Plays / Series A Raised, No GTM Infrastructure Built Yet
cold email · Post-Series A (0–90 days)
Series A Raised, No GTM Infrastructure Built Yet
Target
CEO / Founder / VP Marketing (if recently hired)
Company size
15–75 employees
Stage
Post-Series A (0–90 days)
Test batch
40 contacts
Expected reply
8-15%
Expected meetings
2-5%
Setup time
1w
Time to meetings
5w
Context
How this is usually done. And how this play runs instead.
The manual approach
- 01
Find Series A announcements on TechCrunch or LinkedIn, note the company
- 02
Search for the CEO on LinkedIn, send a connection request
- 03
Wait for the connection, then send a DM
- 04
Compete with every other vendor who read the same press release
- 05
Send a generic congrats-on-the-raise message with a sales pitch
- 06
Follow up once if no reply, then forget it
- 07
Miss half the companies because the press release came out on a Friday
How this play runs
- 01
Crunchbase funding alerts surface Series A closes within 7 days of announcement — not weeks later
- 02
BuiltWith confirms no marketing automation in stack — they are genuinely at the starting point
- 03
LinkedIn headcount check confirms they are in the right size range before any email goes out
- 04
Message arrives before the hiring decisions are made — not after
- 05
Opener is specific to the post-raise window and the infrastructure decision, not a generic congrats
- 06
Reply routing means a fast response when they engage — the window is real
- 07
Every company that raises a Series A in the target size range enters the play automatically
Before this play runs
Prerequisites
Everything below needs to be confirmed before the first contact is enrolled. Each gap creates a broken loop somewhere downstream.
Funding event monitoring
Crunchbase Pro / Harmonic.ai / Apollo.io funding filterCrunchbase or Harmonic.ai to detect Series A closes in near-real-time. The window is 90 days. After that, the team has made decisions about how they are going to build pipeline and the conversation starts at a different point. Set up a recurring filter and run it weekly.
Marketing automation stack check
BuiltWith / ClearbitConfirm the company does not have HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot in their stack. If they do, the infrastructure conversation starts differently — they have already made some decisions. BuiltWith is the primary check.
Headcount confirmation
LinkedIn company page / Apollo.ioSeries A companies below 15 are pre-GTM and likely not ready to buy. Above 75 they usually have marketing infrastructure already. Confirm current headcount from LinkedIn or Apollo.
Decision-maker identification
LinkedIn Sales Navigator / CrunchbaseAt this stage the founder or CEO is almost always the right contact. If a VP Marketing or Head of Revenue has been hired (and has been in the role < 60 days), they are the right contact instead. Avoid reaching the board or investors.
Founder email finding waterfall
Hunter.io / Findymail / Anymailfinder / Apollo.ioUse a founder-specific email finding order. Plan for 15–25% invalid rates on early-stage contacts.
Email verification
NeverBounce / ZeroBounceVerify before enrolling. The batch is small (40 contacts), so each invalid email represents a meaningful percentage of your send volume.
Warmed sending domain
Instantly / Smartlead / MailreachA secondary domain warmed 30+ days. The message in this play is personal and timing-specific — domain reputation matters for landing in the right inbox.
Reply routing to Slack
n8n / Zapier / MakePost-funding founders are moving fast and making decisions in a short window. A reply that goes unseen for 4 hours often goes cold.
Setup time: approximately 1 week before sequences go live.
What triggers this play
Signal Detection
A contact needs at least one of these signals confirmed before entering the waterfall. Two signals puts them in the top tier and gets them enrolled first.
Series A closed < 90 days ago
Source: Crunchbase / Harmonic.ai
No HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot in stack
Source: BuiltWith
Company headcount 15–75
Source: LinkedIn / Apollo.io
The enrichment waterfall
From raw list to sequence-ready contacts
Each step filters or scores before the next runs. The final output is a list of contacts above the ICP threshold, verified, and ready to enroll. Human review points are marked.
Series A Funding Detection
Crunchbase / Harmonic.ai→ Series A announced < 90 daysDetect Series A funding announcements from the past 90 days. Crunchbase Pro or Harmonic.ai can provide near-real-time alerts when a round is announced. This is the trigger signal — the timing of the engagement is everything.
Set up a recurring weekly filter to catch new announcements within the window. Review the list before enriching further — some companies in the results will be the wrong stage or size.
Headcount Confirmation
LinkedIn company page→ Headcount 15–75 confirmedConfirm the company is in the 15–75 employee range. This window captures post-product-market-fit companies that have not yet scaled into full GTM infrastructure. Above 75 they usually have marketing automation already.
Cross-check against Apollo if LinkedIn data looks stale. LinkedIn headcount lags sometimes by 1–2 months at fast-growing companies.
Marketing Automation Check
BuiltWith→ No HubSpot or Marketo confirmedConfirm the absence of HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot in the company's tech stack. A company with no marketing automation is at the pre-infrastructure stage — the conversation is about building the right thing, not fixing the wrong one. A company with HubSpot already running has made some decisions.
Note what they do have in the stack. Knowing whether they are using Apollo, a CRM, or basic email tools shapes the first conversation.
Decision-Maker Identification
LinkedIn Sales Navigator / Crunchbase→ CEO or VP Marketing contact identifiedFind the Founder, CEO, or the most recently hired VP Marketing or Head of Revenue. At 0–90 days post-raise, the CEO is usually still the GTM budget decision-maker even if a marketing hire exists. If a VP Marketing has been in the role < 60 days, they are the right contact.
Judgment call on who to reach. The fresher the marketing hire, the better they are as a contact — they are actively forming their plan and have not committed to an approach.
Email Finding Waterfall
Hunter.io → Findymail → Anymailfinder → Apollo.io→ 55–70% email coverageFounder email addresses are harder to find than corporate emails — expect a 20–30% miss rate even with a full waterfall. Hunter first (domain patterns, good for founders using [email protected] format). Findymail second (high accuracy). Anymailfinder third (good on small company domains). Apollo last (large database but lower accuracy on bootstrapped companies).
Review accounts with no email found before discarding. Some founder emails can be manually found via the company website or LinkedIn. Worth 5 minutes on your top 10 accounts.
Email Verification
NeverBounce / ZeroBounce→ Clean, sendable listRun all found emails through a verifier before enrolling. Separate into valid, risky (catch-all), and invalid. Send to valid. Decide on risky — catch-all addresses often work but carry slightly more bounce risk. Discard invalid entirely.
Review the risky/catch-all bucket before discarding — many valid contacts land there. For high-value accounts, a manual check on the catch-all domain is worth it.
ICP Scoring
Combined signal formula→ Score 0–100 per contactA weighted score across all signals present for this contact. Contacts above the threshold enter the sequence. Below-threshold contacts go to a watchlist — they re-enter when new signals appear.
Review the top 10 and bottom 10 scores before launching. Adjust weights if the distribution looks wrong. This model improves with every run as outcome data feeds back in.
Enroll in Sequence
Sending platform→ 40 contacts enrolledContacts above the ICP threshold enroll in the email sequence. Contacts below go to a watchlist — they re-enter when new signals appear.
Final review before launch. Check the list size, the score distribution, and the first few emails the system would send. Then launch.
Targeting logic
Who, why, and how to score them
Who This Play Is For
Founder, CEO, or newly hired VP Marketing at a B2B company that raised a Series A less than 90 days ago, has a headcount between 15 and 75, and does not yet have marketing automation (HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot) in their stack.
This is a timing play. The trigger is the funding event. The absence of marketing automation confirms they have not yet built the infrastructure. The 90-day window is real — after that, the decisions are made and the conversation starts at a much harder place.
Why This Audience
A Series A company in the first 90 days post-raise faces a specific set of decisions: who to hire, what to build, what to buy, and in what order. The CEO is under board pressure to show outbound pipeline progress. The founding team is about to scale from founder-led to process-led, and most of them have never done this before.
The default approach is to hire an SDR and a VP Marketing and hope the pipeline follows. It usually does not for the first 6–9 months, because the infrastructure — enrichment logic, ICP scoring, sequences, routing — does not exist. The new hires spend their first months building it from scratch rather than executing from it.
The message of this play is to get into that conversation before the hiring decisions are made. The right infrastructure build costs a fraction of 6 months of wrong hiring, and it makes every subsequent hire more productive from day one.
The no-marketing-automation signal is the filter that keeps this play focused. A company with HubSpot already set up has made some decisions. A company with no marketing automation at all is genuinely at the starting point.
ICP Scoring Breakdown
| Signal | Points | |--------|--------| | Series A closed less than 30 days ago | 50 | | Series A closed 30–60 days ago | 35 | | Series A closed 60–90 days ago | 20 | | No HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot in stack | 25 | | Headcount 15–50 (pre-hiring spree) | 20 | | No VP Marketing or Head of Sales yet | 15 |
Threshold: enroll at 50+. A company that raised in the last 30 days with no marketing automation in stack is already at threshold. Do not stretch beyond 90 days — the signal degrades fast.
Lessons From Running This Play
No runs logged yet. This section updates after each run with reply rate, disqualification reasons, and what changed in the sequence or targeting.
The sequence
3 touches. Sent from a dedicated outreach domain.
Short, direct, signal-led. No case studies, no 6-paragraph intros. Each touch has one job and one ask.
[First name], Saw [Company]'s Series A — congrats. The next 90 days are when most teams decide how they are going to build pipeline: SDR hire, marketing hire, agency, or some combination. The decision is hard to unwind once you are in it. Before you commit to an approach: it is worth knowing what a 6-week infrastructure build would actually cost versus what 6 months of the wrong hiring decision costs. Happy to show you what we have built for companies at your exact stage. CJ SortedGTM
[First name], The question most post-Series A teams get wrong: should we hire an SDR or an AE first? The answer usually depends on whether the outbound infrastructure exists. If it does not, your first SDR spends 60% of their time building lists and figuring out tooling. You have hired a $90k/year list builder. If the infrastructure exists first — scoring model, enrichment waterfall, sequences, Slack routing — an SDR can be productive in week two. We build the infrastructure. The hire becomes a different decision. CJ
[First name], Not going to keep following up — either the timing is not right or you have already made the decision. If you have not yet: sortedgtm.com. Stack assessment is free and takes 30 minutes. We will tell you honestly whether the infrastructure or the hire should come first for where you are. Good luck with the build. CJ
After a reply
What happens next. And who does it.
Most outbound playbooks stop at the sequence. This is where the work actually starts. Every reply flows through a closed loop — no manual logging, no inbox hunting, no dropped leads. The steps below are how we run it.
Reply detected
Sending platform
The sending platform fires a webhook the moment a reply comes in — positive, negative, or out-of-office. Every reply is captured regardless of type.
Slack alert fires
Automation layer → Slack
A structured message lands in the pipeline channel with the prospect's name, company, ICP score, reply text, and action buttons. No inbox-checking. No manual logging.
CRM deal auto-created
Automation layer → CRM
A deal is created in the Cold Outbound stage with all enrichment data pre-attached — tech stack signals, ICP score, company details, trigger signals. Zero manual data entry.
Human reviews and responds
humanYour team
A person reads the reply in Slack, uses the play's response template or writes something more specific, and sends. Speed is the variable — the reply window closes fast.
Qualification
humanYour team + CRM
Positive reply: a booking link goes out. Unclear: one clarifying question. Negative: deal closed with reason logged. Nothing sits unactioned at end of day.
Signal feedback loop
humanCRM → enrichment model
After each run, outcome data is reviewed and signal weights are adjusted based on what actually converted. The following month's list is sharper. This is the part that compounds.
The result
Steps marked human require a person. Everything else runs automatically. The motion does not depend on someone checking their inbox or remembering to update the CRM.
Expected outcomes
What the first run should produce.
Test batch
40 contacts
Expected replies
8-15%
Expected meetings
2-5%
Decision rule
One meeting from the first batch → expand to 200+. Zero replies after the full sequence → rewrite the message before expanding. Never scale a sequence that has not proven it can generate replies.
Questions
Common questions about this play.
Why does the 90-day window matter so much?
In the first 90 days post-raise, the CEO and founding team are actively deciding how they are going to build pipeline. They have budget but no committed approach. After 90 days, those decisions are made. Hires have been made, tools have been bought, approaches have been committed to. Reversing those decisions is much harder than influencing them before they are made.
Why check for the absence of marketing automation rather than the presence of outbound tools?
The absence of HubSpot or Marketo tells you the company has not yet built out their marketing infrastructure at all. That is actually the ideal state for this play — it means the conversation is not about fixing a broken system but about building the right one from the start. A company that already has HubSpot is further along and the conversation changes.
Is the founder always the right contact at this stage?
Usually. At 15–75 employees and 0–90 days post-Series A, the founder or CEO is still making the GTM budget decisions even if they have brought in a VP Marketing. If a VP Marketing or Head of Revenue was recently hired (less than 60 days ago), they are the right contact because they are actively forming the plan and have not committed to an approach.
Why is the test batch only 40 contacts?
The pool is genuinely small — the window is 90 days, the stage is specific, and the no-marketing-automation filter reduces the addressable list significantly. A batch of 40 is the right size to get clean signal on the message without spreading contacts across a wide targeting range. Scale the batch only after the message proves it can generate replies.
What is the expected close profile from this play?
A company that raises Series A and has not built GTM infrastructure is often in the market for a complete build — enrichment waterfall, ICP scoring, sequences, CRM wiring, Slack routing. The engagement scope is usually larger than a VP Marketing fix-it project. The conversation also tends to move faster because there is urgency built into the timing.
Run this play
Want us to build and run this for you?
We start with a stack assessment to confirm this play fits your situation and what infrastructure is already in place. Free, usually 30 minutes. You leave knowing exactly what to build first — whether you work with us or not.