Recruit Champions
Your ultimate networking goal is to recruit champions and super-connectors, who will bat for you during your fundraise.
What Good Networking Looks Like
So let’s say you have made a list of 25 entrepreneurs, who are well connected to the VC ecosystem and could have valuable advice for you. You reach out to them through a mixture of introductions from friends and cold calling.
You get a bunch of meetings. Some of those are underwhelming. But some go well. You get to practice your pitch and iterate on your deck. You ask for referrals to other founders, and they suggest and connect you to a few (perhaps with the help of a friendly nudge based on your prior research). That’s how you get to expand your entrepreneur network to say 100 founders.
You keep iterating on your company story and touching base with the CEOs you had a meaningful connection with. You schedule additional meetings and start to go deeper, going through your investor list and filling it out with advanced information.
Things usually progress naturally to a point where founders will signal - either explicitly or implicitly - that they are interested in connecting you with investors they like. That makes sense because entrepreneurs look good when they bring good dealflow to VCs. And remember: strong introductions to VCs are basically endorsements. That’s the level of support you are looking for.
This is what good networking looks like. Before you know it, you have a strong network that can reach most if not all relevant VCs through multiple paths of varying strength. That’s where introductions, references, and backchanneling will come from during Phase II - Fundraising.
At this stage, it’s important to control the timing of the intro. There is nothing worse than getting introduced too early, before you are fully prepared and ready to develop momentum, which is the key to successful fundraising. Just say thanks and that you will take them up on their offer in X days / weeks when you have your ducks in a row.
Identify Champions and Super-Connectors
In the same way that you are constantly reassessing the overall fit of prospective investors, you should be thinking about which entrepreneurs you are truly connecting well with. Those will become your champions. And hopefully they are well connected and have a great track record, which allows them to bat for you when it comes time to go out and fundraise.
A few of these champions will be what I call super-connectors. They will make 10+ strong intros, while most other people in your network might do one or two. In some sense, the whole point of networking is to recruit champions that become super-connectors. But it is impossible to know who those people are beforehand. You have to go out there, meet people, and see who you truly connect with and who is in a position and is willing to help. That’s how champions and super-connectors naturally emerge.
At some point, it is worth thinking about recruiting such people as official advisors. You can do that before the fundraise to boost your credibility and offer them an incentive. I talk about that in Build an Advisory Board.