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How to cold email a startup for an internship

Startups often hire interns without a campus visit or a portal listing: a founder posts on LinkedIn, or a role sits on the company's own careers page. A short, specific email to the person who posted, with a one-page resume built around your projects, is how you reach them.

Updated

Where the openings are

  • LinkedIn posts by founders and team leads (“we're hiring a backend intern, send your resume to…”). Search for them with phrases like hiring intern plus your field, and sort by latest.
  • The startup's own careers page, often on Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby. These list the roles that are really open.
  • The monthly Hacker News “Who is hiring” thread, for remote and international startups.
  • Telegram and WhatsApp groups where people forward openings. Check the post is real and recent before you write.

Who to write to

The person who wrote the post, at the address they gave. At a startup of a few dozen people, that is often a founder or the engineer you would work with. If the post gives no address, use a hiring address on the company's careers page (careers@, jobs@). Write to the general inbox (hello@) only if nothing else is published, and say which role you are writing about. More in how to find the right address.

What to write

  1. Say who you are and what you are answering

    Your year and course, and the role from the post. One sentence each.

  2. Show one project that fits

    The one closest to what the post asks for: what you built, the stack, and one real result (users, speed, a contest placing). Interns are hired on projects.

  3. Say why this startup

    One honest line about what they build and why it interests you. Read their site first.

  4. Ask for something small

    A short call, or a look at your resume. Say when you can start and for how long.

An example email

To
careers@ledgerleaf.example
Subject
Frontend Engineer Intern: Rohan Das, B.Tech 2027, available from January

Hello,

I'm writing about the Frontend Engineer Intern role on your careers page. I'm a final-year B.Tech Computer Science student, and I can join from January for six months.

I built TutorLink, a tutoring marketplace in Next.js and TypeScript over PostgreSQL. After optimising images and splitting the bundle by route it reached a Lighthouse mobile performance score of 96, which mattered because most of its users are on low-end phones.

Ledgerleaf's work on accessible finance tools is the kind of frontend I want to do. My resume is attached; I'd be glad to talk this week or next.

Rohan Das
+91 98xxx xxxxx
github.com/rohandas-example

A made-up example: Rohan and Ledgerleaf are fictional. Every claim in the email comes from Rohan's own resume.

The address is a hiring mailbox from the careers page, so it opens with “Hello” and names the role in the first line. With a named founder's address, it would open with their name.

Your resume as a student

  • One page. Projects first, then education, then skills.
  • For each project: what it does and for whom, the stack, and what you did that was hard or measurable.
  • Reorder for each role: for a frontend post, lead with the frontend project.
  • Only what you did. An interviewer will ask about every line.

Batch year, CGPA and stipend

Many internship posts set a batch year (“2026 and 2027 grads only”) or a CGPA cut-off. Check before you write: an email that ignores a stated limit is easy to skip. Say your availability plainly, and if the post names a stipend, don't negotiate in the first email.

Be wary of any internship that asks you to pay, for training, a kit or a certificate. Real employers don't.