A warm intro is an introduction to an investor (or customer, partner, hire) made by a mutual trusted contact who can vouch for the founder. It dramatically outperforms cold outreach in conversion rates (often producing 5-10x higher response rates and meeting conversion), with warm intros being the dominant path to investor meetings in the venture industry and the introduction format most investors strongly prefer. Cold outreach works occasionally; warm intros work systematically. A good warm intro is typically what unlocks the formal [Partner Introduction] inside a venture firm.
The warm-intro structure:
Double opt-in (standard practice):