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How to generate startup leads
Describe your target startup market or stage
Paste your target market or funding stage into Sculptor, such as "Series A B2B SaaS companies with 50 to 200 employees." Sculptor scans Clay's company database for matches.
Sculptor builds and enriches the startup list
Sculptor assembles a startup list filtered by industry, headcount, funding stage, and location, then waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified email for the title you specified. Only matched rows get an email appended.
Get company name and verified contact email
The finished table has company name and, for rows the waterfall enriched, a verified email for your target title. Export to CSV, sync to Salesforce, or pipe into your outbound tool of choice.
Why Clay for generating startup leads
Startup-specific filters in one database
Find the right startups fast using Clay's B2B company database, filtered by industry, headcount, funding stage, founding date, and location. Claygent adds hiring signals and tech stack depth for rows where static filters fall short.
Waterfall enrichment for verified contact emails
Get verified emails for the matched rows. Clay waterfalls through 150+ providers in sequence and only charges credits when one returns a hit, pushing coverage well beyond what any single provider delivers.
ICP scoring layered with funding and hiring signals
Score every startup row on fit and intent using formula columns that combine funding stage, headcount, and active hiring signals. Claygent reads each company site to fill gaps that structured data misses.
Sync scored leads to Salesforce or LinkedIn Ads
Push your scored startup list directly to Salesforce or sync it to LinkedIn Ads as a matched audience, reaching named accounts with ads while your sequencer handles outbound in parallel.
Our most successful campaigns are built on data that doesn’t exist in off-the-shelf tools. Clay helps us find those signals — and transform ambitious ideas into executable, high-performing campaigns.
Frequently asked questions
How does Sculptor find recently funded startup leads?
Sculptor queries funding databases like Crunchbase and Harmonic.ai to surface startups matching your target industry or funding stage, then runs a waterfall enrichment across providers like Apollo, Hunter, and Prospeo to find a verified founder email for each company. You type a prompt such as "Series A fintech" and Sculptor returns company names and founder contacts in a ready-to-use table.
How accurate are the startup leads and founder emails?
Waterfall enrichment typically pushes email coverage from roughly 30% with a single provider to 80% or higher by querying Apollo, Hunter, Datagma, and Prospeo in sequence. You only pay for matches, not misses, and Clay verifies each email before returning it. Funding data pulled from Crunchbase and Harmonic.ai includes round amount, funding stage, and investor names, so you can confirm recency before reaching out.
Can I generate startup leads in bulk for a whole list?
Yes. Sculptor builds your full startup table in one run, and you can paste additional domains, upload a CSV of target companies, or pipe results from another Clay table to enrich at scale. Once every row has a company name and founder email, push the entire list to HubSpot, Salesforce, or a sequencer like Smartlead in a single export.
Is it legal to collect funded startup data for outreach?
CAN-SPAM allows B2B cold email in the U.S. as long as every message includes a working opt-out link. Under GDPR, B2B outreach to EU contacts can rely on legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)), but you must document a Legitimate Interest Assessment, disclose how you obtained the data, and honor erasure requests. CCPA now fully covers business contact data for California residents, so honor opt-out-of-sale requests within 15 business days.
Regulations vary by jurisdiction and change frequently, so always check the rules that apply to your recipients before launching a campaign.