Lead with the constraint.
Name the bottleneck you control, the metric that proves it, and the systems that depend on it. That is the whole first pitch — no warm introduction required, and every message gets a reply within 48 hours.
Five fields, then the part that matters.
Direct is fine too
Founders
Advisers & operators
Response time
48 hours, including the passes.
Seven things we expect to see.
Not all at once, and not polished. But a first message that touches most of these gets a materially faster and more useful answer than one that does not.
- Technical depth in the constraint itself 01
- Evidence the constraint is expensive today 02
- A narrow, demanding initial user 03
- A falsifiable performance advantage 04
- A capture strategy beyond being useful 05
- A capital plan matched to the proof 06
- Hiring across the physics–software boundary 07
The short version.
Not yet. Fund I has not closed, so we cannot write a cheque today. We are meeting founders now because constraint companies are identified early and slowly — and we would rather know you before we can fund you than pretend otherwise.
No. Lead with the constraint and the metric. A cold message that names a real bottleneck precisely will always beat a warm introduction that does not.
Not at first contact — we read too many messages for that to be workable. Everything you send is treated as confidential, nothing is shared with a competing company, and we sign mutual NDAs before technical diligence.
A multi-vertical story with no named urgent customer, or a performance claim that cannot be falsified. The full exclusion list is on the thesis page — reading it may save you the meeting.