Operations Associate – Trial Task: Lead Generation

Iteration67 — iteration67.com
Submission: Upload your completed Excel here → https://tally.so/r/44VqpY

File to work with:

Task_trial.xlsx

Deadline: Complete within 3 days of receiving this task.

Why this task

This task gives you a real feel for the kind of companies we care about and work with every day. If you make it to the next stage, you'll be working with a lot of them.

Quality matters way more than quantity here. Our team put together the 100+ contact in the Sample tab — take time to look through them so you really understand what "good" looks like. We won't evaluate you just on hitting 100 leads. We'll evaluate you on how good the companies and the people you find actually are.

Everything you need to do a great job is in this Notion. If you put in real effort and the quality is there, we'd be super excited to have you in the next stage.

What You'll Do

Find 100 high-quality contacts (decision makers at AI/software companies and VC-backed startups) using LinkedIn + Crunchbase + Apollo. The quality bar is what matters most here — we'd rather have 100 perfect leads than 200 mediocre ones.

The math: 50 companies × 2–3 leads per company = ~100 leads total.

Important: Your job is to find 100 leads at the same quality level as the Sample tab.

Important: Your task is to find 100 more at the same quality level.

The Excel File

Download the file to work with here →

Task_trial.xlsx

Important: it has 3 tabs:

TabWhat it's for
SampleReference only. 100+ leads we already found — study these to understand the quality bar. Don't edit this tab.
Potential_leadsStarting points. Conference sponsor pages where you can find target companies.
Your LeadsThis is where you work. Add your 100 leads here using the same column format as the Sample tab.

What "High-Quality Lead" Means

A lead is high-quality only if both the company and the person are the right fit.

✅ Good Companies (ICP)

Categories that usually fit:
DevTools / Infrastructure · Cybersecurity · Voice AI / Video AI / Comms APIs · Crypto / Web3 infra · Fintech infra · Data & Analytics · AI/ML platforms

Examples of companies that are a fit:

Screenshot 2026-06-14 at 8.26.27 PM.png

❌ Not a Fit

✅ Good People (Roles to Find)

We mostly want marketing decision makers.

Per company, find 2–3 people in this priority order:

  1. CMO / Head of Marketing / VP Marketing
  2. Head of DevRel / VP Developer Relations / Head of Developer Experience
  3. Head of Developer Advocate / Principal Developer Advocate
  4. Director of Product Marketing / Head of Growth
  5. CEO / Co-founder (only if it's a small startup with limited headcount, OR as one of the 2–3 alongside a marketing person)

Rule of thumb:

❌ Do NOT add: sales reps, individual contributors, junior marketers, recruiters, engineers (DevRel is fine but ideally they are head of devrel, staff dev rel etc not junior).

How to Do It

Step 1 — Find 50 companies that fit the ICP

🎯 Read this before you start searching. The #1 thing that ruins this task: candidates Google "best AI startups" or ask ChatGPT for ideas, and end up with the same obvious names everyone already knows — Replit, Vercel, Supabase, Lovable, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, etc. These are not what we want. We want solid, well-funded companies that are a fit but aren't household names.

The right way to find them:

  • Start with the Potential_leads tab in the Excel — every conference sponsor on those pages is a real, vetted company that spends on marketing. Go through each sponsor logo, check the company on LinkedIn, confirm it fits the ICP.
  • Use VC portfolio pages (listed below) — these are companies that just raised real money and are actively scaling.
  • Use Crunchbase to filter by recent funding and industry.
  • Use the LinkedIn "Similar Pages" trick to find companies adjacent to ones you already know are a fit.

Avoid: Random Google searches, ChatGPT/Claude lists of "top AI companies," and any company you'd recognize from Twitter/news headlines. If everyone knows the company, we probably already know about them too.

⚠️ Also important: The 50 companies you find must be new — not duplicates of the companies already in the Sample tab. Skim the Sample tab first so you know what to look for that's similar.

Use these sources, in this order:

🏆 1. Crunchbase (easiest and highest-quality method — strongly recommended)

This is the best way to find leads, by far. It takes 2 minutes to set up and you'll find way more high-quality companies way faster than any other method.

How to do it:

  1. Create a free Crunchbase trial account (you can cancel after the task)
  2. Open these three category pages:
  3. On each page, add two columns: Last Funding Date and Last Funding Amount
  4. Click "Last Funding Date" to sort descending — now you're looking at the most recently funded companies
  5. Go down the list. If a company fits the ICP (B2B SaaS / DevTools / AI infra, $5M+ raised, has marketing budget), it's a great lead — find their decision makers next.

Recently funded = fresh marketing budget = most likely to convert. The companies at the top of this sort are gold.

2. Potential_leads tab — The Excel file has a tab with conference sponsor pages. Every sponsor logo is a real company that already spends on marketing. Click through, check their LinkedIn/website, confirm they fit the ICP. Solid backup if Crunchbase isn't giving you enough volume.

3. VC portfolios — Browse AI/devtool-focused VC portfolio pages:

4. LinkedIn "Similar Pages" trick — Open the LinkedIn page of any company you already know is a fit. LinkedIn suggests similar companies in the sidebar — these are often great leads. Each suggestion still needs to pass the ICP check before you add it.

5. Your own knowledge — AI/devtool companies you've heard of, then verify funding via Google ("[company name] funding").

Step 2 — For each company, find 2–3 decision makers

  1. Go to the company's LinkedIn page → click "People"
  2. Search the People bar for roles in the priority order above ("CMO", "Head of Marketing", "Developer Relations", "Developer Advocate", etc.)
  3. Open each person's LinkedIn profile. Do your best to make sure they are decision makers.

🚨 Really important — don't make up LinkedIn URLs. Some candidates in the past made URLs that look right but actually don't exist or go to a different person. Always find and the LinkedIn URL from the person's actual profile. If we can't verify the LinkedIn, we can't evaluate your task — and a fake LinkedIn = lead doesn't count.

Step 3 — Get their work email with Apollo

  1. Use the Apollo Chrome extension on the LinkedIn profile → grab the work email
  2. If Apollo can't find it → try Hunter.io https://hunter.io/find/
  3. If still no email → move to the next person on the priority list. Don't add a lead with no email. If there’s no email, it doesn’t count for the task.

Out of credits? Create a new Apollo account with a different email, or use Snov.io / Skrapp.io. We're looking for problem-solvers. Figure it out.

Step 4 — Add them to the "Your Leads" tab

Use this exact format (matches the Sample tab):

NameCompanyEmailLinkedInRoleWebsiteShort product/company description
JordanPineconejordan@pinecone.iolinkedin.com/in/jordanleeHead of Developer Relationshttps://www.pinecone.ioPinecone is a vector database built for high-performance AI applications.

Column rules:

Quality Checklist (before you submit)

Exceptions: Some companies legitimately use a different domain for email (e.g., a parent company domain, or a .com website but .io email). If you spot this pattern across multiple employees of the same company, it's likely correct. When in doubt, cross-check 2 employees from the same company — if both have the same domain pattern, you're good.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

How to Submit

  1. Save your file as [Your Full Name].xlsx (e.g., Sara Rossi.xlsx)
  2. Upload it at https://tally.so/r/44VqpY
  3. Done 🎉

Questions? sara@iteration67.com or team@iteration67.com