

- The email is actually relevant and valuable for Evan Spiegel. One of the issues with cold email templates is that they are (basically) useless unless you are emailing the right person with something that is valuable for them. This exact email format, with the same copy structure and flow, would not have worked if the thing being sold to Evan wasn’t obviously useful. In this case, (1) Evan wants engineering talent, and this email offers that, and (2) there is low downside. The kid is asking for an internship, not a 90-minute meeting or a $50k contract.
- The email has a clear narrative flow. 1. Acknowledge awkwardness, 2. Establish credibility, 3. Make the pitch. Plenty of cold emails flounder because people are all over the place; they don’t have a good narrative arc. This one does.
- There’s no fluff. No fake ‘I saw your LinkedIn post’ personalization. No rambling. You could almost call this a Minimum Viable Email—it has just enough information to make sense and be useful. But not a word more.
- It’s short. Brevity almost always beats wordiness. You may feel like your emails need to be long. You may make excuses for why this email can be short but yours needs to be long (because you just have so many important things to say). The truth is that your email can always be shorter. There are rare exceptions where long emails work, but your email is probably not the exception.