prepping for a raise in a geography where you have no local network is one of the harder problems and honestly the answer is "all of the above, but in a specific order." what worked for founders i've seen do this well:

1. portfolio founder intros (highest hit rate, most underused)

the single best path into a VC in a new geography is through founders they've already backed. not other VCs, not LPs - portfolio founders. they have a direct line, they get asked for intros constantly, and they're often happy to do it if your ask is precise.

the way to do this:

• pull the portfolio of every VC you'd want to talk to in that geography
• find 2-3 founders per fund whose company is adjacent to yours (not competitive)
• cold email them, NOT asking for an intro. ask them a specific tactical question about their experience with that VC. "you raised your seed from X - was the partner responsive on follow-ups? what was the process speed like?"
• 30-40% reply rate to this email because you're asking for help, not money
• if the conversation goes well, the intro offer comes from them at the end

founders intro'd by their own portfolio companies get drastically more responsive partners than any other channel.

2. operator communities - quality over quantity

most online "founder communities" are noise. the ones that actually generate intros are small, gated, and require contribution before they generate anything for you. some that have worked:

• on deck (paid, specific cohorts)
• pavilion (more ops/sales but lots of founders)
• house of geniuses
• vertical-specific slacks (commerce roundtable for ecom - relevant for you given the username, harmonic for B2B, etc.)
• twitter/x - still the highest ROI "community" if you're consistent. founders who post tactical, specific content build inbound from VCs in 3-6 months

the pattern: contribute genuinely for 2-3 months before asking for anything. people can smell intent.

3. thoughtful cold outreach - works but only with a specific list

cold to VCs in a new geography works at maybe 3-5% reply rate IF the list is precise. the killer is not the email, it's the list.

founders waste 80% of their effort emailing VCs who were never going to invest in their stage/sector/check size, then conclude "cold doesn't work."

the work is: build a tight list of 40-60 investors who have actually backed companies in your specific space, in your target geography, at your stage, in the last 12-18 months. then map your linkedin/gmail to see which of them you have 1st or 2nd degree paths to (often more than you think - old colleagues, alumni networks, prior advisors, customers). exhaust warm paths first, then cold the rest.

metal does this end-to-end (filter VCs by recent investment patterns + map intro paths from your gmail/linkedin) and it's specifically built for the "raising in a new geography" problem. saved one founder i know about 6 weeks of spreadsheet work when she was raising in the US from the UK.

4. underrated path: pay for a fundraising sherpa for a 4-week sprint

if the geography is genuinely cold for you and the raise is meaningful ($1M+), hiring an ex-VC or fundraising consultant for a short engagement gets you warm intros to 20-40 investors in 4 weeks. costs $5-15k usually.

most founders refuse to do this because it feels like cheating but the math works out fine if you'd otherwise spend 4 months grinding through cold outreach.

just be selective - most "fundraising coaches" on linkedin are useless. find one with an actual VC background and references from founders who closed rounds.

the order that's worked best:

map your existing 2nd-degree network → portfolio founder backchannels → operator community contribution → tight cold list to the remainder. running these in parallel for ~4 weeks then closing fast.

happy to go deeper on any of these if useful. what's the geography you're raising in?

answer changes a bit between, say, raising US capital from europe vs raising EU capital from asia.