Build a sourced outreach list and personal cold emails with Claude Code

The writer of the 4 the curious newsletter has used cold email for years to land internships, mentors and app partners. In January 2026 she used Claude Code with access to her own logged-in Chrome to research incubators and VCs in another country. She gave it two or three seed pages, like a mentor list. It followed links, read LinkedIn and team pages, and returned 25 to 30 people, each with a reason and a source URL. Every personal line in an email had to come from that row. One CLAUDE.md file holds her numbers, rules and the approved email. She read and sent about 20 emails herself and got 7 replies, several with intros. The work fell from about three hours to one.