addressed his email to both of us, and described who each of us was + why the other might want to connect]

Thanks William! (To BCC)

Hi Adele, lovely to e-meet you! I'll be running a pitch competition at the festival/conference that William mentioned, and I'd love to hear about your experiences. If you're down to chat, here's a link where you can book a time. Talk soon!

Best,

Saul

Hello!

[extremely basic question, the answer to which i couldn’t find on their website after ~3-5 minutes of searching]?

Thanks!

Saul

[i have sent so, so many almost identical versions of the above email]

Hi Leon!

I came upon your blog, and really enjoyed it. I had some scattered thoughts, and figured I might as well share!

As I read more, I might continue this thread of comments/thoughts — let me know if it's bothering you and I'll stop :)

Best,

Saul Munn

(note: minor details from some of the emails were censored or changed, but nothing has been significantly altered.)

i originally collected these as an appendix to a post that would’ve been titled “things you’re allowed to do: email edition.”

below is the beginning of that post; it’ll accrete items until it’s baked long enough to publish on my blog.

Things You’re Allowed To Do: Email Edition

Previously, I wrote about things you’re allowed to do in college. This time, I’m writing about emails you’re allowed to send.

This post is not titled “Things You Should Do,” because these aren’t (necessarily) things you should do. Many people should not do many of the items on this list, and some of the items are exclusive, contradictory, or downright the reverse of what you should do. If your reaction to something is “I think that’s a bad idea,” then it probably is, and you probably shouldn’t do it.

  • send cold emails
    • to…
      • the organizers of {events, conferences, festivals, fellowships, programs, etc}
      • people who run businesses that you like. bonus points for specificity on what it is that you like about their products, and for specific critiques.
      • writers of blogs you like. bonus points for specificity on what it is that you like about their blog/posts, and for specific critiques.
      • interesting people you want to befriend
    • in order to…
      • merely thank someone for something (e.g. a really great blog post, a great event, etc)
      • ask for advice about a specific thing
  • send intro emails…
    • introduce one person to another, where the first asked you to be introduced to the second
    • ask each side of an intro email for permission to introduce them to the other
    • introduce two people who you think would get a ton of value talking to the other about something, without either of them requesting the intro. bonus points for clearly explaining to them why you think they should talk to the other.
    • ask someone who requests to be introduced to someone you know why they want to discuss
  • send extremely brief emails asking for an extremely specific thing.
    • e.g. “Hello! I really enjoy using [product]. I have [use-case], and it doesn’t seem that [product] has a way of handling [use-case]. Is that right?”
    • e.g. “Hello! I’d like to stop receiving emails from this list, but it looks like there’s no ‘unsubscribe’ button. Thanks!”
    • e.g. “Hello! It looks like your blog blog has an “about” button that’s broken — it loads a blank page with no content. Thought you should know!”
  • suggest dates/times to meet (instead of forcing this cognitive load on the other person)
  • [all writing advice that has ever been written]
  • load good emails you’ve written in the past into an LLM in-context, and ask it to write/revise an email

also see this list from 80k of email scripts, and this advice for cold emailing, and some of elad gil’s thoughts on emailing.