How to get a meeting with a VC
A first meeting is about thirty minutes of one partner's attention, granted on someone else's recommendation, and it exists to decide whether there is a second one.
By Jerry Feng, Growth at Happenstance. Updated August 28, 2026.
The short version
A first meeting with a VC comes through a recommendation, runs about thirty minutes, and exists to decide whether there is a second one. DocSend's 2023 seed report found founders contacted 66 investors on average for 38 meetings, up from 48 contacted and 56 meetings in 2022, so who carries the request sets the yield. Hand the connector one forwardable sentence, give the partner one number and one customer story they can retell, and send a follow-up the next morning that carries what they asked for and a date.
Sixty-six emails for thirty-eight meetings
DocSend's 2023 seed report (December 7, 2023) found that “the average number of investors contacted is 66 in 2023, up from 48 in 2022, but the average meetings set is down to 38 per startup team, compared to 56 in 2022”. Founders wrote to eighteen more investors than the year before and got eighteen fewer meetings.
Read those two numbers together and the lever is clear. Sixty-six emails to a sorted list of partners who write checks at your stage, each one carried by someone the partner already trusts, produce a different meeting count from sixty-six emails to a firm list. Who carries the request decides the yield.
Getting the meeting
The warm path is the one that works. A founder the partner has backed, a co-investor, or an executive at a portfolio company sends one forwardable sentence, and the partner replies to them rather than to you. Build the list from partners who write checks at your stage, then for each one find the person you know who can carry the request. Choosing and ranking those carriers is on how to get warm intros to VCs. A cold email is what you send when that search comes back empty, and it does better when it names a mutual connection.
What happens in the thirty minutes
The partner is deciding whether to spend more of the firm's time on you. In practice that means deciding whether to bring you to the next partner meeting and describe your company from memory to colleagues who were not in the room. So the useful output of the meeting is one version of the company that a partner can retell accurately in ninety seconds: what it does, one number with a time frame, and one customer story.
Thirty minutes is the booking and twenty is what you often get. Send the deck beforehand as a link if they ask for it, so the time goes on the questions behind the slides rather than on a walkthrough, and put the number that makes you interesting in the first five minutes rather than on slide fourteen.
The request and the follow-up
The first template goes to a connector and the partner never sees it. The second goes to the partner the morning after the meeting, and only the bracketed fields change.
Subject: Worth an intro to [Ana Ruiz] at [Northgate]?
2. The follow-up, sent the morning after
Subject: Following up: [Datacheck], and the [churn] numbers you asked for
The follow-up contains the thing they asked for, which shows you can execute inside a week, and it names a date, which gives the thread a reason to come back to life. If nothing was asked for, send the number that moved. After that, one message every two or three weeks with news in it for as long as the round is open: a new customer, a new number, a term sheet elsewhere. Partners who passed on the first meeting sometimes come back on the fourth update, and they cannot do that if the updates stopped.
Turning the target list into introducers
The part of a raise that eats a week is turning forty target partners into the forty people who could introduce you to each. Happenstance answers that as a search over the accounts you connect, Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, LinkedIn and Instagram among them. Ask “who do I know who has raised money from Northgate?” and the results are ranked by the evidence behind each relationship, so a founder you have emailed for two years outranks someone who accepted a connection request. A founder group or an accelerator batch pools everyone's networks, and the largest groups on Happenstance make 380,000+ people searchable. Happenstance is free. The free plan is the whole product, with usage limits on chat and web searches beyond your network. Pro raises the limits: unlimited web searches and results, higher chat limits, and CSV export.
Happenstance for fundraising has the whole raise, and how to get in touch with investors compares the outreach channels.
What Happenstance can see
Email is read as headers only. Message content and attachments never reach our servers. Yes. Your connections are searchable only by you, the friends you accept, and the groups you join, and sharing is always mutual. Your public profile shows a constellation of named people you know by default, which you can turn off anytime. We never share, sell, or use your data to train AI models. Happenstance is SOC 2 certified and DTI Trust Level 2; the full list of what is stored and for how long is on the security page.
Frequently asked questions
How many investors do you have to contact to raise a seed round?
DocSend's 2023 annual seed report put the average at 66 investors contacted and 38 meetings set per team. Founders who target well run lower than that, and founders working an unsorted list run higher. Either way, plan the process as dozens of conversations rather than a handful.
How long is a first meeting with a VC?
Thirty minutes is the default and you'll often get twenty of them. Assume you have ten minutes to make the partner want the second meeting, and structure the conversation so the thing that makes you interesting arrives early rather than on slide fourteen.
Should I send the deck before the first meeting?
Yes, if they ask for it. A partner who has read the deck spends the meeting on the questions behind it, which is a better use of thirty minutes than a walkthrough. Send it as a link rather than an attachment so you can see what got read and update it without resending.
What's a VC deciding in a first meeting?
Whether to spend more of the firm's time on you. Not whether to invest. That means the meeting is won by giving the partner something specific to take to their colleagues, usually a number or a customer story they can repeat accurately after one hearing.
Can you get a meeting with a VC through a cold email?
It happens, and it happens more at seed than at Series A. It's still the lowest-yield route on the board, so treat it as what you do after you've exhausted the people who could introduce you rather than as the plan. A cold email that names a mutual connection is a different thing and does much better.
How soon should I follow up after a VC meeting?
The same day or the next morning, while the conversation is still the most recent thing they remember about you. Put the thing they asked for in the email, name the next step you want, and keep the whole message under 150 words.
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