Warm Introduction

An opportunity introduced by someone who knows both the investor and the founder, rather than a cold approach.

Example

An operator you worked with emails to say the founder was the best engineer they ever managed.

Important

A warm introduction is only as informative as the reason behind it. Ask whether the introducer has money in, or is passing on something they declined.

Related terms

• Proprietary Deal Flow — Opportunities an investor sees because of who they know or what they have done, rather than because the opportunity was sent to a list.
• Deal Flow — The stream of investment opportunities that reach an investor, across every channel they arrive through.

Lessons that explain it

• In private markets, who you know decides what you see — Private companies are not listed anywhere. Networks determine the deals an investor hears about, the quality of diligence they can do and whether founders choose them. (9 min)
• Founders send the best deals to investors who treated them well — Founders are the most valuable part of an investor's network. Responding quickly, saying no clearly, being useful without being asked for credit and behaving well when things go wrong earns their referrals. (9 min)
• A network is kept alive by small, useful contact, not by volume — Maintaining an investment network means a simple system: knowing who matters, staying in touch with a light rhythm, giving before asking and reviewing which relationships actually produce value. (9 min)
• The best opportunities are rarely the ones being shown to everyone — Deal flow is not one thing. It arrives through channels with very different quality, and the channel an opportunity came through tells you something before you have read a word of it. (10 min)
• Why what comes to you is a biased sample — The opportunities that push hardest for your attention are drawn from a worse pool than the ones that do not need to push, and urgency is the tell. (9 min)
• Being findable and useful beats hunting — Proprietary deal flow comes from relationships and reputation built before you need them. Writing publicly, helping operators and being easy to reach compound over years in a way that outreach campaigns do not. (11 min)

All 578 terms in the Investing glossary