Does Cold Emailing Investors Ever Work?

0:00 Is cold emailing investors dead in 2026?

[Cold open - highlights from the episode.]

0:41 Max Goldberg, Mike Spidaliere, Sam Poon, Cam Owen

Max: What's going on guys, and welcome back to The Funding Table, episode number three. For those of you that are new here, this is a show devoted to all things venture capital, startups, and raising money, with the hope that you avoid some of the costliest mistakes we made on our own journeys. We have a pretty exciting - very controversial - conversation for you today. Before we get into it, quick bios so you know exactly who you're hearing from. I'll go first as the host: my name is Max Goldberg. I'm a two-time exited startup founder, Techstars alum, and former investment banker, and currently the founder and managing partner of GoldCapital Consulting, where we help early-stage startups raise capital. I'll turn it over to my man Mike - welcome back to the table.

Mike: Much appreciated. Mike Spidaliere, multi-time founder. I started a firm called First Time Founder Capital about three years ago, where we work with early-stage founders to help them get to the point where they're both investable and investor-ready.

Max: And that we do. Sam - you're always third in rotation. How's everything going?

Sam: Everything is going great. As you might have heard on a previous episode, my name is Sam, and I sat in the venture capital seat for many years - sourcing and diligence, bringing companies all the way to the investment committee before we actually wrote a check. This was in a global, generalist, early-stage capacity, working with GPs who were among the earliest and largest investors in the Facebooks, Uber, Venmos, Beyond Meats - and one who came out of NASA. Happy to be here.

Max: Love that. And as always, last but not least - Cameron Owen. Welcome back.

Cam: Thanks for having me again. Cam Owen - one-time exited founder, bootstrapped myself, actually. I'm the partner and COO here at GoldCapital. I'm on the front lines talking with founders every single day, and I bring their burning questions about capital raising to the funding table.

Max: And that's a nice segue into today's episode, because a lot of those questions from folks considering working with us come through what? Cold email. This is a show devoted to all things cold email versus warm introductions, and how they fit within the whole raising-money ecosystem. We're all super passionate about this subject. Before Mike gives you the deep dive on the efficacy - or lack of it - of cold email, let's go around: nuttiest cold email you got this week, and how many seconds it took you to delete it.

3:21 Do cold emails to investors actually work?

Cam: The worst cold email I got was a phishing attempt - I'll lead off with that. But most cold emails are pretty much the same thing, whether it's email, LinkedIn DM, Instagram DM: some form of "Hey Cam, I'm building X for Y - and we're not just A, we're B." And then it goes on to have about 16 different em dashes. I'll just say this: if you've got more em dashes in your email than you have users on your platform, you ain't going to be raising capital. Let's just be real here.

Max: Mike - worst cold email you got this week. How long did it last before it was in the trash?

Mike: I'll start with the second question: a split second. I get probably one to six of these every single week: "Hey Mike, I'm X from Y - we love your thesis over at First Time Founder Capital, and because your thesis is such a strong fit, we wanted to put this deal in front of you." I don't invest in companies, so I don't have an investment thesis. They just ran an AI search for everything with "capital" at the end of the name and cold-emailed every single person on the list. Sending me a deal saying my thesis is a perfect fit is a quick way for me to understand you've done zero homework.

Max: Not only that - I got an email from the same guy asking about my apple orchard that I don't have.

Mike: Put "capital" in your company's name and all of a sudden you're an investor.

Max: Sam - I'll broaden your window: this week, or from your seat at the venture fund. Worst cold email you ever got, and how fast was it trashed?

Sam: One I always remember said: "No one questioned why Steve Jobs built Apple - and why would you question what we're building? You should get on a phone with us and really learn what we're building. It's selling quickly. We're scaling like crazy." It gave me no substance about what they were doing. It didn't feel like they were building anything - it felt like marketing at me. I can't work with that, so it went in the trash. What am I supposed to reply - "sounds like you're doing something great, I don't know what it is, but I want to learn more"? I have no background on you. Why would I answer that email?

Mike: And that goes to the core thesis we'll dive into: investors, whether or not they have time to answer and start digging - they won't. They will not email you back with fishing questions. They're not going to figure out what you're building. They're not going to look up the website in your footer. Max, your turn.

Max: Mine's not as exciting, but here's what stands out. When we release these episodes we get an influx of replies to our newsletter, and I think a lot of folks don't register that they're on an email list. This week when we dropped episode two, I got an email from a guy - broken English, a million typos, like he typed it on a Nintendo DS - saying he's looking for debt or equity for his business in Mexico. Nothing about the business. We don't deal with debt products at all - we do early-stage venture. He couldn't even get my name right. And that's the state of the union for a lot of people emailing investors. I'm just glad it came to me, a non-investor - because if that message reached a capital provider, your chance of raising is zero. Here's the lesson: if our inboxes are like this every single day - we don't go hours without cold emails - imagine investors' inboxes, which are a hundred thousand times worse. As a strategy for reaching investors, cold email is not looking good. And let me make our position clear up front: GoldCapital and FTFC work exclusively through warm introductions - a vetted community of investors who know they're receiving deal flow, with masterfully written emails; Mike, I'll hype you up, you're a very good copywriter. So take everything we say with a grain of salt, because we're biased in that direction. But as we go through today: how do deals actually get done? How does money find you as a startup founder? What are the real numbers? Let's say the quiet parts out loud.

9:15 Warm intros vs cold email: what the data says

Max: Mike - this is the biggest funding year in history; we covered that in episodes one and two. But when researchers from Harvard, Yale, Wharton surveyed hundreds of VCs a few years ago about where their deals come from, cold pitches barely registered. Give us the real numbers - what does the state of outreach look like in 2026?

Mike: I have a lot of feelings about this, but I wanted to come with specific statistics, so I did some digging. The HBS report from a couple of years ago surveyed about 900 investors, and about 10% of the deals they looked at came from cold emails. One out of ten - and that's just looked at. The other 90% came from their networks: portfolio companies were one of the biggest pieces of the pie - if a portfolio founder puts a startup in front of the firm, they'll take a serious look, because they already invested in that founder - plus other investors, people in their networks. On average, a firm goes into conversations with about 200 founders a year and invests in four. Four out of 200 screened. That's the average - a16z sees an enormous multiple of that with all their analysts and associates, while the smaller firms and solo GPs have to pick and choose, because it's just them combing the inbox. So where do they start? With the deals their friends send them. With the deals fellow investors send them. Getting into the inbox is hard enough; standing out is the second-biggest issue. And one more: there's a partner at White Star Capital, a global firm, who has famously said he sees about a thousand cold emails a month. That's not average - top-tier is anywhere from 300 to 500-plus a month - but with this guy, you have to get through 999 other cold emails. What are you sending that cuts through that noise?

Cam: An extension on that - maybe you don't have the number, but pure curiosity: only about 10% of the deals they look at come through cold email, but what about once you're actually in the meeting? Does that sense of familiarity from a warm intro keep mattering - in diligence, in getting to the next round?

Mike: Incredible question. I don't have a specific statistic, but think of it this way: when another investor or FTFC sends you a startup, they've already done the digging - what I call the point-five level of diligence. They've built the picture, confirmed it's within your thesis. You're far more likely to already have what you need, versus the email Sam described - good luck even getting a meeting with that. So yes, I'd say a significant percentage more go on to a second conversation or diligence when they're sent by someone warm in the network.

14:21 Should I cold email VCs at all?

Max: That's well said - and I want to get to Sam in a few minutes on what it's like to be the VC in this position, since Cam, Mike, and I have only ever been senders hoping for a reply. But first: there are a lot of folks broadcasting online that cold outreach is a viable strategy to raise capital. Ego aside, our interests aside - Harvard Business School has done the reporting, and nine out of ten deals have some existing connection between fund and founder. Very few deals get funded out of the entire pool, cold or not. So Mike, from a funnel perspective: is it even worth sending any cold emails at all?

Mike: My answer is yes - with a huge caveat. Any founder on X or LinkedIn has seen the pitch: "I spent two years building a list of 10,000 angel investors - pay me $500 and it's yours." You grab that list, BCC everyone, and your inbox floods back: this person doesn't exist; this person is a gardener in Honduras. You're buying complete nonsense. So my big caveat: if you're going to go cold, at least put a little effort into it. Don't be lazy.

Max: And there's something people miss about the laziness - I'll be the first to admit I've done it in the past with investor updates - BCC-ing everyone. Beyond being a failing strategy, it also cooks your deliverability and ruins your inbox: you get sent to spam for everyone, so it compounds - every lazy blast makes the next one worse. And I have this pulled up because you brought facts: the cold email industry's own report - from the largest cold-email software provider, no names, I don't want to get sued - says only 3.4% of all cold emails even get a reply. Let's be clear how bad that is. A reply ain't a meeting. A meeting isn't a check - far from it. You're many conversions away from anything with a dollar value, and VCs get more cold email than just about any other recipient on earth. It's really bad.

17:38 How do VCs actually source their deals?

Max: Sam - you worked at VU Venture Partners. Monday morning, two decks come in over email. One's from a cold blast - you can tell - and the other is from a founder vouched for by a CEO of an existing portfolio company. Be honest. What actually happens?

Sam: We get a ton of emails, and we have a lot on our plates every day. It depends on the temperament of the investor - I like to not ghost founders - but we only have so much capacity. So I'm reaching out to the founder who came in through the warm funnel. Someone vouching for you is much stronger: it's a founder we know, likely like-minded, fitting the working style we want. The cold email might stay on the shelf for a while - a week, maybe. I'll try to get to it. No promises.

Max: And is that typical? You've always been a kind investor who gives feedback - most don't. Do most VCs just auto-delete when there's no warm introduction attached?

Sam: The venture industry and the startup scene are so small that being nasty about it would reflect poorly on you and your fund - so no, they won't go that far. But they'll probably ignore it. Might delete it - you've got to save space on your storage, right? Unfortunately, that's more than likely what happens.

Max: How does the warm intro change the way you actually read a pitch deck once you have it?

Sam: If it comes from another investor, a family office, or an accelerator, it's already gone through a filter - you know the kinds of companies they work with. Most of the diligence stays the same, but your expectation changes: you're not doing all the heavy lifting; it arrives polished. An email blast reads the opposite way - if everyone's seen the deck, that doesn't read as popular, it reads as not competitive. A warm referral reads as competitive: it's through the first two layers of the filter, and you go in with more confidence. That goes a long way.

Max: Someone should make a warm introduction from Mike to Google Fiber and get him better Wi-Fi down there. For those listening - Mike's been dropping in and out; the editor, a.k.a. me, will do what I can.

Cam: While he reconnects - a question for Sam. I went to school for finance, and I have a lot of friends who are personal financial advisors. They definitely do not invest in startups - they manage people's retirements and pensions - and they get hit up by startups to invest. That's who's on some of these lists. And one thing I noticed: one email had about eight of his colleagues on it too. So what happens at a fund when seven people get the same email? Does that help or hurt?

Sam: Definitely a no-go. I've seen founders LinkedIn-request different people within a fund, and that's okay - you want more shots on goal. But if you're emailing more than a couple of people and they compare notes, it reads as spray-and-pray. People within a fund look at things differently - by sector, by how they invest - and if you're blasting everyone, the read is: you're just going after anybody who'll answer. It's not personalized. You don't know how I invest, my track record, what I've done in the venture scene. Not a great look.

23:25 Does sending more cold emails improve my odds?

Cam: That makes sense. But here's my big question on warm versus cold: can volume truly negate luck? We've covered the reply rates, where cold emails go, how many deals actually come from them. But could you play the volume game and beat the warm side? There are lists out there with 10,000, 15,000 - I've seen way higher - investors. Sure, I won't get the open rate a warm intro gets, but doesn't that volume start to negate luck? It wouldn't be easy, but it feels feasible.

Mike: Good question - and apologies for the internet. If you're hitting up 15, 20, 30 thousand investors, you may get a response from a handful. The percentage that converts to an actual check will not be high. If you're going to spend that time anyway, why not spend a little more doing homework on funds that actually invest at your stage, in what you're building, that aren't between funds? It's not that difficult with today's tools. Target 10, 20, 50, 100 investors who are genuinely prime targets for what you're building and where you are - stage is a huge factor - and personalize it: "Hey Sam, great to meet you - I've seen the work you did at VU, really impressive. We're building something similar to how you looked at this company. Here's our traction, here's how we're growing - would love a 30-minute call." The response to that is warmer, more legitimate, and converts far better than shipping a deal to 30,000 inboxes and hoping.

Cam: I'll fight for it one more round, though. Fine - not 30,000. Drop it to 5,000. With the AI tools now, surely there's a way to do the research for me - figure out who's a good fit and send something that doesn't sound like AI-generated slop. Why not use a platform that does that and dial it in?

Max: Let me hit the technicalities, because some things sound good out loud and then there's the reality. First - and I'll name-drop: Insight Partners. We had a client where an introduction was made to Insight - shout out Michael, that was a great one - and the fund came back saying they'd already tracked the deal: another partner had been referred to our client previously, a family friend in that case. And the fund had an internal policy: if a deal came through one partner, another can't review it. So the warm relationship Mike and FTFC had couldn't be used. Now imagine you're blasting a list. You don't know who these people are. The lists rarely represent seniority well - you can't always tell by title - and the data is stale from whenever Apollo or a list broker scraped it years ago. If you spray and pray and hit the wrong person - even one - you can restrict your ability to talk to that fund for the round, even if you later earn an intro to a senior partner. It screws you. Second: on AI-written volume. Yes, you can humanize emails - people comment on my posts about de-slopping AI writing, and fine, I do that too - but people still know an AI-generated email from a mile away. We get them every day - even from clients. Stop doing that with your materials. Take ten extra minutes and write it the way you wrote everything your entire life until a year ago. If you're taking on a high-value challenge like raising millions of dollars, you're shooting yourself in the foot outsourcing it to something that will kill a multi-million-dollar outcome. No one wants to reply to something AI-generated. It's like the WhatsApp voice-note thing - convenience for the sender that destroys the value for the recipient. In a process where you're utterly dependent on what the other person thinks of you, don't ruin the opportunity.

30:16 How do I write investor outreach that works?

Max: We're bashing cold email like a piñata, and there are merits to it - so Sam, give us the real one: a cold email you got as a VC where you thought, this is good, this is escalating - and it worked. What did that person do differently?

Sam: There was one instance where a founder reached out about something I do in my spare time - something they were genuinely passionate about too. They knew my favorite athlete, they knew my form within the sport. It didn't reek of desperation. It wasn't transactional. They didn't ask me for anything - and I thought, I would love to talk about this. I don't even know how they learned about it. I got on the phone, and we didn't talk business at all at first. Most founders reaching out are raising, or want advice, or a connection - which is fine, but it takes effort to respond to. Talking about something you love flows differently. Later in the call we got to what he was doing professionally, and I was more than happy to go to bat for it, because he was genuinely a good person. Honestly, he's a good friend now.

Max: You're being so cryptic. It's tennis. And if you're planning to cold email Sam Poon after this using the tennis thing - sorry, that ship has sailed.

Cam: How did they find out you love Nadal? Were you posting on Nadal forums?

Sam: That's another secret. Honestly, I'd be a sicko if I did that - I love the guy, so don't be surprised if I'm on a forum tonight. But I don't know how they found it.

Max: The key is: someone did their homework. Maybe it's a little creepy - but they went more than the extra mile to find something about a person that the person didn't even know was public. That's the antithesis of cold email. But Cam, you touched on this: there's an entire industry selling founders email lists, guaranteed intros, guaranteed investor meetings, AI senders. If those actually worked - would VCs even be funding from that pool? And why does that industry exist?

Cam: Because it's easy to build. What's hard about warm intros versus cold outbound is that warm intros take years - a lifetime of confidence and talking to people. Of course founders reach for the easy start first. And if I had to guess why the industry exists: you can scrape Apollo for a thousand dollars, build the list in a day, and sell it for $500. It's honestly a pretty good business - for the seller.

Mike: It plays into the age of instant gratification. Founders have chosen one of the most difficult jobs - a brand-new problem to solve every morning - and they're always looking for shortcuts. This is one of the easiest ones to sell: give us $500 a month and you'll see a million in two. Anyone would want that. It's an obvious pitch - but the outcome is not feasible. Nobody can promise that a specific investor will invest in a specific deal; there are way too many variables. And to call out a now-defunct example: you guys remember NewChip? When they imploded, the comments poured out. One of their promises was: finish the accelerator - which you paid for - and we'll connect you with at least two highly qualified investors looking to invest in exactly what you're building. Founders finished, got on a call, and it was some random person who had never invested in their life - possibly paid to take the call - with no ability and no intention to invest. You can promise the moon and the stars, but at the end of the day you have to put grit into this, because that's what being a founder is. You can't take the easy route on anything that truly matters. I'll get off my soapbox.

Sam: That pain is real - most founders start further back without the network. But that's the thing: you can't really buy a network. You're buying activity. And if that worked, funds would primarily source through it. Before COVID, you'd take a flight or meet in person - the effort was the filter. Email costs nothing, AI tools are obvious, the channel is free - so the signal is lost. And because of all that, investors lean even harder on their networks.

37:31 Are paid, cold investor intro services worth it?

Max: There's an adjacency here from my music-tech days. In music, pay-to-play - payola - is illegal. But there's a dark side of the industry nobody talks about: buying fake streams. There's a whole anti-streaming-fraud industry because you can game the algorithm, buy the exposure, and ride the organic coattails afterward - and plenty of labels engage in it on some of the biggest artists. The lists, the AI senders, the monthly-retainer "guaranteed meetings" tools - those are the fundraising equivalent of buying fake streams. Yes, something good could theoretically come from the distribution you bought - but you're buying the most artificial version of the thing you're trying to do. And that connects to what surprises some people about working with us: there's no guarantee of results. How could we guarantee results? We're not doing anything algorithmic. We could guarantee you a thousand emails - it wouldn't mean you raise anything. A real process - real relationships, real targeting - requires work from our whole team, and it compounds; it's a nurturing investment, not a vending machine. If a guarantee like that could exist, we'd charge millions for it. It can't, and it never will. Now the devil's advocate question, and it's a fair one: if warm intros favor people who are already connected - how is this not rigged against founders without a network? Mike, when you built FTFC you started at basically zero relationships. What's the top tactic for someone starting from scratch?

40:36 How do I get warm introductions to investors?

Mike: At the end of the day, you don't need to be inviting the GP of a major fund over for dinner. The warm connection doesn't need to be that intense. There are multiple ways in: portfolio company CEOs, advisors, EIRs, people in accelerators, fellow founders. It doesn't need to be cruising down Rodeo Drive with Marc Andreessen every week - though that does sound fun; I'm sure he has a sick car. You've got to take the first step. And the biggest thing: if you're building in food tech, don't waste time building relationships with investors focused entirely on space tech. Figure out who you're targeting first, and whether you have any warm paths there - someone from a networking event, someone you've gone back and forth with in comments or a WhatsApp group. Figure out your ideal investor, build the list, and understand your starting line: which connections do you have - second degree, third? LinkedIn is incredible for this. It doesn't have to be the GP - a partner, even an associate. (Sorry to the analysts out there - they're on quotas; they'll take anyone.) Figure out which firms fit this round and the next, and start nurturing those relationships. And don't open with "I'd love to grab a coffee sometime" - the volume of those messages makes them impossible to answer. Do a little digging first.

Max: It's going to take time - networking with investors and with other founders who can refer you to their investors. And here's the entitlement trap we see so often: "my business is great, I just need the intro, and it's over." That's the same person who gets the meeting, bombs it - zero relationship, nothing in common - and never hears back. Do you really think there are that many people out there who, handed one shot to close an investor for seven figures, actually get it done? No. There's years of relationship-building, and knowing what you're doing on positioning and materials, before you should even attempt that conversation. So focus on prep and materials, and have people who've raised as founders - and ideally investors - look at your stuff long before you chase the meeting. Because if you're one of the lucky ones whose cold email wins, or who gets the warm intro - you get one call. If it doesn't go great, that process is done for the round, maybe the next one too. Don't waste your at-bats.

Cam: You're preaching to the choir - this is what I deal with every day. People say "I just need the introduction, everything else is done, I'm the safest bet." Two things. First - fun fact - investors are risk-takers. They're not putting money in the market; they're putting it into early-stage startups for outsized returns. So don't be the "safe bet" you're claiming to be. Second, don't think there's nothing left to improve - if you believe that, you'll shoot yourself in the foot the moment you're in front of investors. You have to like learning, and actually enjoy hearing what other people say - no ego. Investors will not invest in you if they don't like you. You have to be a likable person, not just a fundable business, especially at the early stage. And that was my bigger point: warm or cold, getting the meeting is only a little piece of the conversation. Even if your uncle puts you in touch with a GP - you can still blow it. You have to know how to pitch your business, and statistically, you will be bad on that first call.

Max: Exactly - we're not claiming we'd bat a thousand either. There are a lot of no's in this game. When I was a client of Mike's - that's the lore that hasn't been shared on this podcast yet - back in Q1 2023, it was impossible to raise. We were a pre-revenue consumer social platform in music. Brutal: the Fed hiking rates, FTX collapsed, nobody raising. And I remember one call, after several that went nowhere, resulted in a real check that got the round going. The lesson I learned early with Mike: you often need one to put the snowball in motion, and then your conversion rate climbs - sometimes exponentially. And notice what I asked for. I never treated Mike like the help - "just get me more meetings." I asked: can you help me with the pitch? Can you help me learn what this VC wants to hear, their portfolio, the research, my performance? So we could nail one and build leverage from there. Why would I want a hundred meetings? A hundred meetings is a lot of meetings - I wanted to get back to building. I'd rather do five aligned meetings and close two or three than take a hundred.

Mike: And you hit the core thesis I wanted to land today: targeting. I sent that deal to that investor knowing it was exactly what they were looking for - right down the fairway: the traction they wanted, the exact stage. That's why it was effective. I didn't send it to 700 investors hoping one would fit. Even if you're doing cold outreach, do the targeting: know your industry tags, know what round you're raising. Spending time talking to Series C investors when you're pre-seed and pre-revenue isn't going to help you.

Max: And if that sounds like a foreign language to you - if you don't know what an industry tag is and you're sitting there thinking meetings are your solution - you need help before tactics. We'd never market our services as a shortcut to funding - though honestly I think we are one - because we run a real process: enormous work on your side and ours, many meetings, plenty of failure, and hopefully a huge success at the end, getting you both investable and investor-ready. That takes time. If any firm markets itself as a shortcut - hands-free, autonomous, AI, "our system works, thousands of data points" - no. What they have is your city, and it's wrong. There's no targeting there. That data has been public and stale for years.

50:47 Investor outreach advice from GoldCapital Consulting

Max: Let's wrap with a hot-take round - finish this sentence. Cam: "Cold email in venture is..."

Cam: Cold email in venture is... terrible. Overused, AI-generated slop. That's the best take I can give you - I used to work in finance and I still get emails asking me to invest in companies. It can't get worse.

Max: Mike: cold email in venture is...

Mike: Cold email in venture is an art. We'll go complete opposites. It can be done - but not everyone's going to paint the Sistine Chapel. There's no doubt it can be done. But it's not sending an AI-generated email to 50,000 investors and hoping for the best.

Max: So Mike's saying: if you don't know what you're doing, it's not going to work. Maybe a former founder who's raised before could write a pretty good cold email - I think I could at this point. Would I choose to? No. Though if I absolutely had to, of course - doing nothing is not an option. Sam: cold email in venture is...

Sam: Cold email in venture is not broken, costs almost nothing, and is incredibly difficult. Not broken - like Mike said, it's an art - but it costs almost nothing, which is exactly why it's so hard to stand out.

Max: Mine: cold email in venture is cyanide. It really is bad - because even though it can work for some, it will kill your spirits. Any cold sales motion is hard - forget fundraising. Constant rejection stings even for us, and we do this for a living: we get rejected by prospects, by VCs, all the time. If you can't generate your own energy, or you don't have animated people around you screaming pep talks, doing this solo is brutal. It's not a high-efficacy strategy - it's a "maybe if I do enough, something happens" strategy, and most people aren't built for that. You'll get more bounce-backs saying "this address no longer exists" than responses about your company.

Cam: I have to share this - from a call I took yesterday, hadn't even told the team. A lead told me the reason they wanted to work with us is that we focus on warm intros. They'd found a stat that cold outreach is effectively dead - reply rates down from roughly 4% to 2% in the last year and a half due to AI-generated spam. I don't know where they got it and I need to follow up - but that was a prospective client telling us, not the other way around.

Max: To wrap up - we called out our bias early, but I think it's objectively the case that warm introductions are how capital gets raised. Marc Andreessen has said versions of this - look it up - it's part of the test. If you can't network your way to the VC, how are you going to hire amazing talent? How are you going to sell customers and land the enterprise logo? That's from one of the better investors to ever do it. So, to pass the test: quick tactical round. Sam - you're a founder with no network and 90 days. First thing you do to build a warm path to investors?

Sam: I'd go the non-traditional route. Show up to an event in person and talk to founders who've gone through the process - ideally one stage further than you: if you're pre-seed, someone who just raised their seed or Series A. They've made the journey. And it's hard to fake interest - if you genuinely like what they've built and the sector they're in, you can build those relationships over time. Don't start with investors; that path is painful. Go non-traditional.

Max: Mike?

Mike: Target. Figure out which firms you actually want to work with over the next ten years - not just brand names: who provides real value, whose portfolios you love. Do the homework beforehand so that when you do get in touch with a partner or an associate, you have something to talk about. And on tools: LinkedIn religiously, Crunchbase, PitchBook if you can get access. This is also a good use of AI - not for writing the messages, not for scraping, but ask Claude: "I'm building a pre-seed company in frontier tech, here's our traction - what type of investors should I be looking for? Which firms bring real value?" Then start building the network with associates, partners, GPs at those firms.

Max: Cam - number one tactic?

Cam: Going to people who've done it first - I hate to steal Sam's answer, but I agree with it. Unless you live in San Francisco, on the West Coast, or maybe the Northeast, it's very difficult to make these connections locally - and that's just in the US; if you're in Australia, Europe, the UK, harder still. So rely on the people who've walked the path. Ask them: how did you do it? Who are your connections? Work your way in slowly. They'll understand your pain, be more empathetic, and give you real advice instead of pushing you down some random path.

Max: And mine is a culmination of all three: proximity. There's immense benefit in being close to the capital - globally that's New York and San Francisco, plus Boston, Miami, London, other hubs. If you're raising early-stage VC for an internet or consumer company, you want to be close to the action. We're not recommending you reverse-mortgage the house and move to the Bay Area - it's actually the worst time to rent there, with all the new millionaires being minted - but even packing up for a week and heading west, going to events, you'll meet people who just get you, because everyone there is trying to figure out the same things. And if you can't do that - or while you're considering it - inquire with GoldCapital and FTFC. Link in the description: if you're looking to fundraise in the next three months or less, we'd love to hear from you. The call is totally free, and if you're one of the good ones you'll be speaking with Cam at length about your business. Next episode is the most controversial one to date: we answer the one question nobody in our seat would ever want to answer online - should you even hire a fundraising advisor like us in the first place? We'll get real with you, starting with why you shouldn't. As always: feedback, topics, and questions in the comments - I'm very lonely, I saw no comments on the last one. Hit the like button - I know you're sitting there right now and you still haven't clicked it - subscribe, hit the bell. Gentlemen, appreciate you as always.

Mike: Always a pleasure.

Sam: Thanks, guys.