Fundraising·October 30, 2026

How to Get a Warm Intro to an Investor (Using Events)

How founders get warm intros to investors without a network — mapping second-degree connections, using events, and the forwardable email that gets sent.

Most investors delete cold emails. They answer warm intros within a day. That gap is the single biggest lever an unknown founder can pull in fundraising — and you don't need a famous mentor or an Ivy network to pull it. This guide covers how to find who can introduce you, how to ask them without making it awkward, and the exact forwardable email that gets sent.

A quick note on the highest-leverage shortcut: startup events are where warm intro paths get created in the first place. If a mutual contact met you at a demo night, the intro request writes itself. If you're starting from zero on the events side, how to network at tech events is the primer, and how to approach investors at startup events covers what to do when the investor is standing in front of you.

What is a warm intro to an investor?

A warm intro is an introduction to an investor made by someone the investor already knows and trusts — a portfolio founder, a colleague, or a peer investor — typically over email, with the founder's materials forwarded with a short endorsement. It differs from a cold outreach in one crucial way: the investor's default posture flips from "why is this in my inbox?" to "someone I trust vouched for this." That shift matters because seed partners see hundreds of decks a year and can only take a handful of meetings, so they triage by provenance. A trusted referral goes to the top of the pile; a cold email goes to the pile that mostly never gets read.

There's a hierarchy of warmth. An intro from a founder the VC backed twice is platinum. An intro from a lawyer or accelerator director who works with them often is gold. An intro from someone they met once at a conference is still worth more than a cold email. Your job isn't to find the perfect connector — it's to find the best connector you can realistically reach this month.

Why do warm intros work when cold emails don't?

Warm intros work because they transfer trust and social cost. The person making the introduction is spending their own reputation on you, which means they've implicitly vetted you. Investors know that nobody makes a bad intro twice — a connector who burns a partner with a weak founder stops being asked. So the intro itself functions as a pre-screen: someone whose judgment the investor respects has already decided you're worth thirty minutes.

Cold emails, by contrast, start with zero information and a strong prior that the sender is spray-and-praying. Most investors' cold inboxes are full of decks from people who found their email on a list. The fix isn't a better subject line — it's changing the channel through which you arrive.

How do you find who can introduce you to an investor?

Start from the investor, not your network. Open the investor's LinkedIn and their portfolio page on the firm's site, then map every portfolio founder and executive as a potential connector. A founder who raised from that fund two years ago knows how to get the partner's attention — and founders love making intros to their investors because it strengthens their own relationship with the fund. Then cross-reference against your own first-degree network: your accelerator cohort, former coworkers, professors, startup-event regulars, your lawyer, your bookkeeper. Anyone who has raised money themselves is a high-value path.

The practical mapping exercise: pick ten target investors, list the two or three people most likely to know each one, and rank by how close each connector is to you personally. Most founders discover they're only one or two handshakes from almost every seed investor in their city — especially in smaller ecosystems like Seattle or New York, where the investor community shows up at the same demo nights and founder dinners you can walk into this month.

How do you ask someone for a warm intro without making it awkward?

You make the ask zero-effort and zero-risk. Send your connector a short message that includes three things: the specific person you'd like an intro to, one sentence on why you and the investor are a fit, and a ready-to-forward blurb so they don't have to write anything. Never make them guess what to say. Double opt-in etiquette matters here: your connector should be able to forward your note in under a minute, and the investor should be able to say no without a conversation.

A script that works:

"Hey [Name] — I'm raising a pre-seed for [startup, one-line]. I noticed [Investor] led [comparable company] and I think [fund] is a strong fit for what we're building. Would you be open to forwarding the note below to [Investor] if you feel comfortable vouching for us? If it's not a fit, no stress at all."

The "if you feel comfortable" clause is doing real work. It gives the connector explicit permission to decline, which paradoxically makes them far more likely to say yes — and it keeps the relationship intact either way. Never push, never follow up on a declined intro request more than once.

What does a forwardable warm intro email include?

The forwardable email is the unit of the warm intro. Write it so the connector can hit forward without editing. It has five parts, and it should fit on one phone screen:

The hook line. One sentence on what you do and the most impressive proof point: "We help dental clinics cut insurance-claim rejections 40%, $180K ARR growing 20% month over month."
The fit. Why this investor specifically — a portfolio company they led, a thesis they've published, a partner's stated interest in your space.
The concrete ask. A specific request: "I'd love 20 minutes to show you the product and share our pipeline data."
One link. A deck link or a 90-second demo video, not an attachment.
Your contact info. A phone number so the investor's chief of staff can schedule instantly.

Keep it under 150 words. The intro email is not where you pitch — it's where you make the meeting inevitable. The pitch happens in the meeting itself; if you haven't nailed that part, start with the pitch deck template founders actually use and treat demo days and pitch competitions as practice reps — the demo day guide covers how those rooms actually work.

How do you meet investors when you don't have any connections?

You build connections in rooms where investors arrive with intent to meet founders: demo days, pitch competitions, investor office hours, and accelerator showcases. These are structurally different from random networking — the investor showed up specifically to look at people like you. Demo days and funding events put you on stage with a timer and forced attention; VC office hours and pitch events give you ten dedicated minutes with an investor who agreed in advance to listen.

The second-degree effect is the real prize. Meet one portfolio founder at a demo night and you now have a legitimate, warm path to their fund — and "we met at [event]" is context that makes an intro request natural rather than random. This is exactly why the events-first approach works: it manufactures the shared context that warm intros require. If your network is thin, the fastest fix is a month of consistent event attendance — start with how to build a founder network from scratch, and work the room using conversation starters that don't feel scripted.

What do you do after the intro lands?

Respond within hours, not days — speed signals that you run hot, which investors read as a proxy for how you'll operate. Thank the connector publicly (cc them on the first reply), propose two concrete meeting windows, and attach nothing until asked. Then follow up like a professional: the same discipline you'd use for any post-event follow-up, which the post-event follow-up guide breaks down in detail.

If the meeting goes well, don't leave momentum to chance: ask directly "what's the best next step with you?" and name the process you want — diligence, a partner meeting, a term sheet conversation. Warm intros open doors; a clear ask walks you through them.

The 30-day warm intro plan

Put it together as a loop: list ten target investors, map connectors to each, book one event-heavy week where you're in rooms with investors and their founders, and send three forwardable intro requests. Every event you attend either creates a new connector or strengthens an existing one — and a city with a dense event calendar like San Francisco lets you compress months of "accidental" relationship-building into a few intentional weeks.

Explore more from 47Hz

If you're building your fundraising and networking muscle, these guides cover the rooms where warm intro paths are actually created.