Running a Venture Program's National Growth Hub at 116% of Contract KPIs

Founder sourcing, outbound, a content engine and a hackathon — delivered in one contract quarter by one operator with AI-built tooling

7 min read
Published September 8, 2026
growth operationsventure programfounder sourcingoutbound systemGTM systemsaccelerator growth

TL;DR

One operator, one contract quarter, one national growth hub for a venture program (foundation.ventures) building on a global technology platform. Documented results: ~2,585 founders reached across two outreach funnels, 170+ founder video calls, 101 long-form content pieces against a 60-piece KPI (plus 61 custom graphics), 1.74M+ ad impressions, and a hackathon with 160+ attendees and 48 qualified submissions in its qualification round. The engagement finished at 116% of contract KPIs.

The engagement

foundation.ventures runs venture programs that source and accelerate startup founders for a global technology-platform ecosystem. GTM Stacker was contracted to run its UK growth hub: find founders, get them on calls, move them into the program's funnel, and build the content and event presence around it.

The brief spanned four functions that would usually be four hires — outbound/sourcing, community and calls, content production, and event delivery — on a single-operator contract.

The system

1. Founder sourcing and outbound

  • Two parallel outreach funnels with separate ICPs and messaging: an agency-partnership funnel (1,365 founders reached) and a venture-scout funnel (1,220 founders reached) — ~2,585 in total.
  • Enrichment and prospecting handled by custom AI-built tooling: sourcing, qualification and personalisation at a volume one person could not sustain manually.
  • 170+ founder video calls booked and held across the quarter — the pipeline's conversion point.

2. The content engine

  • Contract KPI: 60 long-form content pieces for the quarter.
  • Delivered: 101 long-form pieces, plus 61 custom graphics, 15 ad creatives, 28 lead magnets and 6 videos.
  • Content was fed directly by what the 170+ calls surfaced — real founder questions, objections and language.

3. Paid amplification and the hackathon

  • 1.74M+ paid ad impressions across TikTok (~1.38M) and Facebook (~365k) supporting the sourcing funnels.
  • Delivered the program's hackathon: 160+ attendees, 48 qualified project submissions through the qualification round, followed by national-round selection.

How one operator carried four functions

The multiplier was AI-built internal tooling. Enrichment, outreach orchestration, research briefs and reporting ran on custom workflows built by directing AI coding agents — with model routing chosen per task (high-reasoning models for research and copy, cost-efficient models for bulk steps). That kept the cost per sourced founder far below what a commercial SaaS stack plus an agency team would have charged for the same volume.

Outcome

The engagement closed at 116% of contract KPIs, with the quarter's work documented line-by-line in a performance sheet shared with the client. The same sourcing-to-content machinery now forms the template for GTM Stacker's startup engagements.

Numbers on this page are taken directly from the engagement's shared performance sheet (May–August contract quarter). Nothing here is projected or extrapolated.
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About the Author

Theo Popov runs GTM Stacker, a growth-systems practice for startups and venture programs. Previously Co-Founder & Operations Lead of an 11-location, ~$4M hospitality group bootstrapped with no outside capital, he now builds AI-native enrichment, outbound, content and reporting systems. More about Theo →