Where do venture capitalists say their deal flow comes from?
VC deal sourcing, survey of 885 investors (2015 to 2016)
In a 2015 to 2016 survey of institutional venture capitalists, the investors said that over 30% of their deals came through professional networks and about 20% through other investors. Those are self-reported sourcing shares from an old, selected sample. They are not the odds that a warm introduction gets anyone a meeting or funding.
Summary of external research. Survey fielded November 2015 to March 2016. Reviewed 2026-11-05.
Propel Earth runs events and makes introductions, so it has a commercial interest in the topics below. We summarise other people's research; we did not run it, and nothing here shows that Propel causes any outcome.
What it found
- Over 30% of deal flow came through professional networks, as reported by the investors.
- About 20% came from other investors and 8% from portfolio companies.
- Almost 30% was proactively generated by the firm, and 10% arrived inbound from company management.
- Responses were averaged within each firm when a firm had more than one respondent.
Method and source
- Authors: Paul Gompers, William Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev. Published in the Journal of Financial Economics.
- The survey reached 885 institutional venture capitalists at 681 firms. The NBER summary says 82% of respondents were partners.
- Respondents were recruited through selected business-school and fellowship networks, NVCA members and VentureSource.
- The percentages above follow the authors' rounded language. We have not recalculated them, and we have not confirmed the number of respondents behind each individual item.
Limitations
- The data is about ten years old and self-reported.
- The sample is selected, not a census of venture capital in 2026.
- It describes where deals were found. It does not measure reply rates, meetings or the chance of being funded after a warm introduction.
- A working-paper version with a different respondent count exists. We use the published article and the NBER summary and do not mix versions.
Questions
Does this show that warm introductions work?
No. It shows that investors say many of their deals come through their networks. It says nothing about how often an introduction leads to a meeting or an investment.
Is this current?
It reflects 2015 to 2016. Practices may have changed.
Did Propel run this survey?
No. The survey was run by the authors above. Propel only summarises it.