“Advice for Sending Cold Messages to Busy People at EAG” by Neel Nanda, Jemima

TL;DR

The main thing I expect busy people want when receiving an EAG cold message is:

• Enough info to roughly estimate the expected impact they’d have by helping you,
• Conciseness

My recommended message structure:

• Background (1-2 sentences)
• 1-3 pieces of evidence of your future impact/potential (1-2 sentences each)
• What you want help with: Concreteness encouraged, eg specific upcoming choices (max 1 paragraph)
  • Why they, specifically, are a good person to help with this (skip if obvious)
• A concrete question you would like to ask them (makes it way easier for them to triage)

This advice is for messaging busy people, who will get more requests than they have time for, and need to prioritise, for less established people you can be way more chill.

I’m writing this because I think cold emails can be really valuable, and I hope this gives you the confidence to reach [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) TL;DR

(01:18) Introduction

(01:57) What should the message convey?

(02:40) Should you send a cold message?

(03:47) Recommended Message Structure

(07:26) Stylised Examples

(07:30) Example 1

(08:18) Example 2

(09:14) Final note

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

June 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oKCAytGYKx9dcdBQC/advice-for-sending-cold-messages-to-busy-people-at-eag

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.