How to request an intro + Fundraising Fieldnotes - 7.9.21

Understanding 2 types of intros unlocks more powerful intros

Hey - it’s Jason Yeh 🕺🏻

This is my Friday recap of thoughts I’ve had while helping founders solve their fundraising challenges this past week (7.9.21)

If you have any questions, please reply! I try to get to every comment/question I get :)

How do you request a great intro?

It’s difficult to fully describe the importance of introductions within the game of early- stage fundraising to someone who hasn’t been a professional investor. In short, when you’re on the inside and see how the sausage is made, you gain an appreciation for how little hard data investors have to base investment decisions on. Fairly subjective factors like how a VC first discovers an opportunity becomes incredibly influential. Was it a cold, unsolicited email or did a trusted friend share the deal?

While VCs do invest in deals that reach them via cold outreach, the vast majority of investments are made in companies that are shared via warm introduction.

This stark contrast in outcomes makes concentrating on generating introductions to target investors crucial to a strong fundraise. There are many components of introductions in fundraising that I could write an essay on, but here I’ll focus on the importance of understanding 2 types of intros.

The most common advice given to founders about how to ask for introductions is to make it easy for the person making the introduction (“the connector”). Usually this means providing a blurb and/or a forwardable email to send to the target investor. That’s just table stakes though. You can really optimize outcomes when you begin to understand there are 2 types of intros (continue reading…)

On to the Fieldnotes for 7.9.21…

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Fundraising email protip ✅

Jason Yeh @jayyeh

When fundraising, use bullet points in emails Obvious: they're shorter and easier to read for VCs who have short attention spans Less obvious: Bullet points help remove over-selling, emotional words. You get a much more effective "i'm not too concerned if you invest" tone

It’s really helpful to hear the inner narrative of a deck. Good read

Austin Hallock @austinhallock

Here's the pitch deck we used to raise a $1m pre-seed for @BuildWithSpore I looked for other *recent* examples before starting, and didn't find many. I found zero with explanation around each slide. So hopefully this is helpful! Thread with my comments about each slide ⬇️

Till next week. Stay adamant and be chased.

Jason

p.s. Have a have a look - make your pitches this catchy 😂

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