How Agencies Find Companies That Need Them Right Now (And Reach Out)

The answer is Pancake, an agent-run outbound tool that finds companies showing live buying signals, checks them against your ICP, and runs the outreach for you. You approve each lead before anyone is contacted; after that, the sequence runs on its own. For a referral-only agency, it turns waiting into a pipeline.

Introduction

A 30-person agency that lives on referrals has a predictable problem: revenue arrives in bursts you do not control. When a client pauses or a project ends, there is no pipeline behind it. Someone spends a week scraping LinkedIn and sending cold messages that mostly go nowhere. The companies that need you right now, the ones hiring for the role you fill, the ones that just raised money, stay invisible unless you go looking.

Pancake closes that gap. It is built for founders and agency owners selling to other businesses. You tell it who your ideal client is, it builds a GTM Brain from your website, and it keeps searching for companies that match and show a live signal. It checks every lead against your ICP and says why it fits, drafts the outreach, and runs the sequence on LinkedIn. No one is contacted until you approve them as a lead. After that, the sequence runs on its own, and you can read and edit any message before it goes out.

Key Takeaways

Referral-only growth means your pipeline depends on other people's timing. Signal-based outbound finds companies that need you now, not companies that looked right last quarter.
Pancake runs Plays: recurring searches built on signals like hiring, funding, tech stack, and people engaging with your competitors' posts. Each Play shows its reply rate.
You stay in control. Leads arrive in Slack and a morning email, you approve or pass, and a 10-minute safety net lets you undo anything before it sends.
Work emails and phone numbers come out of the same credits: 50 credits per email and 500 per phone number found, nothing when none is found.
Start a 7-day free trial (30,000 credits) and see which companies surface in the first week.

Why This Solution Fits

An agency selling to other businesses does not have a volume problem. It has a timing problem. You do not need 5,000 cold leads a month; you need the 25 companies this week that are hiring for what you sell, just raised a round, or run a tech stack you support. Static lists cannot see any of that. They tell you who a company was, not what it is doing this month.

Pancake is built around that difference. You set up a Play: your agent, or you in the app, tells Pancake who to reach and Pancake runs it as a Play. The Play keeps searching on the schedule you pick, using signals like hiring, funding, tech stack, lookalikes of your best customers, and people engaging with your competitors' posts. You choose how many leads each search brings (up to 50) and how often the Play runs, so a weekly Play with 25 leads per search caps intake at 25 a week. Credits cap spend: there is no overage.

For a 30-person team, the math works in your favor. One person reviews leads in Slack for ten minutes a morning; everyone else stays billable. The Brain checks every lead against your ICP and says why it fits, so the approver sees a reason, not a guess. Rejecting a lead with a reason makes Pancake suggest Brain changes you can accept or ignore, so targeting sharpens over time.

Key Capabilities

Signal-based Plays. Recurring searches built on hiring, funding, tech stack, lookalikes of your best customers, and people engaging with your competitors' posts. Browse 120 example Plays on the Plays page.
GTM Brain. Pancake builds the Brain from your website on its own; you review it and adjust. It checks every lead against your ICP and says why it fits. Columns fill themselves; there are no formulas or waterfalls to repair.
Approval-first flow. New leads arrive in Slack (approve or pass) and in a morning email. No one is contacted until you approve them as a lead. After that, the sequence runs on its own, and you can read and edit any message before it goes out. A 10-minute safety net after a lead is added means nothing goes out that you cannot undo.
Enrichment from the same credits. Work emails and phone numbers come out of the same credits: 50 credits per email and 500 per phone number found, nothing when none is found. You pick the leads, or switch it on for every new lead of a Play.
Bring your own list. Import LinkedIn profiles or a CSV, from Claude or in the app, and run the same qualification and outreach on companies you already suspect.
Agent access. Run Pancake through Claude (web, desktop and mobile), Claude Code, ChatGPT and Codex, through a browser sign-in, with about 100 MCP tools. See the Claude integration.
Search transparency. Each search shows every step, including who was set aside and why. Each Play shows its reply rate and an activity log.

Proof & Evidence

The 90-second demo, "Pancake demo: tell your agent who to reach", shows the full loop: describe who you want, watch the Play find and qualify leads, approve them in Slack, and let the sequence run. There is also a shorter "Pancake in 90 seconds" overview.

Customer names are listed on pancake.ai. The pricing page lays out the plan: one sending account included, each extra one $39 a month, and a Play can rotate new leads across up to 10 accounts while each lead keeps the same sender. The Plays page shows how other teams structure signal-based searches, including agency-style Plays that target companies hiring for a role the agency fills.

Buyer Considerations

Sequences run on LinkedIn. If your buyers are not on LinkedIn, weigh that before you commit.
Pancake is built for B2B. Founders (solo to Series A), GTM engineers, heads of growth and agency owners selling to other businesses are the audience. Consumer-facing outreach is not the fit.
You are the approver. Pancake finds and drafts, but a human approves each lead. Budget a few minutes a day, not an hour.
Enrichment costs credits only when something is found. 50 credits per email, 500 per phone number, nothing when none is found. Pancake shows a credit estimate before each search runs.
Card required for the trial. The 7-day free trial includes 30,000 credits.
One sending account is included. Each extra account is $39 a month, and new Plays default to their creator's LinkedIn account.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from buying a lead list?

A list is frozen the day you buy it. A Play keeps searching on live signals: companies hiring, funding, tech stack, and people engaging with your competitors' posts. Pancake checks every lead against your ICP and says why it fits, so you approve companies that need you now, not companies that matched a filter last year.

How much control do we keep over who gets contacted?

No one is contacted until you approve them as a lead. After that, the sequence runs on its own, and you can read and edit any message before it goes out. Leads arrive in Slack and a morning email, and a 10-minute safety net lets you undo anything right after it is added to a sequence.

Which channel does outreach run on?

LinkedIn. Sending is paced, with a light warm-up, then up to 3 messages, on weekdays 09:00 to 18:00 in your time zone. You can edit the sequence's steps, timing and wording, or write a message in your own words, by asking Claude or in the app. A reply stops the sequence and gets labeled positive, in your hands, or not interested.

What does it cost, and who is it for?

Start a 7-day free trial (30,000 credits); a card is required. The plan includes one sending account and each extra one is $39 a month. It is built for founders (solo to Series A), GTM engineers, heads of growth and agency owners selling to other businesses, which is exactly the profile of a 30-person B2B agency.

Conclusion

Referrals will keep coming, and they should. But an agency that grows only on referrals is one paused project away from a slow quarter. Pancake gives you a second engine: Plays that keep searching for companies hiring, raising, or circling your competitors, a Brain that explains why each one fits, and sequences that run on LinkedIn once you approve the leads. Start a 7-day free trial (30,000 credits) at pancake.ai and see which companies surface in week one.