The email lands. An investor raised a hand on your round, you accepted, and both of you now have each other's contact details. Nobody is in the middle any more. The clock started the moment that email arrived, and most founders handle the next two days in one of two wrong ways: they send everything they have, or they wait to be asked.
Neither works. An introduction is a door held open for a day or two. Walk through it the same day, carrying one thing.
Reply the same day, with one ask
Reply within the day, in three sentences. Thank them for raising a hand. Give them one concrete fact about the company that is not on the listing, the kind of line you would say first if you had thirty seconds: the customer that renewed, the number that moved this month, the hire that closed. Then ask for twenty minutes this week and offer two specific slots.
Attach nothing. They have the listing, the deck and the round details already. A reply with four attachments reads as anxiety. A reply with one fact and one ask reads as a founder who knows what matters.
If they were the one who wrote first, answer their question before anything else, then make the same ask.
What to send, and what to hold back
Send the link to the listing and, if they ask, the deck. Give a one-line status of the round: stage, target, and what has been committed so far. Say that the committed figure is what founders have recorded, because it is.
Hold back the financial model, the cap table and the data room until they ask for them. Anything you send becomes the first thing they read, and a spreadsheet is a poor first thing. Investors who are moving toward a decision ask for the model. Investors who are not will not open it, and you will have spent your best material on a maybe.
The first call is a fit check
Twenty minutes is enough, and it is not a pitch. They raised a hand because your stage, sector and cheque size matched what they back. The call is for the two questions every early-stage investor asks in some form: why now, and what does this round buy.
Have a one-sentence answer to each. Why now is the market or traction change that makes the next twelve months different from the last twelve. What the round buys is the milestone the money funds, stated as a number and a date.
Then ask your own questions. How do they decide, and on what timeline. What is their usual cheque at this stage. Whether anyone else needs to be in the room for a yes. A founder who asks these reads as someone running a process, and investors prefer to back people who run processes.
After the call
Send a note the same day. Answer anything you owed them, attach only what they asked for, and name a date when you will update them next. Then keep that date whether or not they replied.
If the thread goes quiet after that, it is information, and there is a way to read it. We wrote about it in Reading silence in a fundraise. The short version: one direct question about timing, then move your attention to the conversations that are moving.
When they say yes
A yes at this stage is a stated intent, and that is what a commitment is. Record it on the round so the progress the other investors see is current. The paperwork, the wire and the closing happen between you and the investor, on your terms, outside any platform. The introduction did its job the moment the two of you started talking.
An introduction gives you two days of an investor's attention. Spend the first one.
What it means
Reply the same day with one fact and one ask. Send what they have, hold what they have not asked for. Use the first call to check fit, in both directions. Write the same day afterwards, with a date. Most rounds that stall after a good introduction stall in these two days, and every one of these steps is inside the founder's control.