THIS WEEK’S BRIEF • 5 MIN READ
Warm intros to investors convert at 58%+, cold email sits at 1–5%
An investor who's watched your company grow for a year has made up their mind before the pitch meeting
A quick search in Goodword will surface investors you already know and haven't talked to in months
“I feel like I’ve been on this journey with you.”
That's what our lead investor said when we finally started raising. She committed almost immediately and the reason had nothing to do with the deck.
For a full year before raising, we sent quarterly updates to around 40 investors we'd met along the way. Typically a few key metrics, the milestones that got hit, one small ask, but never any pitch attached.
By the time we asked for money, our lead had already watched the whole arc unfold. From the early idea to market validation and working prototype, they had seen us say we’d do something, then go do it.
The real raise happened across twelve months of updates, long before anyone talked terms.
Investors fund lines, not dots
Ask any VC and they'll tell you how the decision actually gets made: a single great meeting is a dot.
Dots are hard to fund, because a dot could be a fluke, like a founder who interviews well or one good month dressed up as a trend.
What gets funded is a line, proof that January's numbers became better numbers in April, and better ones again in July.
Your next investor is already in your network, and the way you close them is by drawing that line for them, starting long before you need the money.
Warm paths into a fund convert at 58% or better, while cold email converts somewhere between 1 and 5%.
Somewhere in your first-degree connections are investors who already know you and haven't heard from you in months. A quarterly update takes twenty minutes to write and does the pitch meeting's job in advance.
And even better? Show up in person to an event they’re hosting. It’s hard to beat face-to-face when it comes to building a relationship.
Context gives them something to work with
When someone hears how you describe what you’re working on, who it’s for, and how it’s starting to take shape, that’s enough for them to form their own understanding. From there, the connection is easier to make.
Telling someone what you’re working on creates a "context cue."
Whether that cue fires the right connection in their memory depends on how richly encoded that connection is in a similar context.
That’s why if a connection does make sense, it tends to come through faster and is usually higher quality.
An intro you’d never think to ask for
We wanted a meeting with one particular fund. Our first attempt got an automated reply pointing us to a web form - the fundraising equivalent of a dial tone.
But then, something magical happened. The GP reached out. She had heard a good word from one of her LPs. An LP who just happened to be a former colleague, mentor, and angel investor.
The dots got connected. The check got written.
The strongest path to an investor is almost never the person you'd guess.
Your closest contact might barely know the VC, while someone you haven't spoken to since 2023 went to their wedding.
A five-year study of 20 million LinkedIn users found that weak ties (acquaintances with around 10 mutual connections) opened more doors to new jobs than close contacts did.
This is because your inner circle mostly knows the same people you do, while acquaintances are the ones holding the doors you've never seen.
Impossible to fumble intros
Warm intros usually die from friction created on the introducer's side, and that part is fully in your control.
Once you find the right link to a contact, don't hand them homework, write the intro email yourself:
One line on who you are.
One line on why this specific fund makes sense, based on their thesis.
One clear ask.
Your contact forwards it, adds a sentence of endorsement, done. The whole favor takes them ninety seconds.
And if the intro goes nowhere, don't read too much into it. VCs miss emails all the time - a second intro from someone else a few weeks later has a good chance of getting a reply the same day.
Build your 40
Our raise came from a list of about 40 investors we kept warm for a year.
That list is the whole machine, and building your version of it takes fifteen minutes.
Search your network in Goodword and it'll pull up every investor you already know.
Add the ones from demo days, the angels from your last round, the VC your co-founder knows from a past life - basically anyone who's ever said 'keep me posted' goes into your target investor group.
A pass today goes on the list too. Funds that pass on a seed round lead Series A all the time, but only for founders they've kept on watching.
Whether it ends up being 40 or not doesn’t matter, the list grows every time you take a meeting that ends without a check, which in fundraising is nearly all of them.
For the funds you want but don't know yet, our Claude, Gemini, and Codex integrations let you ask your network directly. Query who knows fund X and you might learn a founder you know raised from them two years ago, and can make the intro.
Then block thirty minutes at the start of each quarter to send your update to everyone on it.
The edge in our story wasn’t any single email, we just never skipped sending one.
Put your network to work
A list of 40 investors only works if it stays warm, and staying warm is where founders slip - names go stale, roles change, investors move funds.
Goodword helps you:
Build your 40 from the investor relationships already in your network
Catch the moments that matter, like a fund raising a new vehicle or a Principal changing firms
Keep your quarterly cadence alive so nobody on the list goes cold
We signed our lead within weeks. You can close yours too.
— Team Goodword