The AI-Powered Investor List and Warm Intro Playbook

If I was preparing to raise money today, here's exactly how I'd do it.

Warm intros are the standard. They signal hustle. More importantly, they create immediate trust before you ever get on a call. That's especially true with angels.

When I was raising for Perch, this was days of manual research and a spreadsheet I was constantly losing track of. Here's the workflow I'd run today.

1. Define your parameters.
Round size, target check size, investor profile, angel vs. VC. Prep your materials. Set a timeline. No tool does this for you. It's judgment work.

2. Build your investor list with AI.
Feed a detailed prompt from step 1 into Claude or Codex. One row per person, not per fund. People first. The agent builds a spreadsheet: name, fund, portfolio, check size, LinkedIn URL, plus personal details like school and location. Anything that creates a real connection once you're on a call.

This used to take days. Now it takes 15 minutes while you're doing something else.

3. Find your path in.
Use an agentic tool with browser access (Dot, Grok Bot, OpenClaw, or Claude/Codex) to visit each investor's LinkedIn and surface mutual connections. Add them to a second sheet, linked back to the investor. Pull 2+ per investor since not every connection will respond or know you well enough to help. One row per intro source, tracked like a lead in your pipeline.

4. Mine your own network.
LinkedIn lets you export your full network. Hand it to an agent. Have it scan for two things: relevant investors you already know who may not have made the initial list, and founders or operators in your space. That second group are connection bridges, not targets. Someone who knows your industry may know exactly the right investor.

Now you have two lists. A target investor list, and the people you'll reach out to for those introductions.

5. Build your CRM and let the agent keep it organized.
You do the outreach. Don't outsource that. Set up a nightly Claude/Codex routine: it checks your email and LinkedIn DMs and flags anyone you haven't heard from in 5+ days. At 30+ investors with 2+ mutual connections each, you need a system or things fall through.

6. Make the specific ask.
Don't ask your connections to think through their entire network for you. That rarely works. Do the work yourself and make a simple ask: "Hey, I see you're connected to Person X. Would you mind making an intro?" Most will check with the investor first, so put together a short blurb they can easily forward.

Get this right and you get more meetings. You also show up to every conversation with trust already in the room.

The pitch, the deck, the negotiation: that's a different post.