Bill Stathopoulos

Founder

👋 I'm Bill, and here's my story:

1. Building SalesCaptain, an Outbound & AI GTM agency for B2B SaaS to $3M+ ARR, while being a digital nomad for 4 years.
2. Authored a book - "Cold Email Secrets"
3. Scaled a Growth Marketing Agency to $1M ARR at the age of 28. Grew the team from 7 to 25+ employees in 3 years. Closed clients like Nestle, Revolut, GE, and the Singapore Airport.
4. Helped multiple startups go from zero to $5M+ revenue in 18 months since 2015
5. Trained 2,500+ Growth Marketers in the last 5 years
6. Built the speakers lineup for Ad World, with 50k+ attendees and 100+ speakers, making it the largest advertising conference in the world
7. Interviewed Seth Godin, Scott Galloway, Arianna Huffington, Rory Sutherland, the CMO of Samsung, the CMO of Hubspot, and 30+ world-class Marketing executives.
8. Published the book “Cold Email Secrets”, the bible of modern Outbound & GTM. 
9. Named “Top Lead Generation Voice” on LinkedIn in 2024
10. Became the Clay Club Host in London, leading a team of 15+ GTM Engineers

What you'll get working with me:
🧲 Your Go-To-Market (aka GTM) Strategy
🏀 Optimize your Marketing channels; make the most of your budget
🏆 Build systems for User Acquisition, Activation, Retention, and Revenue

Peace, love & growth ✌️

Bill

Co-Founder

We build and scale Outbound Sales systems that include multi-channel prospecting, lead response, and our cutting-edge processes to help you build your business.

This is the exact stack we're relying on to get us to $6M ARR. 
After working with 70+ GTM teams, testing 125+ tools, here is what stayed.

To get from $0 to $3M we ran a much bigger stack.
It worked, but the tools got better and we got smarter about what we actually needed.

So we simplified our stack.

This is what stayed, organized by job to be done:

0. The Engine

→ Clay: data orchestration. Every source plugs in, every workflow runs through it
→ n8n: where our agents live and automations run 
→ Claude: research, intelligence, copy

1. Finding the right accounts 

→ Apollo: targeted lists 
→ LinkedIn Sales Navigator: full stakeholder mapping 
→ Ocean.io: lookalike companies once you've nailed an ICP

2. Capturing buying intent

→ RB2B: identifies warm website visitors
→ Trigify.io: catches LinkedIn engagement signals before your competitors do 
→ Common Room: monitors your CRM accounts and flags when it's time to reach out

3. Getting clean contact data

→ FullEnrich: phone + email waterfall 
→ Prospeo: fills the gaps for specific cases 
→ ZeroBounce: validate before you hit send

4. Personalizing at scale

→ Claygent: account research on autopilot 
→ Twain / Octave: purpose-built copy tools for teams that want alternatives

5. Reaching out
 
→ lemlist: best multichannel 
→ HeyReach.io: LinkedIn DMs at scale, zero bans 
→ Instantly.ai: cold email with warmup + rotation built in 
→ Salesfinity: cold calling that actually books meetings

6. Closing and tracking
 
→ HubSpot: still the best CRM if you use it right 
→ Attio: our recommendation for teams under 50 
→ Qwilr: proposals that move deals forward async 
→ Sybill/ Claap so reps spend time selling, not taking notes

That's 23 tools across 6 layers.

The catch is: you don't need all of them.

We run this many because we work across 70+ clients, different industries, different ICPs, different motions that are built for their specific case.
(What works for a PLG SaaS won't work for an enterprise services firm.)

But the logic behind every tool is the same:
Signal → Enrich → Personalize → Reach out → Close → Learn
Each tool has one main job, each job feeds the next.

What's the one tool you'd never cut? 👀

CEO, SalesCaptain | Clay London Club Lead 👑 | Top lemlist Partner 📬 | Investor | GTM Advisor for $10M+ B2B SaaS

We're building toward $6M ARR, 
Signal-led outbound is the bet... Here's every signal worth tracking in 2026 👇
 
🟢 1st Party (The signals you have, nobody else has access to this)

- Website Visitors:
RB2B
Midbound
Warmly,

- Product Usage
Common Room
Pocus

- LinkedIn Signals
Trigify.io
Clay
Expandi

- CRM Data
HubSpot
Close
Attio

- Call Transcripts
Fathom.ai
Attention
Claap
 
🔵 2nd Party (these are shared by your ecosystem: from partners, platforms, and communities your buyers are already part of)

- Champion Tracking
Clay
UserGems 💎
Unify

- Ad Engagement
ZenABM
Fibbler

- Affinity Signals
Crossbeam
The Swarm

- Review Sites
G2
Capterra
 
🟡 3rd Party (These are inferred from public data, it's everything happening in the market.)

- Job Openings
Clay
PredictLeads
LoneScale

Funding
Crunchbase
PitchBook
Clay

Technographic
BuiltWith
HG Insights
Clay

Custom Scraping
Apify
Claygent
Firecrawl

Firmographic Data
BetterContact 
Apollo
Clearbit
Clay
 
P.S. We turned everything we learned into "The Intent Signals Playbook".
26 pages, every signal type, every tool, and every workflow.

Comment SIGNALS and I'll send it over.

search-magic

salescaptainio

scicord-llc

pixofix

madbold

$45+ Billion in GTM software valuations, from just 9 tools on this map!!
There are 80+ on here!

(And most weren't built in Silicon Valley.)
 
V2 of the 🌍 Global GTM Map is here.

After dropping the first GTM map last week,
the comments became a map of their own.
Founders and GTM operators tagging tools, adding countries, calling out what I missed.

So I updated it.
 
+20 New tools, +3 new countries, same mission:
Showing that GTM is now a global movement.
 
A few things that you can see from the map:

→ There is a concentration of tools in France, UK and Estonia
→ France is leading enrichment
→ Estonia coming strong in email outreach
→ The US still leads on signals and intent
→ The UK is dominating AI video & voice
→ Bulgaria, Canada, and Ireland just joined the map
 
The tools that got the most love in the comments:

🇺🇸 Clay
🇫🇷 FullEnrich 
🇫🇷 lemlist
🇪🇪 Instantly.ai
🇲🇰 HeyReach.io
🇺🇸 RB2B 
🇬🇧 Synthesia
🇬🇧 Attio
🇺🇸 Zapier 
🇩🇪 n8n

New additions include:
🇺🇸 Lovable 
🇫🇷 Claap 
🇧🇬 clearcue.ai
🇨🇦 EmailBison
🇮🇪 Trigger.dev
🇺🇸 Chili Piper
🇺🇸 Artisan
🇺🇸 Calendly
🇳🇱 Signalbase
 
What's the best GTM tool from your country that didn't make the map?

Claude Code went from $0 to $2.5B in under a year!
We spent 3 months figuring out how a GTM team should use it. Here's everything we found..
 
LinkedIn is giving you FOMO about Claude Code,
but nobody is explaining how it actually fits into GTM.
 
We built the playbook that answers that.
 
Whether you're an AI expert or this is the first time you hear about Claude,
this resource has everything you need to get started, like:
 
1️⃣ Setup in 10 minutes, no dev background needed
2️⃣ Your first win in 60 minutes, copy paste prompts included
3️⃣ 12 playbooks every GTM team should build first
4️⃣ The full 8-step outbound campaign pipeline
5️⃣ CLAUDE.md templates by GTM motion
6️⃣ 25 workflows by GTM role, SDR, AE, Marketing, RevOps, CS
7️⃣ What NOT to automate, and the readiness checklist
 
Every workflow in it is running in production today.
 
We gave early access to our newsletter subscribers, the response was overwhelming.
Now we're making it public, for free.
 
Comment CLAUDE and I'll send it over.

100+ hours tracking LinkedIn feeds.
These are the 50 GTM voices worth your attention in 2026.
 
These are the people moving the needle in GTM right now.
Sharing frameworks you can steal on a Monday morning.
Building and leading the companies defining how B2B revenue is won in 2026.
 
A few highlights 👇

Kyle Coleman: redefining how AI should actually plug into your sales motion, not just your copy.

Chris Walker: the person who was right about the dark funnel before the rest of the market caught up.

Kyle Poyar: if you touch pricing or PLG, his Growth Unhinged newsletter is the closest thing to a cheat code that exists.

Adam Robinson: bootstrapped RB2B to $7.5M ARR by turning building in public into a real distribution engine.

Andrei Zinkevich and Emilia Korczynska: the most consistently rigorous ABM thinkers posting on LinkedIn.

Plus top voices from Clay, lemlist, Salesforge.ai 🔥and others.
 
I'm on the list too 😎 I share what we're learning at SalesCaptain in real time: the workflows we run, the outbound playbooks that actually convert, what's working in GTM right now and what isn't.
If any of this is useful → hit Follow, I post 4-5 times every week.
 
Full list in the creative,
Everyone else tagged in the comments 👇

Clay hit $100M+ ARR without a traditional sales army.
Because Clay's best customer is Clay.
 
They use their own product to run their entire GTM, and it helped them scale to $100M ARR and a $5B valuation, serving 15,000+ customers including OpenAI, Canva, and Google.
 
This Thursday, at 🇬🇧 Clay Club London, Clay's Co-Founder Varun Anand is breaking down the actual operating model.

You’ll see:
- How Clay uses Clay internally
- How website intent becomes outbound action
- How workflows replace manual prospecting
- What stays human, and what doesn’t
 
Plus:
Yash Tekriwal 🤔 is walking through Clay’s internal education and enablement engine.
lemlist and Dealfront are joining the operator roundtable.

And I’ll be doing a live breakdown of how we build signal-driven GTM systems for clients right now.

Real workflows + open Q&A.

If you're in London, you don't want to miss the insights (and the people) in this room.

Registration link is in the first comment.

See you there 🔥 😎

undefined undefined

"Should I just use Claude Code instead of Clay?"
"What about n8n or Make?" ,"Do I even need Zapier anymore?"

We get these questions every week across 70+ clients. 
The confusion is understandable. 
Here's the answer nobody's giving you.

You don't need all 5 of these tools. 
You need to know what each one does, pick the ones that match your stage, your team, and your budget.

1. Claude Code

✅ Calls any API, writes and runs its own scripts 
✅ Replaces tasks that used to need a developer 
✅ Cheapest of the five ($20/mo base)

❌ Your code and prompts go to Anthropic's servers (data privacy concern) 
❌ No visual interface (non-technical will have a steep learning curve) 
❌ Needs deployment setup to run autonomously 
❌ Cost spikes with heavy API usage

Best for: Scale stage teams ready to automate custom workflows

2. Clay

✅ Best B2B enrichment on the market (waterfall 15+ providers) 
✅ Visual, non-technical friendly
✅ Native AI built in (Claude, GPT, Gemini)

❌ Won't run on its own  
❌ Credits stack up fast at high volume

Best for: Any stage, the GTM tool most teams start with

3. n8n

✅ Runs 24/7 autonomously 
✅ Self-hosted = zero per-op cost
✅ Full logic control, AI agent nodes built in

❌ Steep learning curve 
❌ Every API update = manual fix on your end 
❌ Managing 20+ client instances needs a dedicated person

Best for: Scale stage (only with a dedicated GTM engineer)

4. Make 
✅ Visual drag-and-drop, no code needed 
✅ Affordable entry point ($9/mo) 
✅ Runs 24/7

❌ Hits its ceiling fast on complex logic 
❌ Not built for serious GTM engineering at scale

Best for: Growth stage teams who need automation without hiring a developer

5. Zapier 

✅ Easiest to set up 
✅ 6,000+ integrations 
✅ every team already knows it

❌ Most expensive at scale 
❌ Not built for complex GTM logic (you'll outgrow it fast)

Best for: Early stage, or simple triggers at any stage

The clients who get this right early save 3-6 months of rebuilding. 
The ones who don't always come back saying they wish they'd started smaller.


Which of these are you currently running?

40% of our outbound now runs on Claude Code.
Here are the 25 workflows making it happen, broken down by role.
 
👨‍💼 SDR / Business Development

1. Signal-triggered outbound
2. LinkedIn engagement scraping
3. Job-change tracking
4. Competitor evaluation targeting
5. Influencer outreach automation
 
💼 Account Executive

6. Meeting prep brief
7. BANT call analysis
8. Recovery email after tough calls
9. Buying committee mapping
10. Deal intelligence from transcripts
 
🤳 Marketing

11. LinkedIn ads via API
12. Content-to-pipeline workflow
13. SEO content pipeline
14. Win-loss messaging analysis
15. Sales calls to content
16. Event attendee outreach
 
💰 RevOps

17. Pipeline forecast check
18. Custom signal enrichment
19. Positive reply routing
20. Weekly pipeline digest
21. Lead magnet follow-up automation
 
🤝 Customer Success

22. Champion departure response
23. Renewal intelligence
24. QBR preparation
25. Account health scoring
 
These workflows are built on:

Claude Code 
Clay
Apollo
HubSpot
HeyReach
lemlist
Instantly.ai
RB2B 
Fathom.ai
Slack
n8n
 
We documented all 25 in detail in the Claude Code GTM Playbook, exact prompts, setup steps, tools and 30-day plan for using Claude Code in GTM included.

Comment CLAUDE and I'll send it over. 👇

25 Claude code Workflows for GTM teams

Here's the full ABM stack we're using to hit $6M ARR
200+ ABM campaigns taught us which tools actually matter. 

P.S. The top 1% GTM teams in 2026 are running seven layers, the rest 99% run only three.

1. Intent Signals
Unify
Bombora
Common Room
 
2. LinkedIn Ads & Tracking
ZenABM
Fibbler
LinkedIn Campaign Manager
 
3. Website Visitors
RB2B
Midbound
Warmly,

4. Data Orchestration
Clay
Apollo
Sales Navigator

5. Outreach
Instantly.ai
lemlist
Salesforge.ai 🔥
HeyReach.io
 
6. AI Layer
Claude
Claygent

7. CRM & Ops
HubSpot
n8n
Zapier
 
💡 One tip we learned after 200+ campaigns:
The main reason ABM fails is because you're reaching one person at a company, not the buying committee. 
Fix your contact coverage first.
(Match rates went from 40% to 80%+ for our clients when we did 🔥)
 
What's the one layer missing from your current ABM stack?

We analysed 6,000+ signals across 200+ B2B campaigns.
These 9 generated $2M+ in pipeline.
The rest were just noise.

Last month we ran a webinar with lemlist about signals, 1,200 people showed up.
Most of them had the tools, Clay, RB2B, Bombora... you name it.

They all had signals,
But almost none had a system for what to do with the signals.

They had the tools, not the playbook.
So we wrote it for you.

A comprehensive resource (9 chapters) on:

→How to find the signals UNIQUE to your business (that your competitors don't have)

→ How to prioritize the accounts they surface (the exact scoring matrix) 

→ What to do at every stage: TOFU, MOFU, BOFU 

→ What to say when a signal fires (the AI personalization framework) 

→ 17 signal types + the full GTM tech stack to run it all

Everything we use at SalesCaptain and across 70+ clients
Nothing held back.

Comment SIGNALS and I'll send it over.

We used these 7 signals to generate 20+ meetings/month and $1M+ in pipeline, ONLY from LinkedIn.
Here are the signals, the steps and the tools we used:
 
1. LinkedIn Ad Engagers → They engaged with your ad but never clicked. Capture, enrich, reach out.

2. LinkedIn Harvesting → 3+ engagements from the same person. 
Auto-DM + follow-up email.

3. Event Attendees → New events in your space every Monday. 
Find who's attending first.

4. Keyword Engagers → Someone posts about the exact problem you solve. 
You show up.

5. Followers Outreach → They followed your page. Enrich, classify, personalize, reach out.

6. Competitor Followers → Already in the market. 
The warmest outreach you'll ever run.

7. Decision Maker Connect → Meeting booked → full buying committee found → connected before the call. (This one alone changed how we close deals)
 
Most reps are waiting for prospects to raise their hand.
These workflows find them the moment they show intent, before they even know they need you.
 
Tools used across all 7:

LinkedIn
Clay
HeyReach.io
lemlist
Trigify.io
Common Room
PhantomBuster
HubSpot
ZenABM
Instantly.ai
Calendly
 
Workflow 06 is the one most people skip because it feels too aggressive. It's also the one I'd start with.

Which one are you running? 👀

7 LinkedIn workflows that generated $1M in pipeline

HeyReach just got banned by LinkedIn ❌ 
We've run 200+ campaigns with them. Here's my opinion 👇

Of all the LinkedIn tools out there, HeyReach was one of the most careful.

They respected rate limits.
They built for safety.
They did everything right
... and they still got banned.

Which means no one is safe.
Because this isn't about compliance.
 
LinkedIn is playing a different game entirely.
Every tool that monetizes their data better than they do is a target.

Automation tools first.
Then enrichment.
Then analytics.
 
LinkedIn is closing the loop, slowly, then all at once.
Worth noting, existing campaigns are still running, users are not affected.
 
The right question to ask isn't "which tool do I switch to?"
It's: 
"How much of my GTM is built on a platform that can pull the plug overnight?"
 
Curious what others are thinking here.

Clay just dropped a major pricing update (March 2026)🆘
Here's who benefits, who should pay attention, and what most people missed.
 
🟢 BIG WINNERS

→ Teams doing heavy enrichment with Clay's marketplace 
Data costs just dropped 50–90%.
Your budget goes a lot further from day one.
 
→ Teams that wanted CRM + Web Intent but couldn't justify $800/mo
Those features now unlock at $495/mo on the Growth plan.
That's the biggest access shift in this update.
 
→ Heavy Claygent users Clay says 85% of AI users will pay less.
Frontier models now pass through at cost, zero markup.
 
🟡 WATCH OUT

→ Pro plan users running workflows on your own API keys 
Three things to know:
 
1️⃣ You may see a price increase, Clay admitted the old Pro plan was mispriced

2️⃣ Using your own API keys DOES consume Actions, this is the detail most posts are missing.

3️⃣ Even a single HTTP API call to your own database now requires the $495 Growth plan

→ Heavy credit users (70K–100K credits/month)

One user publicly shared their math:
Currently paying ~$1,500/mo.
To maintain the same volume on new plans → $3,500–5,000.
If you're in that range, model this out before you switch.
 
→ Solo GTM engineers and individuals

Clay essentially coined the GTM Engineer role.
But higher fixed costs raise the barrier for people just getting started.
Worth flagging honestly.
 
→ Anyone assuming Actions = Credits
They're not.
Actions measure platform work, 1 action per task, regardless of data spend.

The good news: 90% of customers will never hit their limit.
 
What does NOT consume Actions: Lookups, CRM imports, webhook imports, CSV exports.
 
🔵 THE BIGGER PICTURE
 
Clay is separating what the platform does from what the data costs.

For GTM teams, that clarity matters, and it sets them up to charge properly for the orchestration features coming next.
 
Across the 70+ clients we run GTM for, 
the teams that will feel this most are the ones doing serious enrichment work inside Clay, and for them, this is a genuine win 🏆 
 
Clay also publicly said this will cost them 10% in revenue short term.
That's not a company optimizing for quarterly numbers, that's a bet on the right model winning.
 
If you've been sitting on the fence because the credit model felt unclear, this changes that.
 
On a legacy plan?
You have until April 10 to decide.
You can stay exactly where you are. No forced migration.
 
Where are you right now with Clay? 👀

- Heavy user evaluating the change
- Considering Clay for the first time
- Confused about Actions specifically

Drop it in the comments, happy to help if I can.


*image via Everett Berry.

We went from $0 to $3M ARR using cold email.
The tools that got us there? Half of them don't exist in our stack anymore.

It's not because they're bad tools, but because the market moved.
 
Cold email in 2026 looks nothing like 2022, here are 10 differences:
 
1️⃣ Sending moved from basic sequencers to multichannel-first tools Instantly.ai lemlist

2️⃣ Data moved from static databases to waterfall enrichment 
Clay

3️⃣ Validation moved from manual to automated 
ZeroBounce

4️⃣ Personalization moved from Mail Merge to AI at 1:1 scale 
Clay Claude

5️⃣ LinkedIn moved from manual outreach to 30 profiles running simultaneously HeyReach.io

6️⃣ Email only outreach is replaced by Multichannel Email + LinkedIn + WhatsApp + Calls 
lemlist

7️⃣ Automation moved from Zapier clicks to plain English workflows 
n8n Claude Code

8️⃣ Deliverability moved from guessing to knowing before you send 
GlockApps Folderly Inc.

9️⃣ AI research moved from hours to minutes 
Claude Claygent

🔟 Infra moved from 1 domain to 10+ minimum 
Mailforge - Cold Email Infrastructure 📈
 
We're building toward $6M ARR.
The modern stack in this image is part of what we're betting on.
Share it with your network 🔁 
 
P.S. We put together SalesCaptain's full "Cold Email Playbook" (infrastructure, sequencer setup, drafting emails, stack...etc the whole thing) 
Comment COLD and I'll send it over.

Bad email infra costs the average GTM team $2,000+/month in wasted tools.
Here's what you actually need at every budget level.
 
💰 $500 Stack 
For solo founders and new GTM teams testing cold email. 
Goal: Test messaging fast + keep reputation intact.

Inbox Provider: 
Gmail
Outlook 

Sending:
Instantly.ai
Smartlead 

Warm-up:
Built-in (both) 

Verification:
ZeroBounce
Bouncer 

Health Monitoring: 
GlockApps
Instantly.ai reports 

AI Personalization:
Claude 

Automation:
Zapier 

Domain Setup:
Namecheap + Cloudflare

⚙️ $1K Stack 
For growing teams running consistent outbound and early multichannel. 
Goal: Stable inboxing + visibility into what's working.

Inbox Provider:
Mailforge - Cold Email Infrastructure 📈
Zapmail.ai 

Sending:
lemlist 
Salesforge.ai 🔥

Warm-up:
Mailforge Warm
Clay Signals 

Verification:
NeverBounce by ZoomInfo
ZeroBounce 

Health Monitoring:
MailReach
Mailsuite 

AI Personalization :
Claude
Claygent 

Automation:
n8n

🚀 $5K Stack 
For GTM teams sending 100K+ emails/month or agencies running multi-client. 
Goal: Predictable deliverability at volume, automated, monitored, CRM-connected.

Inbox Provider:
Mailreef
Inframail 
Mailscale 

Sending:
Lemlist
Outreach
Salesloft 

Warm-up:
Folderly Inc. 
Warmbox 

Verification:
ZeroBounce
MillionVerifier 

Health Monitoring:
Mailreach Premium 

AI Personalization:
Claude
Claygent
Twain 

Automation:
n8n
Clay
HubSpot CRM sync 

Reputation AI:
Mailscale active recovery
 
We mapped all three stacks into the slides above.
Swipe to see if you're overpaying for your current setup

P.S. If you want the FULL "Cold Email Playbook" Let me know in the comments below 👇

Cold email infra by budget 2026

The worst thing that can happen to your business : being INVISIBLE to your best buyers.
 
They're ready to buy,
You have no clue!
Because you don't know it's the right moment to reach out.

That's what signals fix.
 
Signals tell you who is in buying mode, right now.

Most teams use 1 or 2.
The best teams stack signals from all 3 layers simultaneously
and that's what separates 1% reply rates from 5%+.
 
Here's every signal type worth tracking in 2026 👇
 
🟢 1st Party (The signals you have, nobody else has access to this)

Website Visitors → RB2B · Midbound · Warmly,
Product Usage → Common Room · Pocus
LinkedIn Signals → Trigify.io · Clay · Expandi
CRM Data → HubSpot · Close · Attio
Call Transcripts → Fathom.ai · Attention · Claap
 
🔵 2nd Party (these are shared by your ecosystem: from partners, platforms, and communities your buyers are already part of)

Champion Tracking → Clay · UserGems 💎 · Unify
Ad Engagement → ZenABM · Fibbler
Affinity Signals → Crossbeam · The Swarm 🔆
Review Sites → G2 · Capterra
 
🟡 3rd Party (These are inferred from public data. Everything happening in the market.)

Job Openings → Clay · PredictLeads · LoneScale
Funding → Crunchbase · PitchBook · Clay
Technographic → BuiltWith · HG Insights · Clay
Custom Scraping → Apify · Claygent · Firecrawl
 
P.S. We turned everything we learned about signals into "The Intent Signals Playbook".
26 pages, every signal type, every tool, and every workflow.

Comment SIGNALS if you want to get it.

The only Signals playbook you will ever need.

https://lnkd.in/d7J3_JRR

I’ve seen the CRM problem from both sides.
First in sales roles at Total and McKinsey. Then as a founder.

The pattern is always the same:

Sales happens in WhatsApp, LinkedIn and email.
But the “truth” is supposed to live in a CRM nobody updates.

So companies keep adding tools.
CRM, sequencing, automations, enrichment, spreadsheets.

They pay more.
But still get less visibility.

That’s why I built Dalil.

Dalil is an AI-native sales platform that helps teams run sales where work actually happens and keeps pipeline, follow-ups and customer data up to date without all the usual tool sprawl.

Less manual admin.
Less fragmented data.
More execution and control.

If you’re a founder or sales leader tired of messy follow-up, outdated pipeline reviews and paying for too many disconnected tools, let’s talk.

DM me.

Here’s an even punchier version if you want it more aggressive:

Sales happens in WhatsApp, LinkedIn and email.
But most companies still expect reps to update a CRM on the side.

That’s why pipelines go stale, follow-ups slip, and founders end up paying for 5 different tools just to get partial visibility.

I built Dalil to fix that.

Dalil is an AI-native sales platform that keeps pipeline, follow-ups and customer data aligned with real conversations — without the usual CRM admin and tool sprawl.

If you’re a founder or sales leader tired of paying more and seeing less:

🔗 usedalil.ai
💬 DM me for early access
📥 Download my free Sales Stack Audit (link in Featured)

Let's fix this together.

Giuseppe Manzone 💼📲🤖

3 minutes 30 seconds.
That’s all I gave myself to explain Dalil AI without boring you. 😅

Last night, I was producing this new demo for our website.
Screen. Script. Silence. CapCut.
And that annoying thought: 
“No one cares about features… they care about relief.”

So I built the video like a journey, not a product tour.

It starts where sales actually happens: 
The Inbox.
Email + WhatsApp + LinkedIn + Sales Navigator… in one place.

Then I jump into a real profile.
And in seconds, Dalil shows you the “what’s going on” without reading a novel:
- momentum by channel
- sentiment
- what the buyer cares about
- what to do next (follow-up, tasks, notes)

After that, it gets fun:
One click on LinkedIn → record created.
- Workflow triggers.
- Lead gets qualified, routed, staged…
- …and enrolled into a sequence automatically.

No exports.
No “I’ll do it later.”
No messy stack of tools duct-taped together.

We’re adding this demo to the website.
And I genuinely want feedback (brutal is fine):

Where does it feel too fast?
What part is unclear?
What feature should we show more (or less)?
Would you change the storyline?

Drop your thoughts in comments
I’ll iterate the next version based on that. 🤝

#Dalil #Sales #Operating #System #CRM #AI #Outreach

Giuseppe Manzone 🧠⚙️📈

We help B2B sales teams automate outreach and CRM work in one AI Sales OS, so they can focus on closing.

Founders talk a lot about product–market fit.
But the hardest fit is founder–founder fit.

Choosing the right partner for the journey is everything.
Someone who believes in what you’re building.
Someone who is as committed as you are.
And someone with whom roles and responsibilities are crystal clear.

At Dalil AI, the first 10 months looked perfect from the outside.
The cap table was super clean.
We had good funding in the bank.
The team was growing fast.
On paper, everything looked great.

But it was fragile.
We had a "hired" CTO who wasn’t fully honest,
keeping engagements with other companies.

There was misalignment between founders 
about roles and the way forward.

And we scaled the team too quickly,
simply because we felt ready and we had the money.

It was a house built a little too fast.
And when the earthquake arrived, everything collapsed.

At that moment I had two options:
Die with it.
Or rebuild and learn from my mistakes.

I chose the second.
We separated from the previous co-founder.
I found a new partner for the journey
Sagnik, an exceptional and experienced CTO.

We redesigned roles and responsibilities from scratch.
We downsized the team to only what is truly necessary.
Yes, today the cap table is a bit messier.
Yes, we have less money in the bank than after the funding.

But something important changed.
Dalil has never been stronger.
Stronger product.
Stronger pipeline.
Stronger direction.

Because a startup is not about how clean things look on paper.
It’s about who is still standing and building when things break.

The biggest lie in SaaS is “build it right the first time.”
In reality? You build it wrong
over and over again
until clarity appears.

I redesigned the same feature 6 times before it finally worked.
And that was just one feature.

The first version looked brilliant in my head.
Clean UX.
Clear workflow.
All the features we thought users needed.

Two weeks later I looked at it again and realized something uncomfortable.
Half of it was unnecessary.
What I thought was essential…
was actually just a cherry on top.

So we started again.
Simpler flow.
Less steps.
Better logic.
Suddenly the product felt lighter.

Then the same thing happened with the website.
We launched a version we were proud of.
Design polished.
Messaging sharp.
Two months later I opened the homepage and thought:
“Wow… this is completely wrong.”
So we rebuilt it.

New positioning.
New structure.
New story.

And of course the same thing happens with marketing.
Campaigns.
LinkedIn posts.
Landing pages.
You try something.
It doesn’t land.

So you change the angle.
Adjust the message. 
Refine the audience.
And try again.

There are moments where it feels like you lost time.
Weeks redesigning a feature.
Months refining something that already looked “good enough”.

But the reality is:
The version that finally feels right 
only exists because of all the wrong ones before it.

Every redesign.
Every deleted feature.
Every failed campaign.

They weren’t mistakes.
They were steps toward clarity.

Today when I look at Dalil AI, 
the product, 
the workflows, 
and the direction are finally starting to click.

But I also know something.

In six months I’ll probably look back at this version and think:
“Wow… that was still naive.”

And that’s fine.
Because building a startup isn’t a straight line.
It’s a loop.
Build → doubt → redesign → clarity.
Over and over again.

Do you agree or not? Tell me what you think in the comments here!

If I were Barney Stinson, and someone asked me:
“What’s your job?” - I'd reply:
PLEASE!!!

“Platform for lead engagement and sales execution" 😅 

Because obviously,
you can’t just say:

“We help sales teams stop losing leads across 
WhatsApp, LinkedIn, email, and their CRM.”

No no.

That’s too clear. Too simple. Too human.

You need something longer.
Something sharper.
Something that sounds like a VC-backed category on a pitch deck.

Platform for lead engagement and sales execution.
PLEASE.

Now jokes aside!

Behind the fancy words, the problem is painfully basic.

Most sales teams don’t actually struggle because they lack tools.

They struggle because they already have too many.

One tool for CRM.
One for outreach.
One for LinkedIn.
One for WhatsApp.
One for automations.
One spreadsheet nobody wants to admit still matters.

And in the middle of all that…

the rep is just trying to reply to a lead,
book a meeting,
follow up on time,
and not forget what happened last week.

So what happens?

The conversation happens in one place.
The follow-up happens somewhere else.
The CRM gets updated later.

And “later” usually means never.

That’s exactly the mess I wanted to solve with Dalil AI.

Not by building another system that asks salespeople to behave like robots.

But by building one that accepts reality:

Sales happens in conversations.
Not in perfectly filled fields.
Not in 14 tabs.
Not in an ops person’s dream.

So yes, 
let's call it a platform for lead engagement and sales execution.

But what we’re really trying to build is much simpler:

A system that helps sales teams work from where they already are
and keeps the rest moving in the background.

Less:

“Hey guys, quick reminder to update the CRM.”

More:

“Just sell. The system handles the rest.”

And honestly, that may be the most founder thing ever.

You start with a big vision.
You use fancy words.
You make it sound sophisticated.

Then one day you realize the real value is just this:

People are busy.
People hate admin.
People forget stuff.

Build around that… and suddenly you might have something good.

Platform for lead engagement and sales execution.

PLEASE

$13,740!!!! Per Year!!!!
This the typical 5-person sales team spend on sales tools...
that actually still loose context because they are broken.

This number is embarrassing.

Here's what most B2B teams are actually paying:
→ CRM: $59+/user/mo
→ Email + LinkedIn sequences: $128+/user/mo
→ WhatsApp sequences: $25+/user/mo
→ Connecting them all: $17+/user/mo

$229+ per user per month!!!
On tools that don't talk to each other.

But the subscription fee alone isn't the real problem.

The real cost is invisible:

→ 60% of CRM data is wrong within 6 months. Nobody wants to update a spreadsheet disguised as software.
→ Your WhatsApp conversations aren't in your CRM. The deal moved. The CRM has no idea.
→ Follow-ups fall through the cracks between tools. Every single week.
→ 2 hours/week per rep managing the stack. That's 100 hours/year per person — not selling, maintaining.

For a 5-person team: 500+ hours/year lost to stack maintenance.

None of those hours closed a deal.

4 tools. 4 logins. Zero shared context.

There's a better way!
One platform that covers the full sales lifecycle from first outreach to closed deal and beyond.

That's what the AI Sales OS is.

What does your stack cost you? Drop it below 👇

#AISalesOS #DalilAI #B2Bsales #SalesTech #SalesOps #CRM

Sales Stack Carousel

Why does a company with 170 sales reps 
have the exact same CRM complaints as a team of 5?"

We built Dalil AI for small sales teams. 
5–20 reps. Lean. Moving fast. No time for tool stack chaos. 

But this is the kind of messages that usually end in my inbox:

"The CRM is terrible and the salespeople are resistant to using it. I'd like more granularity — calls and interactions recorded. 
We're building BI reports but we're limited. 
We use SalesLoft for outreach, but not yet with all the features. It's been a real uphill battle." 

170 reps. Enterprise budget. Premium tools. 
Same exact problem as a 5-person team. 

And that's the thing nobody talks about: 

The tool stack problem doesn't go away when you scale. 
It gets worse. 
More tools. More logins. More data living in silos. 

Your CRM doesn't know what happened on the call. 
Your outreach tool doesn't know the deal stage. 
Your BI team is duct-taping reports from 4 different sources. 

This isn't a "small company" problem. 
This is a sales infrastructure problem. 

And it won't be solved by adding another tool on top. 
It gets solved by replacing the stack with an operating system. 

One platform. Full lifecycle. Zero lost context. 
That's what we're building at Dalil AI. 

You want to see how? 
👇 Comment "DEMO" and I'll show you!

#DalilAI #AISalesOS #B2BSales #SalesTech #CRM

107 decision makers contacted.
27 positive replies in 7 days.
Actual positive replies.

Not connection accepts.

We recently started using Dalil AI… for Dalil.
Running outbound at scale directly from our AI CRM.

Yes, even if I keep hearing the same thing:
“Outbound doesn’t work anymore.”
“People are spammed everywhere.”

Honestly?
That’s only half true.

Outbound doesn’t fail because of volume.
It fails because of bad targeting and bad conversations.

Here’s the structure we are using.
1️⃣ Start from a real signal
(Example: they follow a competitor → likely doing outbound)

2️⃣ Ask a real question
(Not a pitch)

3️⃣ Introduce the problem
(The sales stack becoming ridiculously complex)

4️⃣ Show proof
(A real customer story)

5️⃣ Only then talk about pricing.

Most people start from step 5.
“Here is my product.”
But nobody cares yet.

People decide in less than 5 seconds if they continue reading.

So three things matter:
• Are you targeting the right people?
• Does the first line trigger curiosity?
• Does your value proposition solve a problem they already feel?

If those three things are true…
Hyper-personalization suddenly becomes much less important.

Because relevance beats personalization.
Every time.

The whole system is now running inside Dalil.
• Connection requests go out automatically.
• Replies are detected instantly.
• Follow-ups are triggered.
• Contacts and deals are created.
• Every conversation activates workflows that automate around 85% of the process.

By the time someone says:
“Sure, let’s talk.”

Dalil has already prepared the entire context for me:
• Who the person is
• What message triggered the conversation
• What problem they likely have
• What they already answered

So when I join the call…
I’m not starting from zero.
I’m entering a prepared conversation.

And that changes everything.
The real lesson from doing outbound at scale:

Tools don’t create results.
Conversations do.

Curious:
Do you think outbound is really “dead”…
or just done badly most of the time? 👀

It took us 8 website iterations to understand 
what Dalil AI should look like.
Eight.

And honestly…
I thought, the first versions looked “good”.
But we were so wrong.

At the beginning we tried to be the cool kid.
Fancy gradients.
Trendy layouts.
Startup-looking animations.

It looked like an AI SaaS website.
But it didn’t feel like us.

So we started looking at other companies.
What HubSpot does.
What Attio does.
What the modern SaaS players do.

We took inspiration.
Adjusted the structure.
Copied some patterns.

Version 3.
Version 4.
Still wrong.

Then we realized that we had to go through
the hardest part of building a product:
finding OUR OWN identity.

Not the cool one.
Not the inspired one.
The REAL ONE.

So we simplified everything.
Less design noise.
Clearer messaging.
Sharper product story.

No unnecessary complexity.
Just:
• what Dalil is
• what problem it solves
• why it matters

After 8 iterations, we finally landed on something that feels right.
Simple.
Epurated.
Clear.

The product is easier to understand.
And the story finally matches the vision.

This is what most people don’t see when they look at a startup website:
The version you see today
is built on seven versions that failed before it.

And that’s not wasted time.
That’s the process.

Because building a startup isn’t about getting it right the first time.
It’s about getting less wrong every iteration.

Until one day things start to click.

Curious to hear your feedback!
Both positive and constructive ones!

125 connection requests in 5 days.
I didn’t send a single one,
I only found the people within my ICP,
and 44 already accepted!

Saturday + Sunday.
I’m on the floor playing with the kids.
And somewhere in the background… Dalil AI is quietly doing the work.

Monday.
Back-to-back sales calls.
Dalil keeps sending connection requests anyway.

Yesterday.
I’m redesigning our website.
Still sending.
Still tracking.

Even right now…
while I’m writing this post.

Dalil acts like my personal assistant.
It checks who accepts.
Auto-sends them the first message.

And for everyone who doesn’t accept?
If after 7 days they’re still silent 
Dalil creates an automated note + a task for me.
No chasing.
No “did they accept?”
No mental clutter.

I just show up when they say:
“Yes, let’s go.”

Not gonna lie…
I used to waste hours doing the dumbest loop in sales:
Send → refresh → wait → forget → follow up too late.

Now the system runs.
I stay human.

And that’s the real upgrade:
Automation shouldn’t replace relationships.
It should replace the waiting room.

What’s ONE sales task you wish you could delete from your life forever?

25 meetings booked before the event even ended.
+50 more in the days right after.
These are the results from the team at KAAR.it

From a trade show.
No fancy stand.
No aggressive sales tactics.
Just a very smart way of using Dalil AI.

Picture the scene.
Busy exhibition hall.
Hundreds of people walking from stand to stand.

A visitor stops.
Talks with the team for a few minutes.
Leaves a business card.

Normally… that’s where things get messy.

Cards get lost.
Notes are forgotten.
Follow-ups happen two weeks later (if they happen at all).

But KAAR's played it differently.

Every time a conversation ended, 
the sales rep did one simple thing.

They opened Dalil AI on WhatsApp,
took a picture of the business card,
waited for the confirmation message, 
and sent a voice note to the Dalil agent.

Something like:
“Met John at this Trade Show. Interested in improving outbound. 
Add a note about it and add a task for to book a demo next week.”

Those 2 simple and quick messages instantly:
• created the contact in the CRM
• attached meeting note
• tagged the event
• created a task for the sales rep.

No typing.
No admin work.
Just talk.
40-60 seconds, 
and hop! Ready for the next visitor!

But the real magic was the automation they designed.

They created a simple custom field.
The moment a new contact was created with the event tag…
Dalil automatically enrolled them in a welcome sequence.

Imagine this from the visitor’s perspective.
- You leave the stand.
- You walk toward the next booth.
- Your phone buzzes.

WhatsApp message:
“Hey John, great meeting you at the event today. 
Here’s our contact and a quick link 
if you’d like to book a deeper conversation.”

One day later:

Email:
A short recap and invitation to book a meeting.

Then over the next days:
A mix of WhatsApp messages and emails, perfectly spaced.

Helpful.
Relevant.
Never pushy.

All automated.

The result?
25 meetings booked before the fair even finished.
And 50 more in the days immediately after, when the sequences kept doing the work.

The lesson here isn’t automation.
It’s speed.
The companies that win after events are the ones that follow up first.
When the conversation is still fresh.
When people still remember you and your stand.

Most teams come back from a fair with a pile of business cards, 
and a ton of admin and manual work.
This team came back with 75 meetings already booked.

Same event.
Different system.

Curious:
How many leads does your team usually lose after events just because follow-up happens too late?

THANK YOU FOR A 1,000,000 NOs!
5.5 years at McKinsey & Company taught me my ideas were valuable. 
22 months building Dalil AI taught me that wasn't enough.

At McKinsey, I was advising billion-dollar companies on multi-million deals. Every suggestion felt valuable. 
Every decision mattered. 
I was in rooms with C-level executives.
They listened, I spoke, things happened.

That's not how entrepreneurship works.

In the last 22 months, I've been told NO more times than I can count.

- NO from customers who didn't want to pay $80/month. 
- NO from investors who passed on a $5k check. 
- NO from partners negotiating over a 5% commission difference. 
- NO from talents who had better options.

Not millions on the line. 80 dollars a month.

The first few hit differently than you'd expect. 
You've built something real. 
You believe in it. 
Why don't they?

Then I realized.
At McKinsey, I was selling my analysis. 
As a founder, I'm selling my belief. 
And belief, unlike analysis, can't be validated by a slide deck.

Steve Jobs once said #consultants don't build things. 
They don't take responsibility for their suggestions.
I never fully agreed. 

At #McKinsey, we genuinely delivered. 
We owned outcomes more than most.
But I understand his point now.

When you consult, the worst outcome is a report that doesn't get implemented. 

When you build, the worst outcome is the company you sacrificed everything for doesn't survive.

The stakes aren't just higher. 
They're personal.

Every NO on an $80 license isn't just a lost #sale. 
It's a signal!
Rethink the pitch, the product, the value proposition. 

Every NO built scar tissue. 
And scar tissue is what resilience is made of.

So I want to say thank you.
Thank you to everyone who said #NO. 
You made us better in ways no mentor, 
slide deck or MBA case study ever could.

And thank you even more to everyone who said #YES before we'd earned it. 
You gave us the fuel to keep climbing 
when nothing in the numbers justified continuing.

We're not at the summit yet. 
The ascent is still steep.

But one thing I know for certain: 
when we get there, the view will be spectacular.

And the journey? It already was.
#DalilAI #Startup #Founder #Entrepreneurship

You can vibe code a CRM.
You probably shouldn’t build your business on one.

A lot of founders look at HubSpot, Salesforce, 
or any serious CRM like Dalil AI and think:

“Why am I paying this much for software?
Can’t AI just build me one now?”
Fair question.

But I think Dharmesh Shah is right.
The problem is not building a CRM.
The problem is building a CRM that survives real life.

Because a CRM is not just a database with a nice UI.
It’s permissions.
It’s workflows.
It’s reporting.
It’s integrations.
It’s data consistency.
It’s edge cases.
It’s adoption.

It’s all the messy human behavior that shows up after the demo.

On paper, building your own sounds cheaper.
In reality, most founders forget to count the real costs:
- the weeks of product time
- the maintenance
- the bugs
- the broken automations
- the “small fixes” that never stay small
and the opportunity cost of your team 
solving CRM problems instead of customer problems.

That’s where the math changes.
Yes, CRM software can feel expensive.

But bad pipeline visibility is expensive too.
Missed follow-ups are expensive.
Dirty data is expensive.
Sales reps working outside the system are expensive.
Managers making decisions on incomplete information is expensive.

And rebuilding the same infrastructure again and again?
That’s usually the most expensive option of all.

The truth is:
most businesses do not need a custom CRM.
They need a CRM their team will actually use.
That’s a very different problem.

That’s also one of the reasons we built Dalil AI the way we did.
Not because the world needs another bloated CRM.
But because sales teams, especially mobile and field teams
needed something lighter, faster, and more natural.

Something that works where they already work.
- On WhatsApp.
- On LinkedIn.
- On email.

With AI handling the admin in the background.
Because the future is not “build everything from scratch.”

The future is:
buy the infrastructure you need,
and reinvent the parts that make your business unique.

Sometimes software is expensive.
But compared to operational chaos, 
lost deals, 
and wasted sales hours…

it’s often cheap.
Would you ever build your own CRM from scratch?

Founder and CTO at HubSpot. Helping millions grow better.

Founder to Founder: Why Can't I Just Vibe Code My Own CRM?

Yesterday, I shared that I was going into early-stage "founder mode" and digging into drive some founder-led growth (FLG) by actually *selling* HubSpot (the product, not just the vision).

In that post from yesterday, I committed to creating a series of "founder to founder" videos where I addressed questions that founders/entrepreneurs considering HubSpot might have.

The first video in that series is ready (after an embarrassingly high number of takes).  

Some quick takes:

* Can you actually use AI to vibe code your own CRM with current technology?

* A simple framework for determining when vibe coding is a good approach and when it's not.

* Why vibe coding your own CRM may not actually save you any money.

If you have feedback, questions or ideas for future videos, please leave a comment.

Thanks.

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