Cold CakedQuestions
Questions VCs ask us at parties.
Also sales teams, founders and the odd receptionist. Straight answers, including three things we will not pretend.
Coldcaking 101
What it is, whether it works, and whether you'll get in trouble.
What is coldcaking?
Coldcaking is cold outreach sent as a custom cake instead of another email. Daymaker popularized the tactic with pitch cakes to VCs. Read the full guide
Is this legal?
Yes lol. The fine print lives in our terms.
Do VCs actually look at cold pitches?
Yes. Most active funds review cold inbound. A cold pitch with traction gets read; a cake with your deck baked on gets read, photographed, and posted. Receipts
What should I send instead of a cold email?
Something that can't be archived. A hand-delivered cake has a 100% open rate and gives your follow-up a hook: "did the cake arrive?" More tactics
Do you guarantee meetings?
The cake gets you noticed, your traction gets you the meeting.
Does this get saturated?
We believe physical gifting is the future of marketing when email and cold calls get saturated. Cake is just a wedge, and to prevent saturation each recipient is limited to 2 cakes a month.
The cake
Sizes, designs, and what happens to it at the front desk.
What size cake should I do?
Any size works, but the larger the cake, the bigger the likelihood of them posting about it.
Can you bake my logo / face / cease-and-desist letter on the cake?
Yes, yes, and we've already done it twice.
Do I need a designer?
No. Upload your art, write a line, or let Design it for me draw a cake for each company.
Can you mail a cake to someone?
Mailing a cake means a sad frozen cake in a box. We bake it fresh at a local bakery in the recipient's city and hand-deliver it to their office. No freezer, no courier roulette.
What happens if it gets eaten by the receptionist?
Then your brand was tasted by the receptionist. Marketing is marketing.
Delivery
Where, when, and what if they're working from home.
Where do you deliver?
Anywhere a partner bakery covers the address. Add an address and we tell you right away, with the bakery and the price for that city. Outside our zones we can ship cookies instead. See the delivery zones
When does the cake arrive?
Each bakery sets its own lead time. Pick ASAP or a day that suits you, and you'll see the soonest possible day before you pay.
What if they work from home?
Send a gift link. They claim the cake and tell us which address and which day work for them.
Money
What it costs, and what you can still undo.
How much does it cost to send a cake to an office?
Every cake is priced by size and city, with hand delivery included. You see the price for their city as soon as you add the address. Sending more? 5% off every cake from 10, 8% from 25, 10% from 50, 15% from 100, 25% from 500. It comes off automatically. Try the calculator
Can I cancel a cake?
Yes, cake by cake, until the bakery starts baking it. The money goes back to how you paid.
The fine print
Three things we will not pretend. Read this before you order.
- We can't guarantee the address is right. We use publicly available addresses for VC firms and companies. They move offices. Reception desks change. Sometimes the data is stale. If a cake goes to the wrong building because the address we had was no longer current, the cake is lost. We will not re-bake or re-deliver for free.
- We can't guarantee the recipient will accept the cake. A receptionist can refuse delivery. A partner can decline a gift on policy grounds. A building can have a no-deliveries rule. If the cake is refused at the door, the cake is lost. We will not re-bake.
- We can't un-bake a cake. You can cancel cake by cake until the bakery starts baking it. Once your message goes into the bake queue, the ingredients are spent and the labour is committed, so there is no refund after that: not for change of mind, wrong recipient, refused delivery, stale address, ghosted reply, or buyer's remorse.
The long version is in our terms of service.
Still stuck?
Ask a person. Bulk orders, odd addresses, a cake with your cease-and-desist on it: we've probably seen it.
Send the cake anyway.
Most questions answer themselves the moment the delivery photo comes back.
