🚀 Use case: Generate leads from recently funded startups with PhantomBuster + Sales Navigator

If your goal is to reach decision-makers at fast-growing startups, there's no better timing than right after a funding round. This step-by-step workflow shows how to combine Sales Navigator with PhantomBuster to find, segment, and contact startup founders and execs shortly after their companies raise capital.

You’ll automate everything — from identifying funded companies to reaching out on LinkedIn. Let’s break it down 👇

🧰 Tools you’ll need

• Sales Navigator (LinkedIn Premium)
• PhantomBuster account
• These Phantoms:
  1. Sales Navigator Search Export
  2. Sales Navigator Account Scraper
  3. Sales Navigator Search Export (Decision-Maker Finder)
  4. LinkedIn Outreach Message Sender

🔍 Step 1: Find recently funded startups

In Sales Navigator:

Create a search with these filters:

• Funding events in the past 12 months (under “Recent activity”)
• Company size: 1–10 and 11–50 employees
• Location: UK (or your target market)
• Optional: Filter by low LinkedIn followers to focus on newer startups

Copy the search URL.

In PhantomBuster:

Use the Sales Navigator Search Export Phantom:

• Paste your search URL
• Connect your LinkedIn session (via cookie or extension)
• Enable Watcher Mode to re-scrape daily and get only new companies
• Launch once, or on a recurring schedule

🏢 Step 2: Enrich company data

Use the Sales Navigator Account Scraper Phantom:

• Input: the results from Step 1
• Extract:
  • Website URL
  • Company size
  • Year founded
  • Department growth rates
  • Decision-maker search URL
• Optional: Chain this to run after the previous Phantom

📊 Step 3: Filter for the most relevant startups

Export the enriched company list to Google Sheets or Airtable.

In Google Sheets:
Use the IMPORTDATA function and a SQL-style QUERY to:

• Filter companies founded after a certain year (e.g., 2019)
• Create a curated list of young, growing startups

👥 Step 4: Identify decision-makers

Use the Decision-Maker Search URL (from Step 2) in a second Sales Navigator Search Export Phantom.

This pulls profiles of high-level employees from each company.

Configure:

• Input: Google Sheet with decision-maker URLs
• Column: “Decision-makers URL”
• Launch: After account scraper or on a regular schedule

✅ Output: A list of potential leads per company

🎯 Step 5: Segment and build your lead list

In PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Leads tab:

• Create a new list (e.g., “Recently Funded Founders”)
• Filter by Phantom → Select the Decision-Maker Search export
• Apply keyword filters (e.g., Job contains "founder")

🎯 You now have a ready-to-outreach list of startup founders and execs.

✉️ Step 6: Automate LinkedIn Outreach

Use the LinkedIn Outreach Message Sender Phantom:

• Input: The list from Step 5
• Configure:
  • Connection request message
  • Up to 3 follow-up messages (sent after the connection is accepted)
  • Personalized fields like {firstName}, {job}, etc.
• Behavior:
  • Set a daily invitation limit (20/day is recommended)
  • Send during business hours in your time zone

Activate the Flow to run automatically across all steps.

💡 Bonus Tip: Personalize with Job-Specific Content

You can use AI Phantoms to:

• Analyze job data posted by startups
• Generate LinkedIn content to attract engagement from similar companies

This makes your outbound even more contextual and relevant.

And if you want to get a demo of this use case, here is the video we created.

✅ Final Outcome

With this workflow:

• You continuously detect newly funded startups
• You find founders or senior staff
• You engage them with tailored messaging — automatically

Perfect for sales teams, recruiters, or agencies looking to work with up-and-coming companies.