Networking is crucial for career and business growth, but cold outreach often fails, while warm introductions—leveraging mutual connections—significantly improve engagement. However, accessing the right networks is often left to chance or limited to elite circles. At the same time, professionals with valuable networks, like investors or executives, lack incentives to systematically share their connections. This creates an opportunity for a structured way to facilitate high-quality warm introductions at scale.

A Two-Sided Marketplace for Warm Introductions

One way to address this gap is by creating a platform where buyers (e.g., sales teams, startups) can request introductions to specific personas, like "CTOs at mid-market SaaS companies," and offer bounties for successful meetings. Connectors—professionals with relevant networks—could browse these requests and submit matches from their contacts. If the introduction leads to a predefined outcome, such as a meeting, the connector earns the bounty, and the platform takes a transaction fee.

• Vetting: Connectors would be verified (e.g., via LinkedIn) to prevent spam.
• Escrow: Bounties would be held until outcomes are confirmed.
• Reputation System: Connectors would be rated based on the quality of their introductions.

This model benefits B2B sales teams, startups seeking investors, and professionals looking to monetize their networks. Buyers get higher conversion rates than cold outreach, sellers earn from underutilized connections, and the platform generates revenue through fees while ensuring quality.

Execution and Scaling

An MVP could start manually by curating a small group of high-value connectors, such as ex-sales leaders, and partnering with a few B2B startups to post introduction requests. Matchmaking could initially happen via email or LinkedIn, with fees collected offline. Once validated, the process could be automated, expanding into verticals like investor introductions.

Key assumptions to test include whether professionals are willing to monetize their networks and whether businesses will pay for introductions. Early tests could involve LinkedIn campaigns offering cash for successful introductions or pre-selling intro packages to sales teams.

Differentiation from Existing Solutions

Unlike networking apps that focus on serendipitous connections, this idea ties payments to outcomes, like booked meetings. It also differs from platforms like Intro.co, which is niche (investor intros only), by broadening use cases and adding monetization for connectors. Compared to contact data tools like Lusha, it offers higher conversion rates through trusted introductions rather than cold outreach.

Success would depend on balancing supply (connectors) and demand (buyers), starting with a niche market like SaaS sales to mitigate early risks and prove the model.