This is one of those personal preferences that might differ from investor to investor, but: no, I probably won’t intro you with another investor if I’ve already passed on your company.
A lot of venture capital is full of wishy-washy bullshit human feels over reals. It’s an odd way to manage a market worth trillions, but it is what it is.
When I refer a company to another investor, without fail one of the first things they’ll ask me is: did you invest? This is a problematic question for a few reasons:
- It immediately puts your company at a disadvantage because they’re already getting other signals from other investors (that they ostensibly trust) that your company wasn’t a good fit for them.
- It gives me as the referring investor at a reputation hit because I’m asking this other person to take time out from their lives to look at a company that I don’t even have belief in myself.
That said, I have seen this approach work well. A decade ago I pitched a lovely investor who really liked the company but was worried about a conflict in their portfolio, so they were a pass. But without asking, he proactively suggested a few possible introductions he could make (and then he made them). This was great because it gave him a clean surface area for the other investor (“I like the company, but I’m just conflicted out!”), and I wasn’t forcing him into doing something he didn’t want to do in the first place, so the intro was far more genuine.
That’s really what you’re aiming for: the proactive “…but I’ll still help you out!” Most investors will side with doing that if they think the pitch is truly novel: even if they don’t participate, they still want the aura of referring it to another investor who might. If they’re not offering to do that for you, you’re honestly probably better off talking to that VC cold, rather than getting a not-so-warm introduction.