This is how to get introduced to VCs, guaranteed

You want to raise money for your startup and are looking for investors, but like most people, you don’t know any. So how do you get introductions to venture capital investors to make your plans a reality? It’s hard!

Well, let’s dig into this in detail. By the end of this article, you will know what you should do, where you shouldn’t spend your time on, and how to maximize your outcome. More importantly, you will know how not to look like a noob and make damaging social etiquette mistakes. Let’s begin.

TL;DR

• Investors don’t want to meet you. They want to be introduced to you instead. The best intros come from portfolio companies and other investors from a different business stage but with a status equal to or better than the target.
• You likely won’t know the nature of relationships people have with each other. But knowing that matters more than the intermediary’s job title.
• Under no circumstances should you cold email investors.

Do I need introductions to investors?

Affirmative. Please just get introductions. It’s a waste of time to argue with me on this. But if you’re already arguing, I’m not listening. You’re talking to yourself right now, which is a little weird.

But Alexander, I know someone who got funded without an intro

It’s possible, but the point is that your time ROI would be so low that I don’t recommend it as a hack. One VC surveyed his friends and reckoned that the probability of getting a meeting from a cold email is 1/600. And that’s just a meeting, not an investment.

But like everything in life, there are a few exceptions:

• I do know of a startup that cold spammed investors and was able to fundraise. But it is a total exception. The investors were also c-rate investors (can’t say who it is now, can I?). Of all the funded deals in Southeast Asia, this is the only one I know that closed.
• Aaron Levie at Box managed to get Mark Cuban to invest through a cold email and without a meetup.

A VC is OK with cold emails if you share friends

Since you are desperate for disconfirming evidence, I will give you one from an investor. Charlie O’Donnell at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures manages a small fund in New York City. He wrote that he does not actually mind cold intros. Before you take that as all the evidence you need, note that he expects to be able to check up on you through a shared network.

If the connection is a strong, trusted one, that helps, but to be honest, there are probably less than 50 people than I would just blindly take a meeting based on an intro alone.

Reality is that we’re probably connected in some way anyway through various social networks […].

I don’t care. What does a good cold email look like?

But don’t VCs want dealflow? They want to meet me, right?

What’s the real reason I need introductions to investors?

Who are the best people to get introductions from?

Does it always matter how close the relationship is to get an introduction? Not for low-level intros

Borrowed credibility is how introductions to investors work

What determines a good relationship with investors?

Do not accept any offer to make an introduction!