Turn up with people, not a pitch
A company that has just raised has a hiring plan in a spreadsheet and no job ads yet. The funding play uses that gap to find the person who owns the hiring and reach them early. This play is its twin. It uses the same gap to build the thing that makes that person reply.
Every agency that spotted the round sends the same message: congratulations, we recruit in your space, can we talk. A message that says "you will need a head of customer success next, and here are three people who built that function at companies one stage ahead of you" is a different kind of message. It shows you understand what the money is for, and it puts evidence on the table before anyone has asked.
You can only send it if the pool exists before the job ad does.
What you get back
Per company: the round, what it appears to be for, the roles already advertised, and the two or three roles the agent thinks come next, each marked as inference with its reasoning. Under each inferred role, a small scored pool: name, current title and employer, dated history and why they fit. No contact details until you ask, and nobody contacted.
Variations worth knowing
Name the roles yourself. If you know the pattern in your niche, put it in the prompt. Your read of what a medtech company hires first after a Series B beats anything inferred from a press release.
Anonymise for the pitch. Ask for the pool as blind profiles: career shape and evidence, no names. That is the version that goes to the company.
Size instead of source. Sometimes a number is enough: how many people near them could do this job. Sizing the pool costs less than sourcing it.
Where this goes wrong
Treating the pool as a shortlist. The role is a guess built from stage and sector. There is no spec, no salary and no hiring manager's view of the must-haves. The pool starts a conversation. When a real brief arrives, run a real search.
Going wide. This is speculative work. A small pool per role, across a few well-chosen companies, is the whole play. A large pool for every company that raised is a bill for roles that may never open.
Approaching candidates too early. Telling someone about a job that does not exist costs you that person twice: once when nothing follows, and again when the real role opens and they do not pick up.
A stale round. The window is short. A raise from several months ago has been worked by everyone, and the roles it paid for are already advertised or filled.
