Professional investors rarely find their best deals through cold email. A survey of 885 venture capitalists at 681 firms by Paul Gompers, William Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev found that more than 30% of deals came through professional networks and 20% were referred by other investors. Only 10% arrived unsolicited from company management teams.
Alejandro Betancourt López describes the same pattern from inside a family office.
Why the First Success Matters Most
“It’s really hard to get the first success,” Alejandro Betancourt said in a 2023 interview. “And after you get that, you start getting people that are in the same sector or are equally successful as the people that made the same success. So you jump from one to the other.”
One success opens the door to the next round of introductions, in his account.
“Just bet on winners,” he said. He listens to successful founders and investors, forms his own view and then gets introduced to others in their circle. “You build your networking base.”
Sourcing has also moved online. Opportunities now arrive “every single day from all kind of platforms,” he said in February 2022. The extra volume demands more sorting, he added, “but you get a much wider portfolio of opportunities.”
Alejandro Betancourt López and the 100-to-1 Filter
The median venture firm considered 100 deals for every one it closed, according to the NBER summary of the study, conducted between November 2015 and March 2016. Another 30% of deals were generated by the firms themselves, and 8% came from companies already in their portfolios.
“I get a lot of asks and a lot of opportunities,” he said. He tries to look at as many as he can and gives the most weight to input from successful people. “What are they thinking, what are they doing?” Alejandro Betancourt López said.
“There are so many opportunities that losing one is not a big deal as long as you always choose a good one,” he said.
O’Hara Financial joined the 2016 Hawkers round, Modaes reported. Félix Ruiz, one of the founders of the Spanish social network Tuenti, later co-founded Playtomic, the padel app where Alejandro Betancourt López is listed as a founding partner on his résumé. Ruiz’s investment firm, Match Invest, co-led Playtomic’s €65 million round in March 2025, El Referente reported, one more link in a network that keeps feeding new deals.