Your play
Here’s The Founder Play, the RevOps system for founders running sales solo with 3-5 hours a week for outbound.
For founders running sales solo with 3-5 hours a week for outbound. Your unfair advantage is your face and your story. This system is built around both.
What you’re building.
Three pipeline paths running in parallel off one TAM:
- Signal-led manual outreach on the 10-15 hottest accounts each week (where 70% of your meetings come from)
- Content + automated volume running quietly in the background so pipeline doesn’t gap when signals go quiet
- A 30-minute inbound SLA so warm leads get a call while they’re still thinking about you
The six steps:
- Map a 500-2,000 account TAM in Clay
- Layer buying signals on top (job changes, funding, hiring, engagement)
- Score and enrich only the top 10-15 each week
- Run founder-led manual outreach on that priority queue
- Run content + automated volume in parallel
- Centralise inbound with a 30-minute call SLA
Once set up, the whole system takes 8-12 hours a week to run. If you’re spending more, something’s automatable.
What you’ll need.
Six phases, in order.
01
Map your TAM in Clay
60-90 minMost founders skip this and buy or scrape a list. That’s a slow, expensive way to burn time.
- Create a new Clay table and run a company search with your tightest ICP filters:
- Industry (2-3 verticals max)
- Headcount band
- Geography
- Tech stack
- Funding stage
- Aim for 500-2,000 accounts. If you’re over 2,000, tighten the filters. Smaller is better at this stage, founder-led only works at depth.
- Add columns for: account owner (you), signal score, last touch date, status.
Clay company search with ICP filters applied, showing a ~1,200 account result
02
Build the signal layer
90 minA static list is useless on its own. Stack signals on top:
- In Clay, add enrichment columns for:
- Job changes into buyer titles (LinkedIn monitoring)
- Funding rounds, Series A to C (news APIs)
- Hiring intent, open roles relevant to your product (job board scrapes)
- Tech stack changes
- Connect Trigify to track everyone engaging with your LinkedIn content, and pipe engagers into the same Clay table.
Clay table with signal columns populated across accounts
Stacked signals (2+) lift reply rates 2-3x vs cold lists. One signal alone isn’t enough.
03
Score, prioritise, enrich
45 minYour time is the bottleneck. Only work the best 10-15 accounts a week.
- Build a Clay formula column that assigns points per signal:
- Job change = 5
- Content engagement = 5
- Funding = 4
- Hiring = 3
- Score above 7 = priority queue. Sort by score daily.
- Enrich only the priority queue with Prospeo: verified work email, mobile, LinkedIn URL. Don’t waste credits on low scores.
Clay scoring formula and sorted priority queue
04
Founder-led outreach on the priority queue
No setup needed, this is the manual motion. For each priority lead:
- Personalised LinkedIn DM referencing the signal
- 1:1 email (no template), same context, different angle
- Trellus call if a mobile came back from enrichment
- 3 touches over 5 days, then move on
Founders close founders. Templates feel like templates. The signal gives you the “why now”.
05
Content + automated volume in parallel
2-3 hoursThe priority queue covers 5-15 accounts a week. You need volume for compounding.
Warm volume (content path):
- Post 3-5 times a week on LinkedIn: educational, opinion, case studies
- Trigify tracks every engager automatically
- Pipe engagers into Clay, enrich, filter for ICP fit
- DM the ICP-fit engagers once a week (Thursday works)
Cold volume (backup path):
- Pull a wider Clay segment, 1,000-3,000 contacts matching ICP but with no active signal
- Enrich with Prospeo
- Set up a 3-touch Instantly email cadence over 14 days
- Set up HeyReach: LinkedIn connect + 2 DM follow-ups
- Webhook positive replies to Slack so you see them instantly
Instantly cadence builder with the 3-touch sequence
Two-channel cadences (email + LinkedIn) outperform email-only by 30-40%.
06
Inbound with a 30-minute SLA
60 minInbound replies converted within 5-30 minutes are 5x more likely to book than ones over 24 hours. You’re competing on speed at this tier.
- Webhook every inbound source (forms, calendar bookings, downloads, demo requests) into one Clay table
- Auto-enrich every record: company, headcount, tech stack, funding, ICP score
- Mark each as Qualified or Nurture based on ICP match + intent
- Slack notification for qualified leads with full context attached
- Call within 30 minutes during business hours
- Non-qualified go into a 4-touch Instantly nurture over 90 days
Slack alert showing an enriched inbound lead with score and context
Your operating cadence.
- Monday AM (60 min): review signal queue, pick the week’s top 15
- Mon-Wed (60-90 min/day): manual outreach on the priority queue
- Thursday AM (45 min): DM the ICP-fit engagers from Trigify
- Friday PM (30 min): pipeline review, update Clay, plan next week’s content
- Daily (5 min): check the inbound Slack channel, respond to qualified within 30 min
Mistakes that kill this play.
- Building too wide a TAM. Depth beats breadth every time at this stage
- Skipping the signal score. Without it you’ll work random accounts
- Forgetting the volume play. Signal-led only means pipeline gaps when signals go quiet
- Slow inbound response. Every minute past 5 is a meeting you don’t get
- Running outbound, content, and inbound as three separate motions. They share the same TAM, enrichment, and scoring. Separating them means duplicated work and lower hit rates
● Calculator
What 30-40% more pipeline is worth.
Same selling hours, same reps. Move the sliders to your numbers.
Same selling hours. Annual upside:
£86k to £115k
more closed revenue a yearLeads called within 5 minutes convert 2-4x better than leads called in 30. The industry average response is 47 hours.
● The stack
Tools we run this play on.
● Get started
Get my 10 accounts→See it working on your market.
Book a 30-minute call and we’ll show you this live: 10 accounts in your ICP with buying signals that fired in the last 7 days, the full buying committee, and verified contact info for every lead.