How Warm Intros Create Magnetic Luck

Early-stage companies can’t spend 18 months exploring new partnerships. The runway simply isn’t there.

But you have assets others don’t:

• Enthusiastic investors on your board (if venture-backed)

• A small, committed team

• A new and powerful way to solve a problem

Enthusiasm, commitment, and novelty.

Partnerships for Early-Stage Companies

For early-stage companies, partnerships is a game of quickly finding people who can match your enthusiasm and level of commitment about the problem you’re solving and how you’re solving it.

Very often, those people will be other investors.

This group is most likely to immediately grasp your strengths and have the broader market awareness to judge how you match up versus your up-and-coming peers.

Eventually, you can move into “startup programs” and methodically selling across portfolios. But before that, you simply have to break through.

How? Warm intros.

Warm Intro Types

Here, I’m assuming that you’ve done some research and have a general idea of whether your ICP lives in someone else’s portfolio.

An ideal intro will have the following components:

• Very warm relationship

• Targeted to your ICP

• Minimal distance between you and your buyer

Here is a short list of the kinds of investor intro dynamics that I’ve seen have real power. How effective each is will be influenced by what’s being sold and whether a company’s CEO/CTO is directly involved.

Current Investor —> Portfolio CXO

• A board member makes a C-level intro to a company in their portfolio that meets your simple criteria.

Current Investor —> ICP Investor

• A board member makes a partner-level intro to a target firm that invests in companies that meet your criteria.

Investor-to-Be —> ICP CXO or Their Investor

• An investor you’re intro’d to will follow-up to ask for an education session, bring their entire team to learn about what you offer, and enlist their team in generating leads/warm intros for you.

Current Investor —> Network CXO

• A board member makes an intro to a C-level intro to a company they have a strong relationship with and meets your criteria.

Current Investor VP, Functional Area —> ICP Functional Area Lead

• A VP with one of your investors who specializes in your broad vertical (e.g. talent, finance, GTM) makes an intro to a buyer at your ICP.

What This Creates

As you go, you’ll find that these relationships create a set of investor and customer advocates and in some cases champions, which will set a fly wheel in motion.

And some unusual things will start to happen.

For example, you’ll figure out that you’re only in a conversation because your investor intro’d you to a company who became a customer and then that company intro’d you to another investor who then intro’d you to an advisor who intro’d you to a VC you hadn’t even heard of but who had to talk to you because they keep hearing about you in the market.

In other words, your persistent, targeted efforts will create magnetic luck.

That’s the power of the warm intro.