Warm Network Launch

What is a warm network launch?

A warm network launch is announcing your startup through personal, one-to-one messages to people who already know you: friends, family, former colleagues, classmates, alumni groups, old clients and the parents you chat with at the school gate. Each message asks for one specific action, like trying the product this week, pre-ordering, or introducing you to one named person.

Your first customers are closer than any ad can reach. People who know you reply, forgive a rough first version and tell you the truth, and the ones who don’t fit can still open a door. A group post on Facebook announcing your launch gets likes. A personal message with a clear ask gets things done.

When should you use it?

• Good fit: every type of business at the first launch: B2B services, consumer apps, local businesses, physical products. It’s the cheapest launch there is.
• Strongest for B2B, where one intro from an ex-colleague can get you a meeting that 50 cold emails wouldn’t.
• Do it before any public launch like Product Hunt, so you arrive with users who can comment and share.
• Skip the sales ask with people who aren’t your customer. Ask them for intros instead of guilt purchases; a friend buying out of kindness tells you nothing about demand.

How do you do it, step by step?

1. Export and list your network. Pull contacts from your phone, email and LinkedIn. LinkedIn lets you export your connections as a file through Settings, under data privacy and “Get a copy of your data”; some email addresses will be missing because members control that. Put everyone in one sheet with columns: name, how you know them, last contact, fits as customer (yes/no), could introduce me to, ask, sent, replied, result.

2. Sort into three groups. Group A: people who are themselves your target customer. Group B: people who know your target customers well (a friend who works in a care home when you sell to care homes, an ex-colleague now at a bakery chain). Group C: everyone else who’d be happy to hear from you. Aim for 30 to 100 names in A and B combined (our rule of thumb). Group C gets one short update and no personal campaign.

3. Decide the exact ask for each person. Write it in the sheet before you write the message. Good asks are small, specific and easy to say yes to: “try it this week and tell me where you got stuck”, “pre-order at the founding price”, “forward this to Marta in procurement”. Bad asks are vague: “let me know what you think”, “share with anyone who’d be interested”.

4. Write personal messages, one by one. Use a template as a skeleton and change the first line for every person. Template for group A: “Hi Sam, I know you still run training for the staff at Lindenhof, so you’re exactly who I built this for. I’ve made a small tool that tracks which carers are due for which mandatory training and books the sessions. Would you try it with your team for one week and tell me what annoyed you? Here’s the link: [link]. If it’s not for you, that’s useful to know too.” Keep it under 100 words. On LinkedIn and WhatsApp, cut it to 3 sentences.

5. Make intros effortless. For group B, send a short note asking whether they’d be willing to introduce you, plus a ready-to-forward paragraph: “Ines spent 9 years in HR at a care group and built a tool that keeps carers’ mandatory training up to date. She’s looking for 3 care home managers to test it free for a month. Happy to connect you if useful.” Always ask first, so your contact can say no without awkwardness, and keep the forward text to 3 sentences.

6. Send in batches of 10 to 15 a day. Small batches let you reply fast and adjust your message after the first answers. Note each reply in your sheet the same day.

7. Follow up once, then let it go. If there’s no reply after 5 to 7 days, send one short nudge: “Bumping this in case it got buried. No pressure at all.” After that, stop. Close the loop with everyone who helped: tell them what happened with their intro or advice. People who see their help mattered help again.

What does a worked example look like?

Say Ines spent 9 years in HR at a care group and built a tool that tracks carers’ mandatory training. Her LinkedIn export and phone contacts give her 410 names. In her sheet, 34 are care home managers or training leads (group A), 21 work in care in other roles or know managers (group B), and the rest go in group C.

Over 8 working days she sends 55 personal messages. Group A: 22 reply, 14 try the tool with their team, and 5 managers agree to a free month with a check-in call. Group B: 9 agree to introduce her, which brings 6 more manager conversations. She sends group C a single short email about the launch, which brings 3 surprise intros from people she hadn’t thought of, including a cousin’s partner who inspects care homes for the local council.

After two weeks she has 11 care homes testing the tool and 2 managers asking about price. That’s her first customer list, and every one of them got a message written for them.

Which free tools help?

What mistakes should you avoid?

• The mass announcement. A BCC email or a group post feels like an ad, and people treat it like one. One person, one message, one ask.
• Asking for “feedback” or “support”. Nobody knows what to do with that. Name the action and the deadline.
• Selling to friends who aren’t customers. Their kind purchase hides the truth about demand. Ask them for intros instead.
• Forgetting to follow up once. Plenty of replies arrive only after a nudge. One nudge is polite; three is pressure.
• Never closing the loop. If someone made an intro and never heard back, you’ve used up a favour.

How do you know it worked?

Count actions over kind words: people who tried the product, paid or pre-ordered, and intros that turned into conversations. Our rule of thumb for 50 personal messages: a 40% reply rate, 10 or more people taking the specific action, and 3 or more intros to target customers.

Go: people in group A took the action and some came back unprompted. No-go: friends replied warmly but nobody in group A tried it. That points to the offer or the target group, so go back to problem interviews with the people who did reply.

What should you do next?

Ask your warmest testers to pay with a pre-sale offer before the public launch. Once your network is used up, move to strangers with cold email and LinkedIn outreach, reusing the messages that worked here. If you’d like to plan your network asks with a structured process and an AI co-founder, try Fe/male Switch, the startup game for women.

FAQ

Is it okay to ask friends and family to buy my product?

Ask them to buy only if they’re truly your target customer. Otherwise, ask for an intro to someone who is. Purchases from people who love you feel good and tell you little.

How do I ask for an introduction without being pushy?

Ask whether they’d be comfortable making the intro, give them an easy way to say no and send a 3-sentence paragraph they can forward unchanged. Then tell them how it went.

How many people should I contact for a warm launch?

Our rule of thumb is 30 to 100 personal messages to people who are your customer or know your customers. Fewer than 30 gives too little signal, and more than 100 personal messages in two weeks is hard to do well.

Updated 26 October 2026 · Written by the Fe/male Switch team

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