How VCs Can Actually Help Their Portfolio Companies Raise Follow-On
By Martin Tobias, Managing Partner at Incisive Ventures
Martin Tobias is Managing Partner at Incisive Ventures (incisive.vc), where he has made 75+ pre-seed investments. He was an early investor in DocuSign.
Category: For Investors
Every VC says the same thing after writing a check: "Let me know how I can help." It's the emptiest sentence in venture capital.
Every VC says the same thing after writing a check: "Let me know how I can help." It's the emptiest sentence in venture capital. I've made 75+ pre-seed investments over the past several years. I've watched founders struggle through follow-on rounds not because their companies weren't ready — but because they were knocking on the wrong doors. And I'd been the VC who said "let me know how I can help" without giving them a systematic way to find the right next investor. That's a failure of the investor, not the founder. Here's what I've learned about actually helping portfolio companies raise follow-on — not just feeling good about offering. Why Warm Intros From Existing Investors Are the Highest-Value Action You Can Take Let me give you a number: in my experience tracking introductions across my portfolio, a warm intro from an existing investor converts to a first meeting at roughly 3–5x the rate of a cold outreach. Think about what happens when you introduce a portfolio company to a co-investor you know. You're not just making a connection — you're lending your credibility. You're saying: "I've seen this company from the inside for 12 months. Here's what I know that isn't in the deck." That's worth more than any pitch deck. The reason this works is simple: VCs don't have time to evaluate every inbound. They triage. A warm intro from a trusted co-investor jumps the queue every single time. But here's where most VCs drop the ball: they only intro to the 5-10 investors they know personally. They're limited by their own network. And those 5-10 might not be the right next investors for that specific company. That's the mistake. A warm intro to the wrong investor is almost as useless as a cold email. The investor will politely pass, and you've burned goodwill with both sides. The Matching Problem Is Bigger Than You Think When I was building InvestorMatch.pro, I started pulling data on why follow-on rounds fall apart. The patterns were ugly: Stage mismatch : You're sending a $1M ARR company to a fund that only writes Series B checks Sector mismatch : You think "enterprise software" is enough. The investor only does vertical SaaS in healthcare Check size mismatch : Your portfolio company needs $3M. The fund's average check is $250K Portfolio conflict : The investor already backed a direct competitor 18 months ago These aren't bad meetings that went sideways. These are meetings that should never have happened. And the founder burned 2 weeks chasing them. I've seen founders spend six months in fundraising purgatory because their VC backers kept sending them to mismatched investors. Not from malice — from not knowing who the right match was. How to Systematically Help Portfolio Companies Find the Right Follow-On Investors Here's the framework I use now with my Incisive Ventures portfolio: Step 1: Define the raise parameters precisely What's the round size and target check from a lead? What stage are they at (ARR, team, product maturity)? What sector, subsector, and business model? What geography matters? What's the timeline? This sounds obvious. Most VCs skip it and just start firing off intros. Step 2: Do the matching work, not the founder The founder is busy running the company. Your job as an existing investor is to do the prospecting legwork, not just make a warm intro to the first 3 VCs you can think of. This is where tools become essential. I built InvestorMatch.pro specifically because the manual version of this took me hours per company — scanning portfolios, checking fund stage and check size, verifying no conflicts. Now I use it to run the matching for my portfolio companies. Upload their deck, and it runs semantic analysis against 5,000+ VC portfolios — not just keyword matching, but actual thematic alignment based on what each firm has invested in and why. It surfaces the 20 most aligned investors for their specific stage, sector, and business model, along with verified contact info and personalized outreach templates. In 10 minutes, I can hand a founder a list of 20 investors who are actually likely to care about what they're building. Step 3: Rank by relationship strength, then reach out Once you have a well-matched list, go through it and identify where you have relationships. Even 3-4 warm intros to right investors will outperform 20 intros to mediocre matches. For the investors on the list where you don't have a relationship, the founder can reach out cold — but they'll be doing so with a much higher base rate of relevance, which dramatically improves response rates. Step 4: Write the intro, don't just offer it Don't ask the founder to draft the intro email. You write it. You know the company. You have the credibility. A 3-sentence intro from you, in your voice, with specific conviction ("This is the best pre-seed AI infrastructure company I've seen in three years of looking") is worth 10x what the founder could write pretending to be you. What This Looks Like in Practice Let me give you a concrete example from my portfolio (anonymized). I had a company at $800K ARR building workflow automation for mid-market finance teams. They needed a $4M seed round. The old way: I'd email 5 VCs I know who do "enterprise SaaS" and hope something stuck. The new way: I ran their deck through InvestorMatch.pro. It surfaced 20 investors with strong portfolio alignment — firms that had backed similar workflow automation plays, or had deep exposure to finance-focused B2B software, at the right check size ($500K–$2M per investor) for a $4M seed. I had relationships with 4 of those 20. I wrote personal intros to all 4 within the same afternoon. Three took first meetings. One led the round. That's not a fluke. That's what happens when you match first, intro second. The Broader Point: Portfolio Support Is Competitive Advantage The venture market is more competitive than it's ever been. Founders have choices at the pre-seed. They'll pick the VC who adds the most value post-check, and fundraising help is near the top of that list. If you want your portfolio companies to succeed — and to keep choosing you in future rounds — you need to move beyond "let me know how I can help" and into systematic, high-quality follow-on support. The tools exist now to make this fast. There's no excuse for lazy intros to mismatched investors. Start With Your Next Portfolio Company That's Actively Fundraising Pick one company in your portfolio right now that's in raise mode or will be in the next 90 days. Run their deck through InvestorMatch.pro . See who comes up. You can get 3 matches free. Unlock the full 20 with personalized outreach emails for $20. At the cost of a lunch, you'll have a curated list of the most relevant follow-on investors for your portfolio company — with the email templates to reach them. That's the intro your founders actually need. Martin Tobias is Managing Partner at Incisive Ventures , a pre-seed B2B software fund. He's made 75+ pre-seed investments and was an early investor in DocuSign. He built InvestorMatch.pro to help founders find the right investors — not just any investors.
Tags: venture capital, portfolio, fundraising, follow-on, VC strategy