— A FoundrOps Resource - Built by Mihir Makwana

Most founders start outbound by going cold. They build lists of strangers, write cold emails, and wonder why conversion is low. Meanwhile, their highest-converting leads are already connected to them on LinkedIn. They've just never been activated. This playbook shows you how to change that.

The Core Idea

Cold outreach works. But warm outreach works faster, converts better, and costs less effort per meeting booked.

Your LinkedIn network, and the networks of the right people around you, contains hundreds of potential customers, partners, and referrals who already have some degree of familiarity with you. That's a head start most founders never use systematically.

This playbook gives you a repeatable system to export, enrich, analyze, and activate those warm connections into real pipeline — without sending a single cold email.

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Who This Works For

Any B2B founder who:

• Has been operating for at least 2 to 3 years and has built a meaningful LinkedIn network
• Is targeting a specific ICP that likely overlaps with people already in their network or the network of someone close to their business
• Wants to generate their first 5 to 10 qualified conversations quickly, before a full cold outbound system is live
• Is sitting on a strong warm network and has never mined it deliberately </aside>

The 4-Step Warm Network System

1. Export Your Network
2. Enrich and Clean the Data
3. Identify Your ICP Fits
4. Run a Warm Outreach Sequence

Step 1: Export Your Network

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How to export from LinkedIn:

1. Go to Settings and Privacy
2. Navigate to Data Privacy, then Get a Copy of Your Data
3. Select Connections and request the archive
4. LinkedIn emails you a download link within 10 minutes

The export gives you: First Name, Last Name, Email (where shared), Company, Position, and Connected On date.

📌 Only 10 to 20% of contacts will have emails included. You'll fill the rest in during enrichment.

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• Whose network should you export?