How To Ask For An Email Introduction

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41 points·scottbrit··4 comments

Helpful post. How do you avoid that the potential intromaker replies:

"Just send me more infos + your pitch deck and I'll forward it."

Basically, the intromaker tries to stay as a gatekeeper between you and the target. Then, you are stuck for some time and the following process is not transparent, anymore. Happens often and is annoying.

It means their relationship with target X is strong, but your relationship with them is not. They don't feel like they can vouch for you, and it's unlikely you can get a genuine introduction/endorsement from them under any context.

IMO that is a sign to look for another avenue to talk to target X.

No, I disagree two times on "relationship with target X is strong" and on "They don't feel like they can vouch for you". This may be the case be but must not necessarily, the motivation for such a behavior comes from my experience usually from somewhere else:

If one replies as I posted it's rather a strong sign that this person wants to control the relationship and the process as long as possible in order to particiipate—usually by getting some "advisory shares". We know that those shares should be given to people who made key intros (it's an unwritten law) but still it's cumbersome to deal with this kind of intromakers because they instantly show distrust to you (and more and more are getting like this)

This is a great post by Chris Fralic from First Round Capital on the subject: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/04/the-art-of-the-introduction...

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