Getting Referred When a Startup Has No Program
A fast-growing startup with 40 people has no referral portal and no recruiter to route you. The good news: the person who can vouch for you is one Slack message from the hiring decision.
Find your warm intro →Free · No sign-up · See results in ~10 seconds
A plain LinkedIn search buries the people who would actually help you.
It ranks by prominence, so the most-followed, most-messaged names sit on top. FindWarmIntros surfaces the coworkers who share your school or a past employer - the people most likely to reply - and hands you a ready-to-send intro.
✍️ Ready-to-send intro“Hi - we both studied at [your school]. I’d love to hear about your path to a company you are targeting before I apply…”
… plus everyone else in your network who can put in a good word.
See who can refer you in - pick your target company:
Why a missing referral program is actually an advantage
At a 5,000-person company, a referral is a form in an applicant tracking system that adds you to a pile. At a 40-person startup, there is no form because there is no pile. The founder reads every strong inbound name personally.
This means one warm sentence from an early employee reaches the actual decision maker, not a queue. You are not fighting a process. You are asking one busy person to spend 30 seconds vouching for you to someone they eat lunch with.
Who to reach, in order of leverage
At a small startup the org chart is flat, so almost anyone can vouch for you. Pick the person where you share the strongest real connection, then work down.
- An early employee you share a school or past employer with. They know the hiring bar firsthand and their word travels straight to the founder. This is the highest-conversion path.
- A founder, if you have any genuine tie. Founders answer their own DMs at this stage. A shared alma mater or a mutual former company is enough of a reason to reach out.
- Someone one hop away. If nobody inside is a direct connection, a friend who worked with an early employee can forward you. One warm forward beats a cold application every time.
- Not the generic careers inbox. At a startup with no pipeline, that inbox is often unread. Skip it and go to a person.
How FindWarmIntros does the finding for you
The slow part is figuring out which of the startup's early employees you actually share something with. FindWarmIntros is a free tool that takes a target company like Cursor, finds the real people there you overlap with by school or past employer, ranks them by how strong the tie is, and drafts a warm opening message you can edit.
It does the finding-and-ranking part so you spend your time on the conversation, not the research. You still send the message yourself, in your own words, to a person you have a real reason to talk to.
What to actually say in the first message
Lead with the thing you share, not the ask. 'We both went to State, I noticed you were an early engineer at Cursor' opens the door before you request anything. Then make helping you cost 30 seconds: name the specific role and ask if they would be willing to pass your name along.
Do not attach a resume in message one and do not ask them to 'grab coffee.' Give them an easy yes. A referral at a company this small is one internal message, so ask for exactly that.