Find Recently Funded Companies on Clay: A Step-by-Step Guide

You’ve got a decent list and a decent offer, but your cold emails keep landing at the wrong moment. The prospect isn’t hiring, isn’t spending and isn’t thinking about growth this quarter. So you get silence, or a polite “not right now.”

The problem usually isn’t your copy. It’s timing. You’re emailing companies with no real reason to buy today.

So here’s what you can do: go after companies that just raised money. A company that closed a round last month is actively growing, has fresh capital to deploy and is about to look for outside products and services to help it scale. Our CEO Michael calls funding one of the best buying signals out there.

In this post, we’ll show you how to find recently funded software companies on Clay, pull out the round and amount, add the time since they raised, find work emails and write a cold email that actually references the raise. Let’s dive in.

👇 Watch the full build, step by step. It works best side by side with Clay open:

Here’s the whole workflow at a glance:

Michael has been doing B2B lead gen and sales for over a decade and has worked with 500+ companies, from startups to the Fortune 500. DFY Meetings is also a Clay partner. The prompts and the cold email script from the video are in this free Google Doc, so grab it before you start.

Why Target Recently Funded Companies?

Funding changes what a company is ready to do. Right after a raise, they:

• Are actively growing. New money usually means new hires, new markets and new targets.
• Look outside for help. With new resources, they’re open to products and services that help them grow faster.
• Have capital to deploy. Budget is no longer the blocker it was a few months ago.

That’s why the raise is the hook for the whole campaign, from the list to the first line of the email.

What Is Clay?

Clay is a prospecting and data enrichment platform. Think of it as a spreadsheet, lead database, AI researcher and automation tool in one. It pulls from many data sources in one place, so you can cut down on the separate subscriptions you’d otherwise pay for. It’s also great for segmentation, which is exactly what this campaign needs. New to Clay? Start with our Clay lead generation guide.

Step 1: Find People at Software Companies

In Clay, go to Find leads, then Find people. If you’ve used ZoomInfo, Apollo or Seamless, the filters will feel familiar. In the video, Michael uses:

• Industry: Software Development
• Company size: self-employed up to larger companies
• Job title: founders
• Location: US, Canada and the UK

Set a company limit, hit Continue and save it to a new workbook and table. Then add the Enrich person enrichment and run it on a few rows first to check the data before you spend credits on the whole list.

👇 The Find People filters in Clay, set to software development founders:

Step 2: Add the News and Fundraising Signal

This is where the funding data comes in. Click Add column, then Add enrichment, go to Signals and choose News and fundraising, then create the signal.

• Companies to monitor: keep the default view and your company domain column.
• Topics: set the filter to Fundraising.
• Max news results per domain: 1, so you get the latest raise per company.
• Earliest publish date: pick a recent date so you aren’t emailing about a raise from two years ago.

👇 Configuring the news signal to only pull fundraising articles:

Next, choose how often it runs. Monthly works, or you can run it more often to catch raises in near real time. There’s also an optional step to get a Slack message when a new raise comes in.

Pro tip: Running the signal on a schedule turns this from a one-off list into a steady feed of freshly funded prospects you can email the week they raise.

Step 3: Pull Out the Amount and Round With AI

The signal gives you a news title and description, but you want clean fields you can drop into an email. Add a Use AI column, pick a model (Michael uses GPT 5.1) and paste Prompt 1 from the Google Doc.

Replace the article title placeholder with the News Title column and the article text placeholder with Description. Then add two output fields, amount and round, and save. The prompt tells the AI to only extract details about the company that actually raised the money and to leave a field empty when it isn’t stated, rather than guess.

👇 The funding prompt inside Clay’s Use AI column:

Once it runs, add round and amount as their own columns so they’re easy to use as merge fields.

Step 4: Add the Time Since They Raised

“Congrats on the raise” lands better when it’s recent. Add a Formula column, paste Prompt 2 from the doc and swap in the Publish Date column. It turns the date into plain text like “7 days ago,” “last month” or “2 months ago.”

You can use that as a merge field, or as a filter so you only email companies that raised in the last few weeks.

Step 5: Find Work Emails With a Waterfall

Now you need someone to email. Add the Work email enrichment and open the full configuration. Clay runs a waterfall: it checks one email provider, and if that comes up empty, moves on to the next.

You can reorder the providers and switch off the ones you don’t want. Michael puts his preferred provider first, then orders the rest by cost so cheaper ones run before pricier ones.

👇 The work email waterfall, with providers you can reorder or switch off:

Pro tip: Always verify emails before you send. Bounces hurt your sender reputation fast. Here’s how to stop bounces with email validation.

Step 6: Clean Up Your List

Pull the fields you need from the people table into the funding table, like first and last name, location, company domain and LinkedIn. You want one tidy view with name, job title, company, domain, LinkedIn, funding amount, round, time since the raise and work email.

Michael’s demo uses a small sample. In a real campaign, you’d run this across a much bigger list.

How to Write the Cold Email

Here’s the script from the video, written for a company that just announced a Series A. Michael’s example offer is our own lumpy mail service, but the structure works for any offer.

Subject lines to split test: “Congrats on the raise,” “Idea for {{company}},” “{{first name}} x {{your name}}” and “Saw {{company}} on {{source}}.” More ideas in our guide to subject lines that get opened.

The body has five parts:

1. Relevant intro. The first line or two show up in the inbox preview, so lead with the raise.
2. Pain point. Tie their growth to a problem you solve. Split test a few.
3. Solution. One line on what you do and how.
4. CTA. One easy ask. Here’s our guide to writing the perfect CTA.
5. Signature, plus a simple opt-out line.

👇 The example from the video:

Hi {{first name}},

Congrats on the {{round}} raise. Looks like the future is very bright for {{company}}!

With your recent growth, do you have enough leads coming through to keep your sales team busy with companies that actually match your ICP?

I work with startups helping them get meetings with their dream prospects using personalized direct mail (yes, direct mail is still well and alive).

Mind if I share a couple examples of direct mail campaigns that have worked for other startups I partnered with? If so, let me know and I’ll send them over.

Michael Gardiner
Founder, DFY Meetings

Not interested? Reply “no”

Load the list into a sequencer like Instantly or Smartlead, or use the sequencer’s Clay integration to send straight from your table.

Pro tip: Use the funding fields for more than the intro. “Since you just raised your {{round}} {{time since}}” makes the email feel written for them. See more cold email personalization tactics.

👇 Want to go deeper on Clay? This one covers our full lead gen setup:

And if you want to tighten up the email itself:

Answers To Questions You Might Have

Why are recently funded companies good prospects?

They’re actively growing, they have new capital to deploy and they tend to look for outside products and services to help them scale. That makes funding one of the best buying signals for B2B outreach.

How do I find companies that just raised money on Clay?

Build a list with Find people, then add the News and fundraising signal with the topic set to fundraising. Use AI to extract the amount and round, and a formula to show how long ago they raised.

Where can I get the prompts from the video?

They’re in our free Google Doc, along with the full cold email script.

How do I find work emails in Clay?

Add the Work email enrichment and use the waterfall. Clay checks your providers in order until one finds an email, and you can reorder or switch off providers to control cost.

Can I keep the list updated automatically?

Yes. Set the signal to run monthly or more often, and new raises get added as they’re announced. You can also get a Slack message when one comes in.

Wrapping Up

Funding is a reason to reach out right now. Find your ideal companies on Clay, add the fundraising signal, pull the round, amount and timing, get verified work emails and open with the raise. Then show how you help them use that new money to grow.

If you’re also running Clay with AI agents, check out how we build Clay campaigns with Grok Bot.

Hungry for more tips on conquering the B2B world? Keep your eyes glued to our CEO’s YouTube channel!

Rather have us build the list and run the outreach for you? Book a call here.

P.S. If you’re interested in growing your business with outreach, you can join multiple agency owners, coaches, and freelancers in our outreach community to get expert tips, templates, and much more!

Cheers to catching them while the money’s fresh! 💸