How to Get a Warm Introduction to Investors (Even With No Network)

A warm introduction to investors is when someone the investor already trusts passes your company along and vouches for you. The best ones come from founders the investor has backed or from other investors. To get one, pick a person who knows the investor well, ask whether they’re comfortable making the intro, and send them a short note they can forward without editing. If you don’t have that path yet, you can build one, and a well researched cold message can still get a reply.

Warm intros get talked about as if they decide everything. The data below suggests they help most at the start of the process and much less once you’re in the meeting. This report covers both sides. If you are still building your list, read how to find investors first.

Do warm introductions still matter in 2026?

Yes, mostly for getting the first reply. Three sets of data point the same way.

How VCs say they find deals. In the Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev survey of 885 VCs, 31% of deals closed came through professional networks, 20% were referred by other investors and 8% came from portfolio companies. Only 10% came inbound from company management. The authors’ summary: “Few VC investments come from entrepreneurs who beat a path to the VC’s door without any connection.”

What one VC firm’s full pipeline shows. A 2025 NBER paper by Jang and Kaplan used every deal one early stage US firm looked at from August 2015 to December 2021, 8,815 in total. Of deals sent over by co-investors, meaning other VCs looking at the same company, 13.5% made it to the firm’s in-depth review. For inbound deals the figure was 5.3%, and for deals the firm sourced itself it was 2.7%. That’s one fund, and its “inbound” group mixes cold emails with personal referrals, but at that firm, a referral from another investor clearly helped a deal get a closer look.

What happens after the meeting. CherryPitch’s Q2 2026 report tracked 1,336 outreaches from 108 founders raising pre-seed, seed and Series A. Among founders with a clear deck, a warm intro lifted the response rate from 24% to 38%, and meetings from 14% to 24%. But once founders were in the room, 7.7% of warm intro meetings advanced to a round against 7.0% of cold ones. CherryPitch’s conclusion: “A warm intro widens the top of your funnel.” The outcomes are self-reported by the platform’s own users, so treat the exact numbers with care.

So a warm intro helps you get read and get the call. Your company, your deck and how you run the meeting decide what happens next. Our report on what investors check before a first meeting covers that part.

Who can give you a warm introduction investors take seriously?

Someone the investor trusts, who also knows your company well enough to vouch for it. In rough order of strength:

• Your current investors and angels. OpenVC’s founder calls intros from your existing backers “the strongest intros you’ll get”. This matches the Jang and Kaplan data on co-investor referrals.
• Founders the investor has already backed. They know the investor’s taste and have a reason to stay on good terms.
• Advisors, lawyers and accountants who work with startups. They see a lot of deals, and some have investor relationships.
• Customers and former colleagues who know the investor. Weaker, but still better than a stranger if the relationship is real.

The person matters more than the title. An intro from someone who barely knows the investor can do more harm than a good cold email, because it uses up a favor and looks like you didn’t do your homework.

How do you find a path to the investor you want?

Start with your target list, then look for the connection behind each name.

• Check mutual connections on LinkedIn. Look at the specific partner, not just the firm.
• Read the investor’s portfolio. Any founder there you know, or know someone close to, is a possible path.
• Look at who co-invested with them. Investors refer deals to each other, as the Jang and Kaplan data shows.
• Ask your own investors and advisors who they know. Send them your short list and ask who they’d be comfortable introducing you to.

Note the warmest path next to each investor on your list. If you haven’t built that list yet, our report on investor outreach step by step shows how to build and tier it.

How do you ask for a warm introduction?

Make it easy to say yes, and easy to say no.

First, ask the connector if they know the investor well enough and feel comfortable making the intro. Don’t name ten investors at once. Pick the one or two where they have a real relationship.

Then send a short forwardable email. Expect the connector to check with the investor before passing it on. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures described this etiquette back in 2009 in The Double Opt-In Introduction: “When introducing two people who don’t know each other, ask each of them to opt-in to the introduction before making it.”

Here’s a forwardable email you can adapt. Keep it to five or six lines.

Subject: Intro to {Company}, raising a {stage} round

Body: Hi {Connector}, thanks again for offering to help. Below is a short note you can forward to {Investor} if you’re comfortable.

{Company} helps {customer} do {job}. We’ve {one proof point, such as revenue, growth or a key customer}. We’re raising {amount} for our {seed, Series A or Series B} round, and {Investor} came to mind because of their investment in {portfolio company}. Our deck is here: {one link}.

Happy to answer anything first. Thank you.

A few rules that keep the connector on your side:

• Write it so they don’t have to edit it. They should be able to forward it as it is.
• Give one clear reason this investor fits. A recent deal of theirs in your space works best.
• Link your deck, don’t attach it.
• Follow up once if you hear nothing. Then let it go.
• Thank the connector and tell them what happened, whether the investor met you or not. People who hear back are more likely to help again.

What if you have no network at all?

Plenty of first-time founders start here. It isn’t a dead end. You can build warmth before you ask for anything.

Follow up with investors you’ve met in person. A study by Howell and Nanda, summarized by the Harvard Kennedy School, used 964 participants in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition from 2000 to 2015. Each additional VC judge a male founder was exposed to increased his likelihood of starting a VC-backed company by 25%. Male founders were 81% more likely than female founders to reach out to VC judges after the competition, and VCs were equally likely to respond to both. The lesson works for anyone: when you meet an investor at an event, send the follow-up.

Go where investors look for deals. The firm in the Jang and Kaplan study found 58% of its deals itself, through accelerators, incubators, conferences and startup events. Being in those rooms gives you a path in.

Let investors get to know you first. The founders behind 8fundraising reported that in one week of messaging investors on LinkedIn, 87 of 287 wrote back, which is 30.3%. Every message went to someone already in their network who had been reading their posts for weeks, and over four weeks they counted 361 replies from 1,335 investors messaged. That’s one team’s own account of its own campaign, not a study, but it suggests regular posting can turn cold contacts into warmer ones.

Use any real shared tie in a cold message. In the large cold email experiment by Gornall and Strebulaev, the interested reply rate was 8.87% when the investor and founder had gone to the same school, against 4.12% when they hadn’t. Even a small real connection is worth one line.

Send a good cold email anyway. The same study got a 4.3% interested reply rate from cold pitches to VCs and angels. Keep it short and send it to investors who fit. See our investor outreach benchmarks for what published studies show by channel.

What mistakes burn a warm introduction?

• Asking someone who barely knows the investor. If the investor hardly knows the connector, the intro carries little weight.
• Sending a long, unforwardable email. If the connector has to rewrite it, it often doesn’t get sent.
• Asking for intros to investors who don’t fit. Fred Wilson wrote that he and his friends get intros they don’t want to follow up on, and that he should keep track of who gives him bad ones. Wrong stage or sector is the fastest way onto that list.
• Going quiet afterward. The connector put their name on you. Keep them posted.
• Waiting for warm intros alone. Run well researched cold outreach alongside them. Our report on how many investors to contact shows why the numbers add up quickly.

How does Investor Links help when you don’t have a warm intro?

We don’t replace an intro from a founder the investor has backed. If you have one, use it. We cover the investors you can’t reach that way.

We build investor lists filtered by ticket size and past deals in your space, verified in Apollo, and run personalized LinkedIn and email campaigns on HeyReach and Instantly. Warm replies are handed to you for the meeting, and you get weekly numbers on opens, responses and meetings. We work with AI founders raising pre-seed, seed, Series A or Series B rounds, and on real estate developer fundraising, where we cover the property side in investor outreach for real estate developers. For AI startups specifically, see how to raise money for an AI startup.

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