Alternative to Warm Introductions

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Alternative to Warm Introductions
Read time 1.9 minutes.

We all know that everyone wants warm introductions. We hear this everywhere, but what happens if you can’t get them?

We’ve talked in the past about how to get a warm introduction, but if you genuinely have no network, what are the alternatives?

Funnily enough, the best alternative is the complete opposite. It’s not cold emails but allowing investors to find your company organically. When an investor comes across a company in their day-to-day life and reaches out to invest, this creates a social imbalance that is highly favourable to the founder. It’s the exact opposite of the horrible waiting game you play when sending cold emails.

So how can we make investors find us?

1. Customer testimonials - Many great startups like BeeHiiv leveraged social media in the early days to try and create FOMO around their company. BeeHiiv encourages creators (like me) to share our stats and talk about our experience on BeeHiiv. The hundreds of VCs following me on Twitter and the thousands reading this email have just got an unsolicited customer testimonial for BeeHiiv. Takeaway: encourage your customers to share testimonials.

2. Industry experts - When I was raising for my first company, many of our VC leads came from industry experts. We were building complex hardware, so we reached out for opinions from numerous academics, founders with complimentary businesses and other experts. These people, in their regular course of business, would mention us to investors who would then reach out to invest. Takeaway: Build industry relationships with non-investors.

3. Founder Media - If you, as the founder, have a podcast, speak at a conference or are active on social media, you are creating content that VCs might watch on their own, which will introduce them to you and your company. This works great because their first introduction to you is as an expert, not a founder. Takeaway: Strategically publish media portraying you as an expert.

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Your continued support means a tremendous amount to me. Each person subscribed to this newsletter is trying to improve themselves and their business every day. Always remember that the best goal in life is to make sure every day is better than the last. Keep putting in the work, find the right mentors/advisors, and you will see the results!

Onwards and Upwards,

Liam Gill

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