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The Warm Intro, Part II: Everything You're Still Doing Wrong (And How to Fix It)

Updated: Mar 30

A follow-up to The Art of the Warm Intro by Angel Gambino


A cold email to an investor converts at under 5%. A warm intro? Data from 1,000+ founders shows north of 50%. That's not a marginal improvement. That's a different sport entirely. And yet most founders are still playing the wrong one.


I wrote about the art of the warm intro a while back. Some of you read it. Some of you saved it. And based on my inbox, approximately one of you applied it.


So here we are again. Part II. The sequel nobody asked for but everyone apparently needs. Think of this as the director's cut. Same message, more blood.


Let me be clear about something before we start: a warm intro isn't a life hack. It's not a growth hack. It's not a hack at all. It's basic human respect packaged as a fundraising strategy. The fact that I have to write a Part II about this tells you everything you need to know about the state of founder-investor relations in 2026.


The Cold Email Is Not "Basically the Same Thing"


I need to say this because someone on Twitter will: no, a cold email with the subject line "Mutual friend suggested I reach out" when there is no mutual friend is not a warm intro. That's fraud with a smiley face.


You already saw the numbers above. Real conversion benchmarks from 2025 confirm what anyone who's been on both sides of a deal table already knows: warm intros aren't slightly better. They're an order of magnitude better.


If you're still leading with cold emails as your primary strategy, you're not being scrappy. You're being lazy about the hard part. I do 1:1 calls on Hubble (shoutout to Kevin Jurovich for building it) where founders can ask me anything, and the number one question I get, still, in 2026, is some version of "how do I get in front of investors?" The answer is almost never a better cold email. It's a better network. It's also why we built the Angel Club WhatsApp community, where founders and funders help each other build the warm relationships that actually lead to intros. To join, send your LinkedIn profile, email, and what you plan to contribute to the community. This isn't a lurker's paradise. We want people who show up for others, not just people who want something.


The Double Opt-In: Non-Negotiable


Fred Wilson wrote about this back in 2009 on AVC and it remains the single most ignored piece of advice in venture. The double opt-in introduction means: before you connect two people, you ask both parties if they want to be connected.


Revolutionary concept, I know.


Here's what I see instead: founders who get a "sure, I'll intro you" from someone at a cocktail party and then CC that person into a 47-paragraph email the next morning without warning. The connector looks ambushed. The investor feels trapped. Everyone's uncomfortable. It's a Jeffersonian dinner where nobody wanted to come.


The fix is embarrassingly simple. You ask the connector: "Would you be comfortable making an intro to [investor]? Here's a short blurb you can forward." Then the connector checks with the investor: "Hey, I have a founder I think you'd find interesting. Mind if I make an intro?" Both say yes. Then, and only then, does the email happen.


Is it slower? Yes. Does it work better? Every single time. Because both parties walk in having already said yes to the conversation.


Write a Forwardable Email or Write Nothing at All


This is the part where most founders completely fall apart, and I say this with love and also with the exhaustion of someone who has forwarded tens of thousands of intro emails in her career.


Your connector is doing you a favor. An enormous, unpaid, goodwill-spending favor. The least you can do is make their job easy. Alex Iskold's breakdown on forwardable emails is still the gold standard. Connie Deng's template is equally sharp.


Here's the formula. It's not complicated:


The blurb is under 250 words. If your forwardable email is longer than that, you've written a pitch deck in paragraph form and nobody asked for that.


It answers five questions: What do you do? Why does it matter? What's your traction? Who are you and why are you the team that wins? What are you looking for? And here's the bonus that separates good from great: tell them why this investor specifically should care. Reference their thesis, a portfolio company that's adjacent, a trend they've written about. The more specific you are about why this is a fit for them personally or for their fund, the more likely that email gets forwarded and the meeting gets booked.


It's written so your connector can literally press forward. No editing. No context-adding. No "let me clean this up before I send it." If your connector has to rewrite your email, you've failed the assignment.


It does not include tracking links. Mark Suster has been saying this for years. Investors notice. It's creepy. Stop it.


This is an email I got this week. Want to see the difference? Here's what I get in my inbox every week versus what actually gets forwarded.


Before (what founders send me):


Hi Angel, hope you're well! Please can you introduce me to [investor name]. I've attached our deck. Also here's a link to our demo [tracking link]. We'd be grateful for intros to anyone in your network. Let me know if you need anything else![Attached: 22-page pitch deck]


I can't forward that. I won't forward that. Nobody will. Here's what I can forward:


After (what actually works):


Hi Angel, thank you for the feedback last week. We're already implementing the changes we discussed. 


I would be grateful for an introduction to [investor name] and would appreciate you sharing the forwardable invitation below with a request for a 20-minute call.


[Investor name], I'm [Founder Name], CEO of [Company with url], a hiring platform that uses skills-based matching to reduce time-to-hire by 40%. We have 35 paying customers, $18K MRR, and 3x'd revenue last quarter. Previously I led recruiting product at [known company]. We're raising a $2.5M seed to expand into mid-market. Given your investments in [portfolio company] and [portfolio company] and your thesis on the future of work, I think there's a strong alignment. We'd love 20 minutes to share what we're seeing in the data and hear what you're seeing across your portfolio and the market.


Notice the structure. The first paragraph is the note to me, your connector which I may or may not include. The second paragraph is the forwardable blurb, written directly to the investor. It's self-contained. It includes the company URL so the investor can look you up before responding. It references their specific thesis and portfolio companies so they know you did your homework. It offers a "give" of data insights, signals coachability with the ask, and it ends with a clear, low-commitment ask: 20 minutes.


No tracking links. No 22-page deck. No "we'd be grateful for intros to anyone in your network." I can simply hit forward, write my own one-to-two sentence blurb about why I think it's worth their time, and send. That's the whole point. Every interaction each of us has with one another is an opportunity to earn trust. 


The Research Problem (Still)


I said it in Part I and I'll say it again because it's still the number one thing that makes investors want to throw their phones into the ocean: do your research.


When a founder asks me for a warm intro to an investor who exclusively does Series B healthcare and they're a pre-revenue consumer app, that's not ambitious. That's disrespectful. Of everyone's time. Mine, the investor's, and frankly yours because you just burned a warm connection for nothing.


Before you ask anyone for an intro, you should know: What stage does this investor actually deploy at? What's their thesis? Have they invested in your space? Who in their portfolio might be a competitor? Who on your cap table, advisory board, or LinkedIn knows them?


I recently wrote about how two questions changed everything during one of our Angel Club Open Office sessions. A founder showed up with a vague target list and in fifteen minutes, we reshaped her entire outreach strategy. Not by adding more names, but by subtracting the ones where she had no business asking for a meeting. Precision over volume. Every time.


The Holloway Guide to Raising Venture Capital remains one of the best free resources on this. Use it.


The Intro Path: Your Most Valuable Column in Any Spreadsheet


If you've seen how I build investor target lists (and at this point, many of you have) you know I always include an "Intro Path / Warm Connection" column. It's there for a reason. It's arguably the most important column on the entire sheet.


Every investor on your list should have an answer to: "Who do I know who knows this person, and would they vouch for me?"


If the answer is nobody, that investor goes to the bottom of the list. Not because they don't matter, but because you haven't earned the right to their attention yet. Go find the path first. Angels Partners has a solid tactical breakdown of five ways to build those paths when you're starting from zero.


This is also why the curated list we provide in Ready to Raise isn't just a spreadsheet of names. It's 100 investors aligned with your sector and stage, with research on what resonates most with each one: their thesis, their recent bets, what they care about, and how to position your story for that specific person. Because "spray and pray" isn't an intro strategy. It's a cry for help.


Timing Is Not a Detail


I'm going to tell you something that will save you months of frustration: the best time to build relationships with investors is when you are not raising.


Read that again.


The worst warm intro in the world is the one that comes with a deck attached and a "we're raising" in the first sentence. The best one is the one that came from a relationship that was built six months ago at a dinner, a conference, a community event, when nobody was selling anything. This is why I host investor lunches, Jeffersonian dinners, and unique networking events with founders I invest in and advise well in advance of a raise, and why programs like Ready to Raise exist. The relationship-building starts long before the ask.


Anthony Rose's SeedLegals 2026 VC insights back this up. Fundraising is a relationship business. If you're only building relationships when you need money, you've already lost.


The Pre-Ask: Why You Should Be Engaging Before You Ever Ask for Anything


Here's what almost nobody does, and it's the easiest competitive advantage in fundraising: engage with the investor you want to meet on social media before you ever ask for an intro.


I'm not talking about stalking. I'm talking about being a thoughtful, visible human in their world. When an investor posts on LinkedIn about a thesis they're excited about, leave a comment that shows you actually read it. Not "great post!" but something with substance, a data point from your own experience, a respectful counterpoint, a question that shows you're thinking deeply about the same problem. When they share a portfolio win, congratulate them and mean it. When they publish an article or appear on a podcast, engage with it publicly.


Why does this work? Because when your name eventually lands in their inbox via a warm intro, you're not a stranger. You're that person who left the sharp comment on their Series A announcement. You're the founder who shared their blog post and added a thoughtful take. You've already built familiarity, and familiarity is the precursor to trust. Research shows that 78% of seed-stage investors vet founders on LinkedIn before accepting a pitch meeting. What they find there matters.


This is a long game play. Start three to six months before you plan to raise. Follow the investors on your target list. Engage authentically. Share your own "building in public" updates so they can see your traction unfolding in real time. Mercury's fundraising guide recommends starting an investor newsletter before you fundraise, so that when you do raise, VCs are already primed with context on your progress. That's smart.


SeedLegals' guide to finding investors reinforces this: the spray-and-pray approach of mass emailing investors is dead. Customization is everything, and even small personal touches, like referencing an investor's recent deal or their published thesis, dramatically improve your odds. Dori Stein, who's raised over £50M, puts it simply: if a VC has 20 portfolio companies and you approach every one of those founders, you'll almost certainly get at least one introduction. But the founders who get the best intros are the ones who've already shown up in that investor's world.


There are many platforms and tools out there to help you do this systematically. Mercury's Investor Connect matches startups with investors based on structured data and has facilitated over 1,500 introductions between VCs and founders. SeedLegals gives you the legal and strategic framework to approach your raise with credibility. They have loads of events and content on their blog about how to engage investors. You can schedule a call with Max at SeedLegals to explore how their tools fit your fundraising strategy, or get set up with Mercury through our partner page where you'll get actual humans to help you with founder-first banking that puts you in the room with the right investors.*


The point is: the warm intro doesn't start when you send the email. It starts the first time an investor sees your name and thinks, "that person is interesting." Your job is to create that moment long before you need anything from them.


The Warmest Intro You're Not Thinking About


Everyone obsesses over getting intros from advisors, mutual friends, other investors. And those are fine. But you know what's better than all of them? A warm intro from a founder that investor already backed. And made money from.


Think about it. When a VC gets an email from a portfolio founder who returned 10x saying "you need to meet this person," that's not a warm intro. That's a hot intro. That email gets opened in under sixty seconds and the meeting gets booked the same day. There is no higher-signal referral in venture than a founder who already proved that investor's thesis right.


Which means the most strategically valuable relationships you can build right now aren't with investors at all. They're with founders who are a couple of steps ahead of you. Who've already raised, already have board seats filled, already have VCs who trust their judgment. Those founders can become your champions. And when the time comes, their word carries more weight than any cold deck, any clever subject line, any LinkedIn connection request you've ever sent.


So go to the events. Join the communities. Show up for other founders before you need anything. Be helpful, be genuine, be the person they think of when an investor asks "who else should I be looking at?" This is the long game. It's the game that actually works.


This is also why we built Pitch Slam, where founders pitch live to me, Anthony Rose, and a rotating panel of active investors. It's not just practice. It's a room full of people getting to know you, watching you think on your feet, seeing how you handle tough questions. Some of them are investors. Some are founders two steps ahead of you who might become exactly the champion I just described. Either way, you're building the relationships that turn into warm intros six months from now.


Who Does This Well


A few people whose work on this topic I'd point you toward:


The Holloway Guide: comprehensive, free, and updated. If you read one thing on writing investor emails, make it this.


Harry Alford's intro email template: simple, clean, and battle-tested.


Raimonds Kulbergs' VC intro template: the step-by-step for people who need step-by-steps.


Trust Finta's guide to asking for warm intros: particularly good for first-time founders who don't know what they don't know.


Nathan Beckord's advanced fundraising tactics: for when you've graduated past the basics.


The Part Nobody Talks About: Being Worth Introducing


Here's the uncomfortable truth that no amount of email templates will fix: the warm intro only works if people actually want to introduce you.


That means your reputation matters. How you treat people when there's nothing in it for you matters. Whether you follow up, say thank you, close the loop, and tell your connector what happened. That matters. Because the person who introduced you to that investor? They're going to be asked about you. And if you ghosted the last three people they connected you with, guess how enthusiastic they'll be about intro number four.


Your network is not a resource to be extracted. It's a garden. You either tend it or you watch it die. And no amount of clever subject lines will resurrect a reputation you neglected.


I talk about this a lot in my work on somatic speaking. The idea that authentic connection isn't just a nice-to-have in fundraising, it's the whole game. Investors are pattern-matching for trust before they're pattern-matching for TAM. If your head, heart, and gut aren't aligned when you're asking for an intro, people feel it. They may not be able to articulate why they didn't forward your email, but their body already decided for them.


The Bottom Line


Build relationships before you need them. Research before you ask. Write emails that respect people's time. Use the double opt-in like it's a commandment. Make the forwardable email actually forwardable. Track your intro paths like your raise depends on it. Because it does.


Cold emails still have their place. Sometimes it's the only door available, and you should knock on it. But if cold outreach is your entire strategy, you're playing defense. The real hustle is investing in people before you ever need something from them. If you want investors to invest in you, invest in them first. Invest in the community first. Show up, add value, build trust. That's not soft. That's the hardest work in fundraising, and it's the only kind that compounds.


Now I want to hear from you: what's the best warm intro you've ever received, and what made it work? Or, if you're on the other side, what's the worst intro request that ever hit your inbox? Drop it in the comments. I'll be reading every one.


If you're serious about building the relationships that actually get you funded, book a 1:1 call with me on Hubble. I'll help you with relationship building, growth strategy, and fundraising. No fluff, no templates, just direct feedback on your specific situation.


This is a follow-up to The Art of the Warm Intro. If you found it useful, share it with a founder who needs it. If you want more where this came from, subscribe to my newsletter or check out the Angel Club blog where we unpack this stuff regularly. Join the Angel Club WhatsApp community to build warm relationships with founders and funders who actually show up for each other. And if you're a pre-seed, seed, or Series A founder who wants hands-on help with your raise, look at Ready to Raise and Pitch Slam. Reading articles is great, but pitching live to real investors and having someone tell you your forwardable email is terrible is better.


If you want to go deeper on authentic connection and what I call somatic speaking, check out The Key to Having Meaningful Conversations. And if your team or event needs a speaker on this topic, book me here.


* Mercury and SeedLegals are partners of Angel Club, a startup community and angel syndicate I founded to help angel investors and founders build stronger relationships and deliver outcomes that make the world healthier and happier.


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© Angel Gambino, 2025

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