10+ Positive Replies from a List of Under 100

Challenge

• Video Agencies are a very competitive space and very difficult to break into through outbound.

• Manual outreach was causing burnout; the CMO spent several months building lists and writing copy entirely by hand.

• Low conversion rates from manual efforts yielded almost no new clients after months of hustling.

• The outbound landscape proved too complex and rapidly evolving to manage while simultaneously running the core video production business.

System & Implementation

Decade Journey partnered with Represent to replace their outbound with a Go-To-Market system. We:

• Built a custom data infrastructure using Clay to automatically scrape, track, and enrich founders directly from the YCombinator directory (for every batch).

• Deployed intent-monitoring systems to track specific buying signals and keyword mentions across platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit.

• Launched multi-channel outbound campaigns (Email and LinkedIn) triggered instantly by these buying signals.

• Replaced AI copy with 100% human-written, hyper-personalized messaging that resonated with recently YCombinator founders.

Enhanced Customer Segmentation

• Granular YC Batch Targeting: Instead of broad, generic lists, we isolated the absolute highest-intent prospects, specifically targeting 157 founders from the latest YC batch.

• Reply Rates: By pairing precise segmentation with personalized messaging, the campaign achieved 21.02% total reply rate (33 replies).

• High-Intent Conversion: The messaging was so effectively tailored to the prospects' current growth stage that 54.55% of all replies were positive, generating 18 qualified opportunities for the Represent sales pipeline.

• Zero Ad Spend Dependency: We bypassed the need for expensive, competitive ad channels by utilizing multi-channel across email and LinkedIn.

Future Action Plan

• Expand the signal-based monitoring systems to track startups raising Series A and Series B rounds, moving beyond just the initial YC batches.

• Enhance our custom Clay workflows to identify and map secondary decision-makers (such as Technical Co-Founders or Heads of Growth) within these target accounts for multi-threading.

"Gui is outstanding at learning who your customers are and figuring out the type of messaging that will resonate so they feel stupid not responding to the email... We launched a campaign to a list of under 100 people and had 10 positive responses." — Renat, CEO at Represent