This Entrepreneur Did Something Ultra Creepy to Pitch an Investor

It’s no secret nowadays that the startup scene is inundated with entrepreneurs raising funds for their startup. They are always looking to find more creative ways to grab the eyes of investors and separate themselves from the gazillion decks they receive in their emails daily. In the case of Y Combinator alumni Avi Zolty, he thought the best way to grab angel investor Jason Calacanis’ attention was to hack his phone’s voicemail.

In an article on Medium, Zolty went full-on stalker status and found Jason Calacanis’ and Tim Ferriss’ personal contact through old blog posts and website listings.

“At first, I decided to just solicit them our deck and pitch but then I realized something: Tim Ferriss and Jason Calacanis almost definitely knew each other. So I spoof called Calacanis from Tim Ferris’ number. (Ferris’ phone was off). Unfortunately, after 30 seconds of adrenaline and angst his phone sent us to voicemail.”

From there he discovered that Jason didn’t have his voicemail set up, so he had an idea:

“… I spoofed Calacanis from his own number which allowed me to trick the system into sending me straight to voicemail set-up. Being the good Samaritan I am, I of course set up his voicemail for him (but with a special message of my own). I figured the kind of people calling Calacanis would be the ideal demographic to target for our seed round.”

Unsurprisingly, Jason was not amused.

Insane. Someone hacked my voicemail and changed my outgoing message to get me to invest.

A video posted by Jason Calacanis (@jasoncalacanis) on Oct 10, 2014 at 12:04pm PDT

Zolty has since came out to publicly apologize.

View post on X

Although creeped out, Jason still forgave the creepily intrusive young entrepreneur.

View post on X

Share this Article