How junior VCs can break through to elite founders: beyond the SDR AI email approach

7 creative tips for deal sourcing.

Author

Michael Morgenstern
May 13, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex community,

Series A founders: Your success has unleashed a flood of identical "relationship-building" emails from associates at top firms. Sourcing associates: When founders are receiving 15+ generic check-in requests weekly, your SDR-style outreach dies in their mobile inbox. Seven ways junior investors can actually earn attention:

  1. Productize your diligence – "While analyzing GTM strategies in your space, I identified three expansion vectors your competitors missed. I've attached a 2-page teardown with specific TAM calculations that might inform your Series B positioning. Happy to elaborate if useful."

  2. Leverage firm resources asymmetrically – "Our data science team built a crawler tracking feature adoption across your category. It flagged an unusual pattern in your competitor's enterprise tier. Screen recording attached showing what they're testing with F1000 accounts."

  3. Pre-qualify strategic interest – "I've vetted acquisition interest from two strategics expanding in your vertical. Both indicated $XXM-range interest when you hit $YM ARR. I've documented their product integration priorities and can connect you to their corp dev if relevant now or later."

  4. Share material recruiting leverage – "Our talent team just completed compensation mapping of 50 engineers with your exact stack requirements in your geography. Instead of abstract introductions, I'm sending the anonymized data set to benchmark your offers without wasting your time."

  5. Deliver targeted competitive intel – "After speaking with 6 customers who switched from your primary competitor, I've documented their exact pain points and decision criteria. This may help refine your sales positioning. One-pager attached without any asks in return."

  6. Amplify your technical understanding – "I spent last weekend building a small implementation using your API to surface a specific opportunity: your webhook structure outperforms competitors for this use case. Demo and documentation attached."

  7. Bring genuine value, not just food – "Instead of a generic lunch drop-off, our team wants to bring your engineers a specialized workshop on Series B technical due diligence with our technical partners. We'll provide food, but more importantly, prepare your team for what's coming in 12-18 months."

Junior investors who transcend the SDR mindset focus on delivering asymmetric value upfront. You're not selling meetings – you're proving you think like a founder's strategic partner by solving real problems. The best associates build reputation through tangible contribution, not follow-up sequences.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

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Averin is focused on the transformation of health by technology.  Founded by brothers David and Eric Berry, Averin brings together deep scientific expertise and entrepreneurial success in its approach to investing in and partnering with leading companies and management teams to usher in a better, brighter future.

David Berry has been instrumental in founding and leading multiple unicorns.  As a former General Partner at Flagship Pioneering, he has over 18 years of VC experience and has founded over 20 companies. Eric Berry co-founded and led TripleLift as CEO, scaling it to a $1.4B acquisition with less than $17M raised.

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