FundzKnowledge Base
Playbook · Complete blueprint

Fundz for Software Founders

A complete blueprint for SaaS, AI-native, and indie software founders running founder-led GTM — using Fundz to find your ICP at the moment of funding, hiring, and exit events, with verified contacts and warm-network outreach via Engage.

What’s new for software founders
Just shipped2026-05-21
Buyer-function exec exits + unfilled-seat detection
The moment a target company’s VP-of-your-buyer-function departs is your displacement window: the incumbent vendor relationship resets, the new arrival re-evaluates the stack in their first 60-90 days. New Unfilled departures only filter on /sec-filings isolates exec departures where no replacement has been named — queue those orgs for outreach the day the new exec announces. Combine with a role filter (set CTO / CRO / CMO in Slack Settings depending on who you sell to) for in-function-only alerts.
Open /sec-filings
Recent updates
  • 2026-05-16Bulk Push to HubSpot from any filtered listbuild your ICP list once on /companies (industry + size + funding event), click Push to HubSpot. 1K/month, 10K/annual.
  • 2026-05-16Enriched Funding Slack alertsnew ICP-matched funding events show round amount + series + investors + AI summary + up to 4 suggested-outreach contacts with emails.
  • 2026-05-16Filter persistence + Save Onlynavigation preserves filters; saved filters can stay quiet (no daily email) for ICPs you reuse across campaigns.
FUNDZIQ SUMMARYBUYER INTENT78/ 100JDVERIFIEDjane@target.coLinkedInREVEAL MOBILE NUMBER
Every account you click into surfaces a Buyer Intent Score, signal context, and verified contact with mobile reveal.

You built a software product because you lived a problem. Now the harder part: finding the other founders, operators, and SMBs who feel that same pain — before someone else lands in their inbox first. Cold spray doesn't work for founder-led sales. Generic BDR motions burn the brand you spent a year building. What works is showing up at the right moment, with the right context, in a voice that sounds like a peer.

Fundz turns the events that create buying moments — funding rounds, exec hires, hiring surges, acquisitions, product launches — into a daily inbox of ICP-matched companies, each with verified contacts and a Buyer Intent Score. Engage layers your warm 1st-degree LinkedIn network on top, so the highest-leverage outreach goes to people you already share connections with.

  • AI-native vertical SaaS founders — you're building category-defining software for a specific operator role (finance, ops, RevOps, marketing). Your ICP is funded companies that just hit a scaling threshold. Funding rounds and hiring surges are your primary triggers.
  • Indie and bootstrapped B2B SaaS founders — small team, founder-led sales, no SDR yet. You can't afford a 100-touch sequence; every outreach has to count. Warm 1st-degree via Engage is the highest-yield motion you have.
  • Early-stage startup founders (pre-seed to Series A) — you're doing everything yourself: product, pitch, sales. Fundz collapses three tools (signal feed, contact data, outreach drafting) into one daily workflow.

Step 1: Fill in your ICP and product description

Visit /account and complete the targeting profile: industry verticals you sell into, employee count band of your ideal customer, buyer titles (Founder/CEO, COO, CFO, Head of Ops, etc.), and a one-paragraph product description. This is what the scorer uses to rank your daily leads — an empty profile means generic results. Two minutes here is the single highest-leverage setup step.

Step 2: Save two Mandates

Pick the two most relevant Mandates from the Mandate setups section. Most founders start with Funded ICP and Hiring Surge. Add a third later once the first two are running smoothly.

Step 3: Configure notifications

Visit /account?component=connectors and connect Slack, then toggle on Releases (funding) at minimum. If you sell into specific buyer-function roles (CTO/CRO/CMO/CFO), also toggle on SEC filings — 8-K Item 5.02 (Executive transitions) with the role-pill set to your buyer function only — that’s the canonical real-time alert for displacement-window prospects.

Step 4: Set up Engage (warm-network outreach)

Founder-led sales lives or dies on the warm network. Visit /engage/setup, complete the five-step setup, and upload your LinkedIn Connections.csv from your data archive. Engage scores every 1st-degree connection against your ICP and queues warm DMs for you in Slack each morning.

Fundz is a signal-intelligence platform: real-time funding rounds, executive hires and departures, M&A, contracts, product launches, and workplace sentiment shifts — paired with verified ICP-scored contacts and 200 mobile direct dials per month on the Strategic plan.

For founder-led GTM, Fundz fills three roles at once: it replaces the cold prospect list you'd otherwise scrape, the contact data tool you'd pay for separately, and the outbound drafting your team doesn't have time to write. The Daily Leads Inbox surfaces 5–10 ICP-scored companies each morning. The Buyer Intent Score on each Deep Dive page is your same-day-versus-later triage. Engage handles the warm network in parallel — cold daily list, warm referral queue, both running off the same ICP profile.

Stuck after two weeks?
Most setup issues for founder-led GTM come down to an empty ICP profile, Mandates that don't reflect actual ICP, or Engage not yet fed with voice samples. We'll sit with you for 15 minutes and tune all three.
Book a 15-minute setup call →
This playbook is written for software founders running founder-led GTM. If you're an advisor, recruiter, wealth manager, M&A banker, or sales rep, each has its own playbook. See all playbooks →