I love it when David Hornik – one of the very first (maybe the first) VC bloggers writes a post. Today’s is Want to get funded? Get an introduction! So simple, yet so often overlooked or ignored.

The punch line – it’s the transitive property that we learned about in elementary school math:

So how do you get funded?  Step one — get an introduction.  Find someone you know who can introduce you to the person you want to pitch.  The closer your relationship with the person making the introduction, the better.  And the closer that person’s relationship with the VC the better.  I’ve written about this before and described it as “borrowed credibility.”  If you are being introduced by someone who has credibility with the VC, and you have credibility with the person making the introduction, you will have credibility with the VC.

I learned about this in elementary school math class — it is called the transitive property:

if

A has credibility with B

and

B has credibility with C

then

A has credibility with C

And as a corollary to the traditional transitive property, (1) the stronger the credibility between A and B, and (2) the stronger the credibility between B and C, (3) the stronger the credibility between A and C.

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