Via AI finds warm paths by working backwards from your target — not forwards from your existing contacts. You name the person, company, or account list you want to reach, and Via identifies who in your team's extended network has a real, trusted connection to get you in.
Most tools start with your network and work outward, creating noise: endless weak mutuals, irrelevant overlaps, dead-end connections. Via reverses the process — starting from who you want to reach and surfacing only the strongest paths.
Most reps spend hours manually cross-referencing LinkedIn, CRM records, and internal Slack threads trying to figure out if anyone at their company knows someone at a target account. Multiply that by 50 accounts in a territory and it becomes a full-time job that never actually gets done. So reps default to cold outreach — not because warm paths don't exist, but because finding them takes too long.
With a target-first approach, you skip the manual digging entirely. Drop a company name — or an entire account list — into Via and get ranked paths in seconds. Instead of starting with "who do I know?" and hoping it leads somewhere useful, you start with "I need to reach this account" and Via tells you exactly who on your team can get you there and why that path is strong.
This matters most at scale. A rep working 10 accounts might be able to brute-force the research. A team working hundreds of accounts across multiple territories can't. Target-first path discovery means warm intros become a repeatable motion, not a lucky break that happens when someone remembers a connection over coffee.
Not every account has a first-degree connection sitting on your team. That doesn't mean there's no way in. Via looks beyond direct relationships to find second-degree paths — people your connections know well enough to make an introduction.
The key is that Via applies the same evidence-based scoring to second-degree paths. It's not just showing you that Person A knows Person B who knows your target. It's showing you that Person A worked closely with Person B for three years, and Person B reports directly to your target. That's a real path — not a chain of loose mutuals that falls apart at the first ask.
In practice, second-degree paths are often the most valuable ones. Your direct connections to a target account may be too junior or too distant to help. But someone on your team who has a strong relationship with a senior leader at the target — that's the path that gets you the meeting, even though it requires an extra hop.
A ranked list of the few people who can actually open the door — not every loose mutual in the graph — with clear context for why each path is strong. You see who to ask, what the relationship is based on, and how to approach it.
Type any name or company into Via and see the warm paths into that account ranked by strength. Each result includes context on the relationship — so you know exactly who to ask and what to say when you make the request.