Why Investor referrals?
Investors typically leverage their network to get access to deal flow and share the job of evaluating potential cases. Companies can leverage this mechanism by helping their existing investor network refer relevant investor connections to their company - in this way allowing existing investors to help build your investor network for you!
How it works
Company admins can enable Referrals from the investor permissions tab on the company settings-page.
This will enable all members and admins to find a referral-button on the Company-page, and allow your company to be selected from a referral-button on the investors home page (same function, two different access points for the investors).
The investor enters the email address of the investor she'd like to refer to the company, and provide relevant context in the text-area.
It is up to the investor whether to include a notification email to the company admin, or not. Notifying the company will allow for a smoother process for the new investor as the company admin can then respond and invite the referred investor directly.
When the referral is sent, the receiving investor will get an email with a link to follow the company. He can then click the follow-button in the email to signal his interest in following the company to the company's admin(s). Investors who 'follow' a company will not be able to access any other data than what may be available on the public profile, until the company provide access to the investor.
The company admins will receive a notification email when there is a new follower, and can provide access from Network on the 'Requests for access'-tab.
If the referral email included a notification to the company admins, the company admins will receive an email stating who initiated the referral and who was the receiver. The admin(s) can then decide to reach out to the investor directly or invite them to their investor portal, without waiting for the investor to click "follow".
PS: This feature is expected to be tweaked and updated based on feedback and data, this article may therefore be outdated from time to time. Please get in touch if you do not find the correct answer to your questions!