Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

The check clears. Now what? Most angels ask themselves how they can actually help their portfolio companies beyond the capital. Customer introductions consistently rank as one of the highest-value contributions an investor can make. But most people do them poorly.

Eric Bahn, co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund who previously worked at Instagram and founded Beat the GMAT, talks about spending significant time helping portfolio companies find their first ten design customers. Not just any customers. The right early adopters who will use a rough product and give real feedback. That specificity matters.

The Right Way to Make Introductions

Here's what works. Say you're an angel investor with a network in developer tools. A portfolio company builds something for SRE teams. You know someone leading site reliability at a major tech company. The warm introduction works because it's targeted. You can message them: "Hey, you're leading an SRE team at Snapchat. Are you looking for a new tool? Are you open to trying this one? It might be rough around the edges."

Coming from you, that ask carries weight. Coming from a stranger cold emailing, it gets ignored. The founder didn't just get an intro. They got access to someone more willing to take a meeting because the request came through a trusted relationship.

Know Your Limits

The key is relationship-based selling. Getting those first few customers in the door can be brutal for early founders. They're unknown. The product is raw. Why should anyone take a chance? Because someone they trust vouched for it. That's the whole game.

But you have to know your limits. You make the introduction. The founder has to close. You can't do the selling for them. You can't pressure your contacts into buying something they don't need. That burns your relationships fast. One portfolio company showed at a recent Angel Squad event that they're building a platform to track how introductions actually went. Both sides rate the experience. As an introducer, you get feedback on whether the person you connected someone to was helpful or ghosted them.

The Data on Bad Actors

That data matters. Elizabeth Yin, co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, mentioned being surprised by how many investors in her network give founders the runaround or ghost completely. Without structured feedback, you never know. Your founders won't tell you someone wasted their time because ghosting is so common it feels pointless to mention. But click-button feedback reveals patterns. Now she knows which investors to stop recommending.

Platform teams at larger VC firms exist largely to make these kinds of connections at scale. They focus on customer introductions, talent recruitment, and go-to-market help. Not every firm has a platform team. Emerging managers rarely do. But the principle applies to angels too. Your value comes from your network and willingness to use it for your portfolio companies.

Practical Guidelines for Success

Some practical guidelines. First, ask the founder what kind of customer they're looking for. Don't just blast introductions to everyone you know. Target matters. A B2B SaaS company needs different customers than a consumer app. A biotech startup needs lab partners, not software engineers.

Second, warm up both sides before the intro. Tell your contact why this company is interesting. Tell the founder what this contact cares about and how to position the conversation. Context increases the odds the meeting actually happens and goes well.

Third, make the introduction and step back. You're not the middleman in ongoing conversations. You opened the door. That's enough. Founders need to build direct relationships with customers, not relationships mediated through you.

Fourth, be selective. You can't introduce everyone to everyone. Your network is finite. Your reputation is finite. Each introduction costs social capital. Spend it on founders you really believe in and contacts who will actually benefit from seeing the product.

When Introductions Don't Work

What about when it doesn't work? Sometimes the introduction leads nowhere. The customer isn't interested. The timing is wrong. The product doesn't fit. That's fine. One introduction failing doesn't mean anything. But if a founder consistently can't convert warm introductions into conversations, you might need to dig into why.

Maybe their pitch is off. Maybe they're targeting the wrong customers. Maybe the product isn't ready. Those are different problems requiring different solutions. As an investor, you can help diagnose which one it is.

Networks Compound Over Time

The long-term game matters here too. Amy Chen from Hustle Fund talks about how her network from Stripe and Twitter evolved. The Stripe people mostly founded companies or joined other startups. The Twitter people often became investors. Those networks compound over time. Your portfolio companies benefit from relationships you're building now, even if the immediate connection doesn't seem obvious.

Going Deeper Than Introductions

Some angels go deeper. They don't just make introductions. They work on specific projects with founders. Help with the deck. Review the website. Provide product feedback. All of that builds trust and gives you insight into how the team works.

You start to see patterns. Who executes quickly? Who gets stuck? Who listens to feedback? Who ignores it? That information helps you decide where to double down with future capital and where to cut bait.

The customer introduction playbook is simple but not easy. Know your network. Know what your portfolio companies need. Make targeted connections. Follow up to see how it went. Learn from what works and what doesn't. Repeat.

Joining Angel Squad makes this easier because you're part of a community doing the same thing. Multiple people with different networks. Multiple portfolio companies with different needs. The overlap creates natural opportunities for intros. Plus, you learn from seeing how others make connections that actually stick.

The best angels think of customer intros as one tool in a broader support strategy. You can't introduction your way out of a bad product. You can't introduction your way into product-market fit. But for founders with something real, getting those first ten customers can be the difference between momentum and stalling out. That's where angels with the right network can shift outcomes.