How we got 100+ warm intros for our pre-seed round. Recently shared a post about on our fundraising experience. Number 1 thing people keep asking is how we got intros to investors. The real answer is very unsexy and not what most people want to hear. The hack - My co-founder and I spent 4-5 years putting ourselves in a position to build this company and get the intros that allowed us to fundraise. No shortcuts. We worked really hard in startups, earned the respect of those we worked with, built relationships, helped as many people as we could, etc. It's actually quite easy to do this in the micro, but it's macro hard because you have to spend years doing it. This is achievable even if you don't come from pedigree / privilege For context: - I grew up in poor, mostly rural, working class Ohio. - My parents have collectively never made more than $50k a year in income. (50k would have been a good year tbh). - I went to an objectively bad school. (so bad that an angel investor I met kindly told me I should remove it from my LinkedIn profile once and for all lol) - "Your school is so off the radar that it's not even good enough to be non-target for us." - an investment banker I once interviewed with - My parents never want to college. - When I got started, I did not know in tech, venture capital, finance, etc. - Hell, I only learned what software engineering was when I was 19 years old. - All of that to say, I didn't start out with great credentials, pedigree, a great network of investors who wanted to give me money, people that wanted to work with me, etc. Silicon Valley (and really most industries) is a highly networked place. It's really damn hard to succeed and get anything done if you're not part of some network and have some form of credibility. The world runs on it. People are constantly judging you based on this. A founder who went to Stanford, worked at Stripe or Ramp, and is mutuals with a bunch of the same people is easily going to get investor meetings. That's just the way the world works. However, Silicon Valley, unlike many industries, is willing to give unproven people more of a chance than almost any industry in the world. You have to get your first shot, your first big breakthrough. Then prove you belong. Then you work your way up from there. So if you have no network, no pedigree from your school, previous roles, etc. - you have to bootstrap it. The best paths I've seen for bootstrapping your credibility as a founder are: 1. Go work at startups. Join early. Join at growth-stage. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Just hustle until someone gives a shot and then make sure they don't regret it. Rinse and repeat and wake up in a few years and you'll be surprised at how far you've come. This is more or less what I did. 2. Get one super-connector to believe in you. I've seen many founders and people from relative obscurity take off because someone who was respected and well connected, met them, believed in them, and then supported them. Naval, Elad Gil, and many other angels have done this. @julianweisser has done this for many people. @delk is another. You'd be surprised how many people might help you. If you and/or what you're building is promising and you can demonstrate that, you just need to grind till you get that first believer. 3. Publish your work online. Have seen several people without pedigree just build publicly and document their journey. Doesn't matter if you have no audience. All it takes is one person to notice / respect your work, for doors to start opening. 4. Join @ycombinator , @beondeck, or some other network. You'll meet a bunch of great people and doors will open. YC takes a lot of pedigreed people but they've also bet on outsiders. I'm sure there are other ways, but these are the paths I've seen work most commonly. --- None of this works if you're not good once you get your shot. All of this requires you to carve your own path out to some degree. I decided I wanted to become an entrepreneur when I was 16 years old with no clue how to do that and few to no role models or connections on how to achieve it. I worked 80 hours a week in grocery stores + full-time school at the time. I did not look like someone that was going to be a founder. It took years of grinding from that point to getting to the point where someone would introduce me to any investor. If you're willing to play a long, multi-year / multi-decade game. You will have an advantage over the people that only play games with rewards today. The work begins early and compounds for a long time. Best of luck. And DMs are open if I can be helpful / supportive. A lot of folks helped me.

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