Reading the Signals

Reading the Signals

Every Lead Discovery candidate ships with one or more signals — short labels that tell you why this lead is worth contacting now. They're the difference between a cold email and a warm-context outreach.

Where signals come from

Signals are derived in three places:

1. At the hunter — the hunter that found the candidate attaches signals from its source data (e.g. OSM tags like opening hours published, wheelchair-accessible).
2. At the cascade resolver — for news / RSS / signal-driven candidates, the cascade attaches signals derived from the originating article (e.g. recent funding announcement, leadership change, product launch, M&A signal).
3. At the judges — the qualifier-arbiter chain may attach scoring signals (founder role match, SaaS sector match, Series A intent, India location confirmed).

Common signals and what they mean

Tech-founder / news-rss signals

• `recent funding announcement` — Company appeared in a funding-round article in the last 30 days. The cascade resolver often pulls in fresh contact info from the press release.
• `leadership change` — A new CTO/CEO/CMO joined or was announced. Fresh hires are highly motivated to make their mark — great cold-outreach moment.
• `product launch` — Company shipped a new product or major feature recently. Often correlates with hiring + budget.
• `M&A signal` — Acquisition or merger announcement. Acquired teams reorganize and re-purchase tooling.

GitHub signals

• `actively building (GitHub bio)` — Bio contains "building", "launching", "founded", "raised", or "ship". Strong indicator of an active operator vs a dormant profile.
• `public email on GitHub` — They've explicitly published an email in their profile. Highest-confidence email source.
• `Twitter linked` — They list a Twitter handle. You can cross-reference their Twitter for recent posts to time outreach.
• `personal site / blog public` — Their blog is in the bio. Often a treasure of context for personalization.
• `based in <City>` — GitHub location string they self-published.

OSM (SMB) signals

• `opening hours published` — The business cares enough to maintain hours. Indicator of an active, professional operation (vs an abandoned listing).
• `wheelchair-accessible` — Physical accessibility tagged. Useful for sales narratives that mention community-mindedness.
• `has public website` — There's a site to research before calling. Almost always means a real, contactable business.
• `phone listed` — Phone number on the OSM record. Direct call route.

Reddit signals

• `build-in-public post` — They self-identified as a founder in a r/SaaS/r/startups/r/IndianStartups post.
• `bootstrapped` / `raised seed` / `raising round` — Mentioned in the post body, lifted to the candidate.

How signals affect your outreach

Signals are designed to be quoted directly in your first email or message:

> Hi <Name>, saw the funding announcement in TechCrunch — congrats on the Series B. Building <product> in <market> — would 15 minutes next week be useful?

> Hi <Name>, came across your clinic on Berlin OSM — noticed you have opening hours published which tells me you're well-organized. We help dental practices like yours with <X>. Worth a 10-minute chat?

> Hi <Name>, your bio says you're actively building at <Company>. Would love 15 min to compare notes on <topic>.

The AI Outreach Inbox automatically incorporates signals into draft messages — see the AI Outreach article for more.

Signal-driven monitoring

After you accept a lead, WRRK automatically subscribes them to a signal watcher. If they appear in any of the news / RSS / hiring / funding / leadership feeds in the future, you'll see a fresh signal in the Signals tab — even if you haven't run a discovery query in months.

This means the cold pile becomes warm over time without your team doing anything.