The warm intro system exists to protect investors from founders they haven't met.

It also keeps investors away from founders that no one in their network has met yet.

Those are exactly the founders who might be building something new.

Every category-defining company in the last twenty years was built by someone who didn't fit the pattern. Most of them couldn't get a warm intro either.

The gatekeeping isn't neutral. It selects for the familiar. Familiar is not the same as good.