How to get warm intros to angel investors
An angel is one person with no inbox that an associate reads. The way to find them is to read who funded the companies next to yours, then find who can vouch for you to each name.
By Jerry Feng, Growth at Happenstance. Updated August 28, 2026.
The short version
To get a warm intro to an angel investor, read who funded the ten companies nearest yours and write down every individual named, then find who in your network can vouch for you to each one. Most of the money at the earliest stage belongs to individuals, and the path to an individual is usually one person long.
Who the 422,350 are
The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire publishes a yearly count of the US angel market. Its report on 2023 puts the number of active angel investors at 422,350, up 14.8% from 367,945 in 2022 (Jeffrey Sohl, The Angel Market in 2023, June 20, 2024). Check sizes and the share of pitches that get funded are on how to reach out to angel investors.
Almost none of those 422,350 people have a website, a thesis page or an inbox that an associate reads. They are operators, second-time founders and people who sold a company a few years ago, and the only public trace most of them leave is a name in somebody else's funding announcement, and that trace is the list.
Building the list from funding announcements
Take ten companies one or two steps from yours: same buyer, neighboring product, a stage ahead. For each one, read the round announcement, the company blog post about it and the founder's own thank-you post, and write down every individual named. Press releases name the lead and often the angels; the founder's post names the people the press release left out.
Then check each name against what they publish themselves. Many angels keep a public list of investments on a personal site or an AngelList profile, and syndicate leads publish the deals they have led. A name that appears in two of your ten announcements is worth more than any entry in a directory, because the evidence that they back your kind of company is already in hand.
The list you end up with is usually forty to sixty names, and most of them will be one person away from you: a founder they backed, a colleague from the company they helped build, somebody who worked for them, so the next step is finding that person for each name.
Finding the path to each name
Happenstance searches the accounts you connect as one network: Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Ask “Which of my connections have angel invested in seed-stage companies?” and each result shows the path in and which account the relationship came from. Put your cofounders, your first angels and your advisors in a group and the search runs over their connections too, which is where operator-investors usually turn up. 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 shows what the rest of a raise looks like from here.
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.
The template
The version for an operator-angel: a short ask on top, and underneath it a forward that carries the amount and the minimum check. Replace everything in brackets.
Asking a mutual connection for an intro to an angel
Subject: Would you introduce us to [Priya]?
If the investor you want is a partner at a firm, the connector hierarchy and the longer template are on how to get warm intros to VCs. For the angels nobody you know can reach, how to reach out to angel investors has the email itself.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find angel investors for my startup?
Read the funding announcements of ten companies that look like yours and write down every individual named in them, then check who those people follow and invest alongside. Angel syndicates publish their leads, and most angels list their investments publicly. That list of names beats any directory, because each one comes with the evidence that they write checks into your kind of company.
How much do angel investors usually invest?
The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire put the average angel deal at $339,390 in 2023. A single angel's check is much smaller, because angels invest as a group behind one lead; the same report counts 422,350 active angels behind $18.6 billion for the year.
Can I get an intro to an investor if I don't know anyone in tech?
Yes, and the first move isn't LinkedIn. It's the founders of the companies whose funding announcements you just read, who are reachable, remember being where you are, and can introduce you to their own investors. One useful email to a founder does more than twenty connection requests aimed at partners.
Should I ask my angels to introduce me to VCs?
That's most of what they are for, and they expect the ask. An angel who has already put money in has a live interest in the next round happening, which makes them the most motivated connector on your list. Ask them for named partners rather than for help in general.
How many investors should I talk to at once?
Enough that no single conversation decides your outcome, few enough that you can keep every thread specific. Most founders run the raise in waves: a first wave of people who will tell you the truth, then the real list once the pitch has survived a few of those conversations. Working in waves also means your best paths aren't spent on the version of the story you've since fixed.
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