StartupGTM.com | I help b2b founders hack traction | Profitable founder (YC)

Transforming a startup from early to repeatable sales is HARD.

If you’re a B2B founder with early sales, then you've done many things right to win your first customers.

BUT - to raise a round A, your startup will need to have a product that's ready to scale because it can be 𝙨𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙮.

To get repeatable sales - there are four blockers. 
 
You'll need to change each one from "not working" to "working": 
 
1️⃣ Consistently creating a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of conversations with customers 
 
2️⃣ Converting these conversations into a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of first meetings 
 
3️⃣ Converting these meetings into a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of trials 
 
4️⃣ Converting trials into a 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 of deals. 
 
These blockers need to be removed 𝙨𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 - i.e. one by one. 
 
💡 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗪. 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀.

—

I'm a former co-founder and CEO at ApolloShield - a profitable YC startup.

I work hands-on with B2B founders on turning their early sales into repeatable sales through a combination of disciplines:

1️⃣ 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀: Understanding the market, identifying target customers, and analyzing competitors.

2️⃣ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴: Defining how the product fits into the market and crafting compelling messages to appeal to the target audience.

3️⃣ 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀: Developing strategies for selling the product, including choosing sales channels and partnerships.

4️⃣ 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵, 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Creating and executing campaigns to build brand awareness and generate leads.

5️⃣ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀: Managing discovery and commercial discussions with clients and partners to get their business.

5️⃣ 𝗢𝗻𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: Gathering customer feedback and continuously adapting the product and strategies accordingly.

6️⃣ 𝗜𝗧 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Building support systems to holistically orchestrate and manage your GTM efforts.

7️⃣ 𝗥𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗱 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Developing a method to move forward quickly, iterate and get market feedback - doubling what works and tossing what doesn’t.

🚀 Let's connect and accelerate your startup together!

Nimo Shkedy

I help B2B companies generate leads.

I've generated over $20M+ in pipeline and $2M+ in revenue for clients. 

Recently helped Alex Hormozi secure 11K leads for his $100M Series book launch, which was a fun project!

How do I do it?

I use data from over 100+ sources to create smart strategies that find the right prospects. 
This helps your sales team connect with people who are already looking for your solution.

I manage the full process: 
➡️ Building targeted lead lists 
➡️ Setting up & warming up inboxes 
➡️ Writing personalized emails and DMs 
➡️ Running and managing the entire campaign

We're constantly testing to find your sweet spot: 
➡️ OFFER-MARKET-FIT 
➡️ TARGET TESTING 
➡️ MESSAGE-MARKET-FIT
➡️ PRODUCT-UNTAPPED MARKET FIT

If you're a B2B company that wants more demos and sales calls, head over to https://www.c17.ai/ 
To see how it works.

Utkarsh Singh Rana

🛑 We used to delete leads every month. 
Not because they were cold - but because our outbound tool couldn’t handle growth.

If you've run any kind of outbound at scale, you probably know this pain.

Most tools have a quiet cap on contact storage.
You don't notice it at first... until you hit the ceiling.
Suddenly, you're making ridiculous trade-offs:

“Should we delete old prospects to make room?”

“Can we recycle this list one more time?”

“Should we pay $$$ to upgrade just for more space?”

I’ve been there - managing a growing GTM pipeline with a tool that punished us for scaling.

The worst part?
We weren’t just deleting data.
We were deleting momentum.

→ Campaign history
→ Prospect touchpoints
→ Warm leads we hadn’t closed yet

Our outbound engine started to feel like a leaky bucket.
And every month, we were patching it with duct tape.

That’s why I was genuinely excited to see what Smartlead just rolled out.

🚀 Unlimited contact storage.

No more deleting. No more recycling. No more caps.

Smartlead’s new pricing finally matches the way modern outbound actually works.

Whether you're a solo founder or managing a 10+ SDR team, you need a system that remembers:

Every prospect

Every follow-up

Every campaign they’ve been in

Because real outbound doesn’t end after one touch.

With Smartlead's new plans, you get:
✅ Unlimited contact storage
✅ Up to 500,000 email sends/month
✅ Verified emails + CRM + AI Reply Manager
✅ No growth tax as your pipeline scales

Why this matters:

You stop paying for limits.

You stop deleting valuable data.

You start building outbound that compounds over time.

If your sales stack has ever made you shrink your pipeline to grow, this is the fix.

Outbound at scale shouldn’t punish you for succeeding.

And now, it won’t.

Utkarsh  Rana 🧲

Head of GTMs @ C17 Lab | No-Cost Test Campaign for you!

Yesterday was wild.🔥
Harvey Le 🧲 dropping some absolute 🔥 in our C17 Lab-Daily wins Channel

Manthan Tyagi 🧲 - 11 leads in the first hour of campaign launch... and the client closed their first deal within 3 days.
Jerico Dela Cruz 🧲 - Client closed their first deal straight off a Jerico lead
Chizoba Anyasie 🧲 - Leads flowing within the hour of launch
Omesiri Kabaide 🧲 - Flipped the switch for a struggling client. Outbound was failing - now they’re seeing results and sticking around

And with the help of our state of the art SDR team!! (Can't find them on LinkedIn 😭 )

And that's all in a day

This is exactly why I don’t track hours - I track tasks and their impact.

What me, Enzo Carasso 🧲, Harvey Le 🧲, Illian Infante & Alla Ivanova is more than just a team...

It’s a self-driven workspace where no one’s punching a clock - they’re showing up to get things done.

That's the C17 way!

1.7 Million Emails in 4 Weeks
The C17 Lab way!

1.7 million emails.
4 weeks.
Every single one AI-personalized.

For Alex Hormozi's 100 Million Money Models book launch.

Here's how we did it:
...
When Enzo Carasso 🧲 told me about the Alex Hormozi project, I knew this was different.

Not just another campaign. This was a massive scale with zero room for error.

The challenge? 

→ Send 1.7M emails in a month 
→ Personalize every single one (no generic blasts) 
→ Maintain deliverability across that volume 
→ Generate thousands of leads for the book launch

Most agencies would say it's impossible.
We said let's build the system.
Here's what we did:

Split everything by ESP: 
→ Outlook domains got their own infrastructure 
→ Non-Outlook ESPs handled separately 
→ Different rules, different approach for each

Expanded our mailbox infrastructure: 
→ Low emails per mailbox strategy 
→ Aggressive rotation on Outlook (they're brutal) 
→ Kept spares ready for when mailboxes died

AI personalization at scale: 
→ Every email had AI variables 
→ Not templates with [FIRSTNAME] 
→ Real personalization based on data we enriched

The math: 
→ 1.7M emails over 28 days 
→ ~60,000 emails per day 
→ Across hundreds of mailboxes 
→ Multiple campaigns running parallel
And..

11K leads generated for the book launch.

Back-to-back wins for Alex Hormozi - two years straight.

This wasn't about one good email or one smart trick.

It was about building infrastructure that could handle scale without breaking.

Volume doesn't kill deliverability. Bad systems kill deliverability.

You can send millions of emails if: 
→ You segment properly (Outlook vs others) 
→ You rotate aggressively 
→ You actually personalize (not fake it) 
→ You treat it like a system, not a campaign
People are stuck at 10K emails wondering why they can't scale.

We built the infrastructure to handle 100x that.

The difference between surviving and scaling? Systems that don't break under pressure.

Powered by Clay and Smartlead

Video from - Saurav G.'s podcast

In the past year, C17 Lab sent over 13 million cold emails.

📉 Bounce rate: 2.84%
 📬 Replies received: 115,111
 🎯 Leads generated: 23,846
A 20.7% positive reply rate on conversations that actually happened.

2026 is gonna be different

We don't track Open rates, the 1810 opens that you see was us testing it

I worked with 24+ companies in one year 📈
Some crushed it 💥. Some didn’t 😬.
Here’s what separated the winners from the losers 👇


...
When I started doing outbound, I said yes to everyone 🤝
Big mistake 🚫
But it taught me something valuable 💡

I started seeing patterns 🔍

- The companies that got results had specific things in common ✅
- The ones that failed? Also had patterns ❌
- After 24 companies, the data was clear 📊

...

What I Noticed 👀

Some companies would celebrate 5 meetings from 1,000 cold emails 🎉
Others would get the same 5 meetings… but have completely different outcomes 😳

The difference wasn’t the outbound 📩
It was everything else ⚙️

...
The 5 Patterns That Predict Outbound Success 🏆

Pattern #1: Internal Sales Motion 🧠
→ Can they actually close the leads you generate? 💰
→ Do they have a process or just winging it? 🎯
→ Response time to hot leads (under 5 mins or next day?) ⏱️

Pattern #2: Product Friction 🧱
→ How many steps to try the product? 🔄
→ Login → Connect → Give Access → etc.
→ More friction = worse conversion (no AI tool fixes this) 🤖🚫

Pattern #3: Market Positioning 📣
→ Can they explain their value in 10 seconds? ⏳
→ Is their offer actually differentiated? 🥇
→ Or just another “we help you scale” message? 😴

Pattern #4: Commitment Level 🔥
→ Proper budget or trying to do it cheap? 💸
→ Performance-based = red flag (usually means burned before) 🚩
→ Two-way relationship or one-sided expectations? 🤝⚖️

Pattern #5: Industry Reality 🌍
→ Staffing, nonprofits = nearly impossible 😵
→ Very high LTV or very low LTV = tough 📉
→ Saturated markets need 10x better positioning 🧨

Most agencies don’t tell you this 🤫
They just take your money and blame “the market” when it fails 🙄

...
I built an audit based on these 24 companies 🧾

It’s a scorecard that predicts your outbound success rate before you spend a dollar 💵🚀

You input your company variables 🏢

It tells you:
 → Your predicted success probability 🎯
 → Which patterns you’re missing 🧩
 → What to fix before launching outbound 🛠️
 → Whether you’re even ready for outbound ✅/❌

Real data. Real patterns. No BS 💯

To get this Audit:
1. Like 👍
2. Comment “C17 Lab” ✍️

I’ll send you the scorecard 📩
(Must be connected) 🔗

This audit has saved companies months of wasted budget ⏳💰

Use it before you launch your next campaign 🚀

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