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How to find startup founders
Describe the founder market you want to reach
Add your target market or industry, such as fintech, B2B SaaS, or climate tech. Sculptor searches Clay's people database for Founders matching your criteria.
Sculptor sources and enriches each Founder row
Sculptor scans Clay's B2B contact data filtered by Founder title and your chosen industry, then waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified work email. Rows where a match is found return a confirmed Founder email.
Get your Founder list with verified emails
The finished table has company name and, for matched rows, a verified Founder email. Push to Smartlead, Instantly, or your sequencer to trigger a campaign the moment a row lands.
Why Clay for finding startup founders
Find People filtered by Founder title and industry
Target verified Founders and Co-Founders by title, industry, location, and company size from Clay's Find People dataset. Filter by description keywords to scope results to the exact startup segment you want, in minutes.
Waterfall enrichment across 150+ providers
Get verified work emails for matched Founder rows. Clay waterfalls through 150+ providers in sequence, charging credits only when a provider returns a hit, pushing coverage from 30% to 80% or higher.
Email verification before outreach delivery
Every matched row runs through email verification before it reaches your sequencer, flagging catch-alls and risky role inboxes so your bounces stay low and your sender reputation stays clean.
Push enriched Founder lists to Smartlead or Instantly
Connect Clay directly to Smartlead, Instantly, or Outreach to trigger your founder outreach campaign the moment a row lands, with AI-personalized copy built from enriched context on each contact.
With Clay, we more than doubled our enrichment coverage from low 40% to high 80%
Frequently asked questions
How does Sculptor find startup founders and their emails?
Sculptor searches funding databases like Crunchbase, Harmonic.ai, and Dealroom for founders matching your target industry or stage, then runs waterfall enrichment across multiple contact-data sources in sequence to locate a verified email for each founder. You type a description such as "B2B SaaS seed-stage" into the bracketed field, click Generate, and Sculptor builds the list automatically.
How accurate are the founder emails Clay returns?
Waterfall enrichment lifts email coverage from roughly 30% with a single provider to 80% or higher by querying multiple sources in sequence. Clay also validates returned emails against a curated set of verification services, including Findymail and Listmint, to flag invalid or outdated addresses before you export. You only spend credits when a match is found, so coverage stays high without wasted spend.
Can I find startup founders in bulk for a whole list?
Yes. Paste a list of target industries or funding stages, upload a CSV, or pipe data from an existing Clay table and Sculptor processes every row in parallel. Once enrichment finishes, push the full founder list to HubSpot, Salesforce, or export as a CSV in one click to start outreach immediately.
Is it legal to cold email startup founders I find this way?
In the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act permits B2B cold email as long as each message includes a valid physical address, an honest subject line, and a working opt-out mechanism. In the EU, GDPR Article 6(1)(f) allows outreach under a documented legitimate interest basis, though the ePrivacy Directive may impose stricter rules in some member states. Canada's CASL requires express or implied consent before the first send.
Always check the rules for your jurisdiction and honor opt-out requests promptly.