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Getting things ready…
AI Discussion ClubAI Discussion ClubGetting things ready…
AI Discussion Club workshop
Researching one person well can take 20 minutes. Today Exa does the digging, so you can write to people the way they deserve.
You will do two jobs: build a list of the right people and save it, then go deep on all ten and write each of them a message they want to answer.
Set aside about 45 minutes and use a laptop. Claude or ChatGPT both work.
Use whichever one you already have. Sign in on the website or in the desktop app.
Either one works for everything today. Where the steps differ, this guide shows both.
Every attendee gets $50 of Exa credit. It stays on your account after today.
Exa is a search engine built for AI. It finds people and pages that normal search misses.
EXA50DCSTARTUP
Follow the path for the app you use. When it asks you to sign in to Exa, use the account you just made.
Describe who you are looking for, or roll an example. Then copy the line into a new chat.
use exa to find 10 angel investors in the DC area who back early-stage startups. for each one give their name, role, company, a link, and one recent thing they said or did. put it in a table first, then save it as a csv i can paste into google sheets, with extra columns for status and date contacted.
If Exa mixes someone up with a person of the same name, tell it their company or city and ask it to redo that row.
Stay in the same chat and let Exa dig into all ten people on your list.
It adds what it finds as new columns, so your spreadsheet gets richer instead of you juggling tabs.
use exa to go deep on all 10 people on my list. for each person find: their background and education, what they have written, posted or said in the last 3 months (with links), the problems or goals they keep coming back to, and what they might need right now. add these as new columns to the table, then give me the updated csv.
The best opener is something they wrote or said recently, and the problem behind it.
Say who you are and what you can offer. The line below writes ten messages, each from that person's own words, and adds them to your sheet.
for each of those 10 people, pick the most recent thing they wrote or said, name the problem behind it in their words, and write them a short message, under 100 words: open with that piece, offer one concrete way i can help, and end with one easy question. i am .... no flattery, no buzzwords. add the messages as a new column in the csv.
In our first test, the research corrected our own prompt: the person had a different title than we typed. That is why you check.
AI can get a detail wrong, and a wrong detail is worse than none.
For more workshops like this one, and our upcoming events, head to the AI Discussion Club homepage.