It's Better To Go Indirect

Want To Meet Janet? Befriend Her Crew.

June 12, 2023

Something that I nave observed about networking up the status latter is that it’s almost always more effective to go indirect to meet the people you want to meet. Are you a founder wanting to meet investors? Build up your founder network. Are you an investor who wants to build up your founder network? Meet more investors. The reason for this is the way trust flows through networks. Here’s an example from a founder point of view.

Investors are used to getting cold pitches all day from founders. They are immune to it and have a reply cued up to every cold email. Founders, on the other hand, generally spend most of their time running their business and don’t meet with other founders all the time. It’s not already part of their routine to field founder inbound. Due to this, when a less experienced founder reaches out to them, oftentimes, the more experienced founder will meet with them. The great thing about a this dynamic is that younger founders can reach out to more experienced founders with a cap table full of investors. If the less experienced founder makes a good impression, the experienced founder may be open to making intros to investors in their network. Warm intros go much farther in this industry when compared to cold outreach. By winning over a single founder, you may get more access to investors than emailing one hundred investors.

The next time you want to connect with an investor, see if you are lightly connected to one of their portfolio founders, reach out, get on a call, and make a good impression. This could be a much more effective to expand your investor network without wasting too much time doing cold outreach. Note, on Seedscout, you can request intros to founders and investors for this very reason. A founder two steps ahead of you could be worth far more than an investor you want to talk to. Good look out there and remember, sometimes it’s best to go indirect to get what you want.

Thanks for reading!