theMasters
Cold outreach,
replaced by a market.
The B2B buyer exchange: startups pay senior decision-makers for honest conversations, and deals follow the evidence.
Seed round · September 2026
themasters.co
The problem
Both sides of B2B selling are losing
Founders
Spend their best hours begging for meetings.
344
cold emails sent per booked meeting
60%
of SDRs hit quota, the lowest on record
Executives
Spend theirs deleting them.
67%
prefer a buying experience with no sales rep at all
73%
avoid suppliers that send irrelevant outreach
Sources: Gong Labs 2025 · The Bridge Group 2025 · Gartner 2025 and 2026
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Why now
AI broke cold outreach, and AI makes the market possible
What broke
Outreach became infinite and worthless.
AI writes unlimited sequences. Reply rates keep falling. Two-thirds of buyers now prefer no sales rep at all.
What became possible
A real conversation became cheap enough to trade.
Voice AI runs a twenty-minute conversation with a senior decision-maker for the price of a coffee, and writes the evidence down.
The technology that killed the old channel is the one that prices the new one.
Gartner, March 2026: 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience
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What we do
theMasters is a market where startups buy honest conversations with senior decision-makers instead of spamming them.
The decision-maker is paid for the conversation. Our AI, Cue, runs it by voice. The startup follows up only with the buyers who showed real intent.
The B2B buyer exchange
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How it works
How a buyer conversation trades
01
Buyer profile
The startup sets the price and describes who buys.
02
Cue matches
Verified, opted-in decision-makers. No cold outreach.
03
Paid voice call
Twenty minutes with Cue. The Master is paid on completion.
04
Buyer signal
Transcript-backed evidence: high intent, exploring, or no signal yet.
05
Follow-ups
Demo, paid trial, then a partnership contract with a success fee.
Price
Set by the startup. $35 today, $45 for deeper rounds.
Take
20% of everything that trades, at every step of the ladder.
Integrity
Verified identities, opt-in only, honest no-signal states.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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For startups
For startups, one campaign replaces the outbound stack
Tell Cue what you built. It writes the buyer profile, finds the people, runs the first conversation, and hands you the evidence.
What it replaces
Contact data
Sequencing tools
SDR teams
Lead-gen agencies
LinkedIn ads
You review. You invite. They book through your calendar link.
01
Auto-ICP
Cue turns your product and goal into a reviewable buyer profile.
02
Auto-pair
Verified Masters are matched on role, company and campaign fit.
03
Auto-interview
Three voice conversations per Master, summarised as buyer signals.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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For executives
For executives, judgment finally has a price
One paid research task, three short conversations
01
Fit check
Are they the right person? The only step that can screen out.
02
Pain point
Workflow, priorities, constraints. The product stays hidden.
03
Solution overview
Test the startup's claims. An honest no is useful, and still paid.
Then, only if they choose
Product demo
See it for themselves or their team. Funded reward.
Paid product trial
Hands-on evaluation with a fixed reward on accepted results.
Partnership contract
Bring it into their organisation or network: exclusivity plus a success fee.
A paid seat at the front row of their field, and a champion's share of the deals they bring in.
Opt-in only · no cold outreach · first name and role until they choose to share more
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Customer zero · our own company, the first campaign
We built it to save Gengage. It booked the demos.
571
Masters enrolled from the commerce buyer profile
162
AI calls completed by Cue
49
demo calls booked through the calendar link
"Keyword-based search is no longer a working technology. Users don't search with keywords; they search with intent."
Product manager, ex-Cimri. Gengage moved to intent-based chat search.
3 in 10 completed calls led to a booked demo.
Bookings, not closed sales. No outreach, no chasing.
Production reporting, 21 September 2026
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Traction
The market is already clearing
1,390
registered Masters, senior operators, all opted in
15
campaigns from 8 Builders, 6 live today
4 of 5
Builders who launched came back for a second round
136
Masters paid out through Stripe
1 in 2
rejected at fit check before any money moves
80 to 94%
continue at every stage once past the fit check
Production reporting API, read-only pull, 21 September 2026 · primarily Türkiye and the UK
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Business model
We take 20% of everything that trades
20%
platform take on conversations, demos, trials and success fees. Startups fund it; Masters earn the rest.
| Paid event | Settles | Master earns |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer conversation | On completion | $35 standard, $45 deeper rounds |
| Product demo | 48 hours after the demo | Funded reward |
| Paid product trial | On accepted results | Fixed reward |
| Partnership contract | On a closed deal | Success fee, 90-day exclusivity |
Illustrative model, not actuals: about $7,150 monthly GMV per active startup, about $17K platform commission a year.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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The prize
Every dollar that leaves ads and outbound comes here
B2B advertising
The outbound stack
The comparable
$43.6B
B2B digital ad spend worldwide in 2025
$4B+
sales intelligence and contact data software, 2025
$3B
expert network industry in 2025
$8.2B
LinkedIn ad revenue in 2025
$80K
median SDR pay, with 60% at quota and 40% attrition
$1,000+
per hour for a senior operator's time
Startups already move ad and outbound budgets here, and get filtered, interested buyers back.
eMarketer · WARC via MediaPost · Grand View Research · The Bridge Group 2025 · Inex One
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Why it compounds
Permissioned conversations compound
01
Opted-in operator network
Trusted, paid participation creates access no list can buy.
02
Conversation-backed evidence
Roles, needs and timing become observable, not guessed.
03
Repeat participation and routing
The market learns who is relevant, and when.
Where paid buyer attention concentrates, product-market fit shows before revenue. The exchange sees it first.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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Category context
What each category hands to sales
Contact databases
ZoomInfo, Apollo
Hands sales
A list of names and emails. No buyer consent.
Your next move
Write the outreach. Hope.
AI SDR tools
Outreach, AI SDR agents
Hands sales
Automated messages and a few replies.
Your next move
More sequences into fuller inboxes.
Expert networks
GLG, AlphaSights
Hands sales
An hour with an expert at $1,000 or more. Built for analysts.
Your next move
Run the call, take the notes.
theMasters
The buyer exchange
Hands sales
The buyer's answer: need, timing, role and the transcript. Paid and opted in.
Your next move
Review, invite. They book.
The others stop at contacts or outreach. Cue qualifies the next step before a sales rep enters the conversation.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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Founders
Built by people who hit the wall themselves
ÖA
CEO and co-founder
Ömer Akkentli
- Former General Manager, Afiniti, enterprise AI sold to telcos and banks
- McKinsey consulting; senior product management at eBay
- Stanford MBA
- Lived the gatekeeper problem at enterprise scale, then again at Gengage
MK
CTO and co-founder
Mustafa Kıraç, PhD
- Former VP Data Science, Afiniti
- Leadership roles at iyzico and Oracle
- PhD, Case Western: bioinformatics and machine learning
- Built and deployed a decisioning system processing millions of offers a day
"I refused to spend another year begging for meetings I deserved to have." Ömer, on why theMasters exists.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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The ask
Raising $2.5M to make the market liquid
$2.5M
Seed round, milestone-based deployment.
Network liquidity
Product and infrastructure
Core team and operations
Milestones this round
01
Active Master liquidity
Supply target set from proven Builder demand.
02
Repeat Builder spend
Recurring demand beyond one-off pilots.
03
Meeting to pipeline conversion
Commercial value measured end to end.
theMasters · Seed 2026
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theMasters
Cold outreach,
replaced by a market.
CEO and co-founder
Ömer Akkentli
omer@themasters.co
CTO and co-founder
Mustafa Kıraç, PhD
kirac@themasters.co
Find us
themasters.co
1259 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 94025