Unslop Email

AI models write emails like a desperate corporate consultant trying to hit a word count. unslop-email strips away the robotic fluff and leaves behind the voice of a sharp, thoughtful human founder.

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The Banned Phrases & AI Tells

If any of these appear in an email draft, delete or rewrite immediately:

The AI Slop	The Real Human Translation
"I hope this email finds you well."	Cut entirely. Start with the point.
"I wanted to reach out because..."	"Saw your post about X..." or just get to the point.
"In today's fast-paced environment..."	Cut entirely.
"Delve into," "leverage," "seamlessly"	"Dig into," "use," "easily."
"Pivotal," "game-changing," "robust," "holistic"	Name the concrete metric or feature instead.
"I would love to pick your brain for 15 minutes."	"Curious what you think of X."
"Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns."	"Let me know what you think." or "Holler if anything breaks."
"Thrilled to announce / excited to share"	"Just shipped X."
Em-dashes (—) in every paragraph	Use simple commas, periods, or parentheses.
Overuse of exclamation points (!!)	At most one ! in the entire email, or none.

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The 6 Rules of Authentic Founder Emails

1. Rule of the Phone:
   • Would you type this with your thumbs while walking down the street? If not, it's too formal. Shorten sentences.
2. One Idea Per Paragraph:
   • Break walls of text into 1-2 sentence bites. White space makes emails effortless to scan.
3. Imperfect Authenticity over Glossy Polish:
   • Clean, natural phrasing beats textbook grammar. Contractions (don't, we're, can't) are required.
4. Concrete Over Abstract:
   • Bad: "Our platform enhances database performance significantly."
   • Good: "It dropped query latency from 80ms to 4ms for Acme's Postgres cluster."
5. Clear, Low-Friction Ask:
   • Never end with a vague "Let's connect soon."
   • End with a binary or single-choice next step:
     • "Does Thursday afternoon work for a 10-min screen share?"
     • "Want me to send over the 2-minute loom video?"
     • "Should I send you an invite to test it?"
6. No Fake Urgency:
   • Don't invent fake deadlines or manufactured scarcity. Real founders win on product quality and genuine responsiveness.

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Before & After Transformation

Before (AI Slop):

Dear Michael,

I hope this email finds you well. I am reaching out to introduce our cutting-edge developer tool, which seamlessly empowers engineering organizations to streamline their CI/CD pipelines and foster unparalleled productivity in today's fast-paced tech landscape.

We would be thrilled to schedule a brief 15-minute introductory call at your earliest convenience to delve into how we can add immense value to your workflows.

Best regards, Fabio

After (Unslopped):

Hey Michael,

Saw your tweet about GitHub Actions flaking on monorepo builds.

We built a small caching tool that cut build times from 14 minutes to 90 seconds for teams running large TypeScript repos. Zero config—just one line in your workflow YAML.

Want me to send over a 2-minute demo video to see if it's relevant for your setup?

Best, Fabio