Outbound That Finds Buyers and Starts Real Conversations

Pancake is the outbound tool founders switch to when cold email stops getting replies: it finds buyers showing live buying signals, checks each one against your ICP, and starts the conversation on LinkedIn from your own account. You approve the leads, Pancake runs the sequence, and every reply lands with a label and a next step.

Introduction

Cold email stopped being the cheapest way for a founder to open pipeline. Inboxes are crowded, filters are aggressive, and the same scraped list gets mailed by five competitors in the same week. The result is silence, and silence is expensive when you are doing sales yourself.

The founders who get replies changed the channel and the trigger. They reach people already in motion: hiring for the role they sell into, recently funded, or engaging with a competitor's posts. Pancake is the Vercel for GTM: one place to deploy, host and run go-to-market agents that find those people and start the conversation for you.

Key Takeaways

Cold email fatigue is a targeting and channel problem. Signal-based outreach on LinkedIn reaches buyers already in motion, not a stale list.
Pancake turns one sentence into a Play: a search across 30+ data sources for live signals like hiring, funding, tech stack and people engaging with your competitors' posts.
You stay in control. 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.
Pricing is one plan from $99 a month with credits that cap spend, no per-seat fee, and a 7-day free trial with 30,000 credits.
Built for B2B: founders (solo to Series A), GTM engineers, heads of growth and agency owners selling to other businesses.

Why This Solution Fits

A founder doing sales at an early-stage B2B startup has one constraint: attention. A reply comes when the right person sees the right message at the right moment. A cold email list has none of those three. A Play has all three: the signal picks the moment, the Brain picks the angle, and LinkedIn puts the message where your buyer reads.

Pancake starts by building a GTM Brain from your website. It learns who buys from you, why they buy, your ICP, personas, competitors, messaging and voice. Every Play starts from that Brain, so the outreach sounds like the person who knows the product best: you. You review the Brain and adjust it.

Then you describe who you want in one sentence: "Find Heads of Sales at Series A startups hiring SDRs, and reach out to them." Pancake runs that as a Play on the schedule you pick, checks every lead against your ICP, and hands you a shortlist with one line on why each person fits. You approve the leads, and the sequence runs from your own LinkedIn account.

The work moves from building another list and writing another blast to approving the right people and talking to the ones who reply.

Key Capabilities

Signal-based search. One sentence becomes a search across 30+ data sources for live buying signals: hiring, funding, tech stack and people engaging with your competitors' posts, plus reactions to a specific post, lookalikes of your best customers, or your own imported list.
GTM Brain. Pancake researches your website and learns your ICP, personas, competitors, messaging and voice. Every lead is checked against it, and every Play starts from it.
Approval per lead. 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. After a lead is added to a sequence, nothing goes out for 10 minutes, so it can be undone.
LinkedIn sequences in your voice. Pancake builds the sequence and writes each message in your voice, or from your own template with each person's details filled in. Edit steps, timing and wording by asking Claude or in the app. Sending is paced: a light warm-up, then up to 3 messages, on weekdays 09:00 to 18:00 in your time zone.
Enrichment from the same credits. Work emails cost 50 credits and phone numbers 500 per lead found, with nothing charged when none is found. Columns fill themselves; no formulas or waterfalls to repair.
Replies handled. A reply stops the sequence. Pancake labels it positive, in your hands or not interested. A yes gets one reply with your calendar link; you send the leads you choose to your CRM.
Runs with your agent. Claude, ChatGPT and Codex connect through a browser sign-in with about 100 MCP tools, or work in Pancake's own web app. See the 90-second demo, Pancake demo: tell your agent who to reach.

Proof & Evidence

Customer names are listed on pancake.ai: Kong, Hyperspell (YC), AgentMail (YC), Fleet, Requesty, Alpic, Praxis (YC), Kinro (YC), Covera (YC), Spacefill and Kardinal. Pancake was also #1 Product of the Week on Product Hunt.

Every Play shows its reply rate and an activity log, and each search shows every step, including who was set aside and why. That transparency is evidence you can check yourself: the leads, the reasoning and the outcomes in your own workspace. To see the flow end to end, watch Pancake in 90 seconds or browse example Plays.

Buyer Considerations

Built for B2B. Pancake is for companies that sell to other businesses: founders (solo to Series A), GTM engineers, heads of growth and agency owners. If your buyers are consumers, this is not your tool.
Sequences run on LinkedIn. Outreach goes out from your own LinkedIn account, paced on weekdays in your time zone. The plan includes one sending account; each extra one is $39 a month, and a Play can rotate new leads across up to 10 accounts.
You control volume two ways. 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 too: when they run out, searches pause, with no overage.
Approval is a workflow, not a black box. New leads also arrive in Slack (approve or pass) and in a morning email. Rejecting a lead with a reason makes Pancake suggest Brain changes you can accept or ignore.
Pricing is simple. Self-serve starts at $99 a month per workspace with 60,000 credits, one plan for the whole team, no per-seat fee, unused credits rolling over up to one month. Details are on the pricing page. White Glove, at $3,000 a month, adds a dedicated GTM engineer who builds the Brain and runs the Plays with you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from the cold email tools we already tried?

Cold email tools send more email to a list you supply. Pancake finds the list itself, from live buying signals, and starts the conversation on LinkedIn instead of a crowded inbox. Every lead arrives with one line on why it fits your ICP, and the messages are written in your voice from your GTM Brain.

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. After a lead is added to a sequence, nothing goes out for 10 minutes, so it can be undone.

Which channels and agents does Pancake work with?

Sequences run on LinkedIn from your own account, paced on weekdays between 09:00 and 18:00 in your time zone. You can run Pancake from Claude (web, desktop and mobile), Claude Code, ChatGPT or Codex through a browser sign-in, or in Pancake's own web app.

What does it cost to try it?

Start a 7-day free trial (30,000 credits) with a card required, and Pancake shows a credit estimate before each search runs. Self-serve plans start at $99 a month per workspace with 60,000 credits, one plan for the whole team with no per-seat fee.

Conclusion

Cold email stopped working because it reached the wrong people in the wrong place with the wrong message. The fix is not a better subject line. It is signal-based outreach: find buyers who are already in motion, check them against your ICP, and start the conversation where buyers respond. Pancake runs that motion as a Play, on the schedule you pick, with you approving every lead before anyone is contacted. Start a 7-day free trial (30,000 credits) at pancake.ai.