The reply came the day after Christmas.

John Hu had spent a year trying to reach Steven Bartlett. He sent DMs, LinkedIn messages and cold emails, then went around to Bartlett's agent and his head of partnerships. He even applied through the application form on Bartlett's own venture fund. On Christmas Eve, the fund sent a mass email saying it had lost applications and asking people to resubmit. John was with his mom, and he resubmitted anyway. The day after Christmas, Bartlett accepted his LinkedIn request and wrote back himself. Bartlett became a co-owner of Stan in May 2025.

People call that story persistence. It's more specific than that. John never repeated the same ask through the same door. He kept changing the door. And when one finally opened, he had something most people skip: a short email built to be read in under a minute.

Who John Hu is, quickly

John is the founder of Stan, a platform creators use to sell from a link in their bio. He cold-emailed his way into Goldman Sachs at nineteen with no connections, left Stanford's MBA program, and started Stan out of his own TikTok account. Stan reports more than $30 million in annual revenue, and its backers include Forerunner Ventures, Bartlett and Gary Vee. He walked through the real email in an episode of The Anatomy of a Dream, hosted by Tiffany.

Watch him open it

The clip below starts as John pulls up the email he sent Gary and ends after he finishes breaking it down.

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

How the email is built

John annotated it himself on screen. Here's the structure, in his order:

  1. The hook. It opens with a true, specific connection to the reader: how Gary's book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, changed his life.
  2. Credibility, fast. One line says who he is, then the headline number: $0 to $30M in three years, launched from his own TikTok.
  3. Double down on proof. Three short bullets cover how Stan grew, how profitable it is, and who already backs it.
  4. Founder credibility and the why. He's a former Goldman banker and Stanford MBA dropout who built Stan to solve his own problem as a creator.
  5. The opportunity, in the reader's terms. He pitches Stan as the "Nike for entrepreneurship," with Gary as its Michael Jordan.
  6. The ask, in one sentence. He asks Gary to invest and help get Stan in front of his audience, and points to a precedent.
  7. The offer back. He says what Stan could do for Gary's brand in return.
  8. A short close that restates the mission and asks for a quick chat.

Why it works

John's own rules are plain. Keep it short. Put the numbers early, because people scan. Give the reader something. He says cold emailing is the one skill he'd keep for life.

"It gets you into rooms that you have no business being in."

What to steal

  • Open with something specific and true about the person, not flattery.
  • Put your headline number in the first three lines.
  • Name the ask in a single sentence.
  • Say what's in it for them.
  • Keep it scannable. If it can't be read in a minute, cut it.
  • Change the door, not just the wording.

The part the email can't do

The email only works if you keep going. John describes a hunger he's still learning to carry. He calls it "eat bitter," a term for taking the hard thing and keeping at it. It got him in rooms. It also nearly ran him down when Stan plateaued and he says he had about ten months of runway left. He and his co-founder rebuilt the product in fourteen days.

Back to the day after Christmas

It wasn't luck. It was touchpoint thirty-something, and a person who had already worked out what he would say when the door finally opened. Build the email. Then keep knocking.

Want the structure and a fill-in template? Get the free Cold Email Blueprint.

If outreach is the weak link in your brand, that's what we work on in the Founder Creator Lab. It's free to join.