Who to contact at a company: titles by size and stage
Who should get your email? A plain guide to who to contact at a company, by size and stage, and what to check before you hit send.
Outrun team2 min read
You have found a company worth writing to. Now comes the awkward part: who, exactly, gets the email?
Send it to the wrong person and it goes nowhere. Send it to the right one and you get a reply, or at least an honest "not now". Here is a rough guide. It is a starting point, not a law.
The short version
Contact the person who feels the problem you solve and has the authority to do something about it. At small companies those are often the same person. At larger ones they are not, and you need to choose which end to start from.
By company size
Under about ten people. Write to a founder. They make the decisions, they read their own email, and they will tell you quickly if you are wasting their time. This is the easiest tier and the least forgiving of generic emails.
Roughly ten to fifty people. A founder is still a good bet, but the person who owns the relevant area may be better. Selling something for marketing? Look for the head of marketing. Selling something technical? Look for whoever runs engineering.
Fifty and up. Aim for the head of the team that would use what you sell. Their boss will sign off, but they will tell you whether it is worth signing off at all. Writing to the top of a large company is a long shot.
By stage
Just funded. The founders are deciding where the money goes. Write to them, and mention the announcement.
Growing steadily. Team leads own budgets and have a list of problems they would like solved. Write to the one whose problem you fix.
Stable and established. Slower, more process, more people involved. Start with the person closest to the problem and let them bring in the rest.
Check before you send
- Read their LinkedIn profile. Two minutes tells you whether the job title on paper is what they actually do.
- Make sure the person still works there. Titles go out of date quickly.
- Write to one person per company first. Following up with a second contact a week later is fine. Copying six people on one email is not.
What to say
Mention the reason you are writing, and make it specific:
Saw the funding announcement last week. Teams at this stage often need [thing you sell]. Is that on your radar?
Two sentences and one question is enough.
Where Outrun helps
Funding rounds are one of the signals behind the leads in the digest, and every lead links to the source it came from. Leads come with named contacts and a work email where we can find one, plus job titles and LinkedIn profiles where we have them.
You get a digest every weekday at 7am. We do the boring research. You do the human bit, which includes deciding who gets your email.
