The situation
Fundraising usually runs on warm introductions. Networked's network was limited, and introductions were slow. They needed to get in front of over 100 qualified investors quickly, and a way to manage the follow-up at scale.
The hard part
Investors get pitched constantly, and most cold pitches never get a reply. The system had to produce real conversations, and then handle more of them than one founder could manage alone.
What we did
1. We started from the network they had. We mapped the connections of roughly 300 existing contacts and found investors who shared a mutual connection with the founder. Every first email opened with that shared name, so it read like a warm introduction, not a cold pitch.
2. We ran it in weekly waves. Investors were contacted in structured weekly campaigns instead of one big blast, so every wave could be adjusted based on the last.
3. We ran the founder's calendar. Every reply was answered within 5 minutes. Up to 8 follow-up touches recovered investors who didn't respond the first time. About 40% of interested investors booked a meeting.
One email from the campaign
The first email in the sequence, as sent. Merge fields highlighted.
Merge field notes
{name}: a real mutual connection between the founder and the investor, from the mapped network of ~300 contacts.{appName}: Networked.
A shared connection turns a cold pitch into a warm one, and naming known comparables makes the business instantly clear.
Results
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Investors contacted | 22,451 |
| Emails sent (incl. follow-ups) | 67,136 |
| Reply rate | 5.09% |
| Positive replies | 470 |
| Emails per positive reply | 1 in 143 |
| Meetings booked | 188 |
| Meetings held | 132 |
| Investors closed | 18 |
| Capital raised | $1.2M |
What it meant
At the peak, the founder had up to 18 investor meetings in a single day, and new meetings were being booked a month out. Cold email went from an experiment to the channel that closed the round.
The total cost of the engagement, tools and fees included, came to under 2% of the capital raised.
Built with
Clay · Apollo · Mailtester Ninja · Instantly
How we count
- Emails sent: every email delivered by the sequencer, first touches and follow-ups combined.
- Reply rate: replies divided by leads contacted, as reported by Instantly.
- Positive reply: a reply showing interest. Not a meeting yet.
- Qualified opportunity: a positive reply from a decision-maker at a company that fits the client's ICP, flagged as an opportunity in Instantly.
- Qualified meeting: a booked call with a decision-maker that meets the client's qualification criteria.
- Attended: the prospect actually showed up.