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Breaking Through the Noise

Overview

How sourcing professionals get a response from inboxes saturated with investor outreach. Both Ryan Murphy and Jake Colognesi agree this is one of the hardest problems in modern sourcing, and that generic, templated outreach is the fastest way to get ignored or flagged as spam.

Key Perspectives

  • Ryan Murphy argues the subject line is "such an overlooked part of the job" and personalizes every cold email. He leverages his Olympic background, advisory board experience, and franchise ownership as attention-grabbing hooks. When a recipient asks to unsubscribe, Ryan finds it "pretty funny" — evidence that his emails are genuinely being mistaken for automated spam, which he considers a compliment to his discipline about sending real one-off outreach. (Ep. 22)
  • Jake Colognesi emphasizes "put yourself in the shoes of the person who's receiving whatever message you're sending." He contrasts generic AUM-forward pitches with value-first outreach that demonstrates understanding of the founder's world. Jake also notes that in an AI-saturated era, "being as human as possible is oddly enough a differentiator" — and has even purchased a typewriter from France to send physical letters that stand out. (Ep. 20)

Tactics Discussed

  • Personalized subject lines — Ryan writes a unique subject line for every outreach (Ep. 22)
  • Unique background leverage — Ryan uses Olympic credentials, advisory work, franchise ownership as entry points (Ep. 22)
  • Value-first content — Jake leads with competitive intelligence, benchmarking, candidate intros rather than AUM (Ep. 20)
  • Physical mail — Jake's French typewriter experiment for completely off-pattern outreach (Ep. 20)
  • Finding connection points — Both emphasize finding unexpected common ground in first conversations

Points of Agreement

  • Generic outreach fails completely; the bar for personalization has risen sharply
  • Unique background or personal hook beats credentials in cold outreach
  • AI-generated templates have made human, effortful outreach more valuable

Episode Coverage

Episode Guest Angle
Ep. 20 Jake Colognesi Value-first outreach, human differentiation, typewriter letters
Ep. 22 Ryan Murphy Personalized subject lines, leveraging unique background, connection points