“With Needle, half the candidates we message write back.”
Arian Abri
Founder at GENZ4GTM
51%
Of messaged candidates replied
163
Candidates asked for details or a call
33+
Calls agreed in the LinkedIn thread
45%
Accepted the connection request
67%
Reply rate on warm candidate lists
The problem
GENZ4GTM is a talent marketplace in Berlin. It places early-career people in sales and go-to-market roles at startups. Candidates pay nothing, and startups pay a fee when they hire. So the business lives on one thing: finding good SDRs and AEs every week and getting them on a short call. Before Needle, founder Arian Abri did this by hand from his own LinkedIn account.
What they did with Needle
Arian started with his own LinkedIn account. Two weeks later the team was sending from seven. Every open role became a campaign: a connection request, then one short German message with the salary in the first line, then up to three follow-ups with memes, a few days apart. The sequence stops as soon as someone replies, and the sender takes over. On top of Needle the team built its own outreach cockpit. It reads every conversation around the clock and answers interested candidates with two time slots and a Google Meet link. More than 2,000 replies have gone out through it so far.
The result
In seven weeks GENZ4GTM reached 2,063 candidates. 45% accepted the connection request, and 51% of the people they messaged wrote back. 163 candidates asked for details or a call, and at least 33 agreed on a call time right in the LinkedIn thread. Warm lists, like job-board applicants and referrals, did best with a 67% reply rate, against 48% from cold search. And it keeps growing every month.
