The Surprising Way Your Professional Network Might Be Making It Harder to Fundraise
By: Aaron Dinin
Tags: Fundraising, Startup, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Networking

Some data on warm intros vs. cold emails

When I look back on my years of fundraising, I remember, at various points, thinking warm introductions to the investors I wanted to meet never seemed to get me any farther than cold emailing them. If anything, the warm intros seemed less effective than cold emails.

Unfortunately, I never bothered to look closely at the data. Instead, I mindlessly accepted the general wisdom that “warm intros are always better.” As a result, even though I wouldn’t have a problem sending cold emails to investors when I couldn’t find a mutual connection, I always prioritized warm intros whenever they were an option.

My fundraising days are behind me (woohoo!); however, I’ve recently had to dust off my networking skills for a different but somewhat related reason. I’ve launched a podcast exploring the history of Internet entrepreneurship, and, as part of that work, I’ve been sending lots of cold emails in order to get guests.

While the purpose of emailing investors and emailing podcast guests isn’t identical (FYI — getting podcast guests to respond is much harder!), the processes are nearly identical. Heck, a lot of the successful early Web entrepreneurs are now venture capitals, so, in some cases, I’m literally emailing the same people I used to target for fundraising.

For the first few months of soliciting podcast guests, I followed the same advice I used to religiously adhere to when fundraising. If I had a mutual connection to someone I wanted to speak with, I’d always prioritize a warm intro over a cold email. However, I soon began noticing the same pattern I’d recognized during my fundraising efforts: Warm introduction emails never seemed particularly effective. If anything, warm intros felt less effective.

When I was younger, I ignored my feelings because I assumed “wiser” entrepreneurs with more experience couldn’t have been wrong. In contrast, now that I’m one of those “wiser” entrepreneurs with more experience, I know we’re wrong ALL THE TIME! So rather than just shrug off my sense that warm intros weren’t as effective, this time I decided to review the data. Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

I’ve sent 54 cold emails to potential podcast interviewees and received warm intros for another 14.

Of the 54 cold emails I’ve sent, 37 people responded, and 32 of them either have been interviewed or have agreed to an interview. That’s a 69% response rate and a 59% success rate for cold emails. Hard to argue with those numbers. Every sales team in the world would kill for those kinds of conversion rates.

In contrast, of the 14 warm intros I’ve received, only four people have responded. That’s a 28.5% response rate. To be fair, all four responders have agreed to do interviews, so it’s a 100% success rate on responses. But still, the overall success rate — 4 of 14, or 28.5% — is exactly 50% lower with warm intros than what I’m getting through cold emails. That’s not just worse. That’s astoundingly worse.

I suppose I should acknowledge that my sample size here isn’t huge, so maybe that’s messing with the data. Still, it’s hard to look at those numbers and think warm intros are more effective than cold emails. And this has me questioning the standard advice that warm intros in fundraising are always the best strategy.