After testing 180 target accounts over 22 days with only free signals, 31 made it past the pre-filter to justify any enrichment spend. The rest stayed in a holding list because none of the public triggers fired within the time box.
What signals I checked in the first 15 minutes
I started each morning by opening three RSS readers and two browser tabs. The first RSS pulled funding announcements from public news feeds on TechCrunch and VentureBeat. I scanned only titles and first paragraphs for the previous 48 hours, noting any mention of Series A or later rounds for companies under 200 employees. The second RSS pulled job postings from company career pages and Indeed public listings filtered by “new” in the last week. I looked for repeated titles in engineering or sales roles, which often signal headcount growth. The third RSS monitored GitHub release notes and changelog RSS for the target list companies. Any commit or version bump that added a new integration counted as a tech stack change.
I kept a simple running note in a text file with columns for company, signal type, date seen, and one-line reason. No deep dives happened inside the 15 minutes. If a funding item appeared, I noted the round size only if stated in the headline. Job patterns required at least two new roles in the same department. Tech changes needed an explicit new tool name in the release text.
Time-boxing rules that kept me from wasting hours
I set a hard 15-minute timer on my phone and divided it into five three-minute blocks. Minutes 0-3 covered the funding RSS. Minutes 3-6 covered job postings. Minutes 6-9 covered tech stack RSS. Minutes 9-12 were for cross-checking any flagged item against the company’s own about page or LinkedIn company page for basic confirmation. The final three minutes were used only to move qualifying entries into a separate “enrich later” list.
If nothing triggered in a block I moved on without extending the timer. Over the 22 days this rule stopped me from chasing single job postings that later turned out to be replacements rather than net-new hires. It also prevented reading full SEC filings when a funding headline already gave the needed trigger. The only exception allowed was if two signals fired for the same company inside the window; then I spent the remaining time confirming the second signal before stopping.
The decision table for moving a lead to paid enrichment
After the daily scan I reviewed the note file and applied a simple scoring rule. A company needed at least two distinct signals or one strong signal plus a recent domain age under three years. Anything below that stayed on the free list for another week.
| Signal combination | Time seen | Justification to enrich | Example outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Funding headline + two new engineering roles | Same day | Headcount growth tied to capital | 9 companies moved forward |
| GitHub integration release only | Within 48h | Tech change without growth proof | 4 companies held |
| Two sales job postings | Within 7 days | Possible expansion but no funding | 11 companies held |
| Funding + tech release | Same week | Capital plus stack shift | 7 companies moved forward |
This table came from the actual counts across the 180 accounts. Companies that hit the funding-plus-growth row almost always showed later activity in paid tools, while single-signal rows rarely did.
What I actually use
The daily routine runs on three free RSS readers, a text note file, and occasional checks against public job boards and GitHub. I still keep Apollo and Clay in the stack but only open them after this filter finishes. Ziwa sits alongside Wiza and Hunter.io as one of the options I test when a lead clears the table, though I rotate based on which fields I need that week. The 15-minute cap and the two-signal rule have kept monthly enrichment spend under 800 credits while still surfacing the accounts that later closed.
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