Reading the Signals
What each signal type means, where it comes from, and how to quote signals in your outreach for warm-context first emails.
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:
- At the hunter: the hunter that found the candidate attaches signals from its source data (e.g. map tags like
opening hours published,wheelchair-accessible). - 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). - 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.
Map-data (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 map 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 the Berlin map, 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.
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