theMasters
Every hustle just
got an agent.
Cue skips the LinkedIn noise, the cold outreach, the recruiters and the trade shows, and takes you straight to the person who can say yes.
Pre-seed round · September 2026
themasters.co
What we're building
Cue is an agent that gets you to the people you need.
Tell it who you need. Today that's buyers; next, investors and hires. Cue finds them, asks them for you, pays them for their time, and brings back their honest answer and the meeting.
The interface is simple: it's WhatsApp. No new app, no profile, no feed.
Live: paid buyer conversations, founder calls, payouts · Building: Cue on WhatsApp for everyone
2 / 12
The hustle
Everyone is chasing the one person who can say yes
Founders
Chasing buyers
Through cold email, trade shows and review sites.
Career builders
Chasing the next role
Through recruiters and LinkedIn.
Investors
Chasing LPs and the best founders
Through demo days and pitch competitions.
Sales leaders
Chasing quota
Through SDR floors and sales conferences.
It takes 344 cold emails to book one meeting, and 73% of buyers avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.
Sources: Gong Labs 2025 · Gartner, June 2025
3 / 12
For founders
For founders, 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 buyers are matched on role, company and campaign fit.
03
Auto-interview
Three voice conversations per buyer, summarised as buyer signals.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
4 / 12
For buyers
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
5 / 12
Market
$95B a year goes to middlemen
TAM · worldwide
$95B
B2B advertising
$43.6B
Executive search
$23.1B
Trade shows
$21.4B
Contact data
$4B
Expert networks
$3B
SAM · US
$49B
B2B advertising
$23B
Trade shows
$15.8B
Executive search
$10.3B
SOM · year 5 ARR
Organic, paid from our revenue
$46M
1.7M members, 85K subscribers
Invested, $100M raised in year 2
$159M
5.9M members, 294K subscribers
ARR
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Growth, years 3 to 5
Organic
$0.7M
$7.5M
$16M
$28M
$46M
83% a year
Invested
$0.7M
$7.5M
$39M
$92M
$159M
177% a year
eMarketer · Mordor Intelligence · IBISWorld · GM Insights · Grand View Research · Inex One
6 / 12
Traction
Buyers show up. That was the hard part.
1,435
registered members, all opted in
307
paid conversations between buyers and companies
64
paid calls between buyers and founders
141
people paid for their time, $8,844 via Stripe
20%
of outside buyers who finish a session take a paid founder call
About 30%
of founder calls were requested by the buyer
58%
of members offered a funded session start it
1 in 2
screened out at the fit check, before any money moves
GTM tools send spam. We get the call. 217 of the 307 were for Gengage, our own company; making outside customers the majority is the first thing this round proves.
Production data, 27 Sep 2026 (fit check: 21 Sep) · Türkiye and UK · no commission taken yet
7 / 12
Real buyers, in their own words
Busy buyers actually enjoy it
PM
Paulina Majewska
eCommerce Growth & CRM Lead
"Very interactive. I felt heard and listened to. I loved it."
JC
Jim Clark
Head of E-commerce
"If you've got a good user journey, there shouldn't be a need for a tool like this."
Said no, and was paid the same
Wesley Brooks
Director, Jellywall Agency
"Quite impressed with the interview process, and with the platform itself."
SB
Steve Bell
Digital Strategist, Clean Canvas
"It's actually easier than a normal phone call. It's been brilliant."
Louise Boyd
Head of Marketing, Aspect
"I wasn't sure what to expect. Now I've done it once, I know how I can add value. Loved it."
LH
Liam Hewitt
Senior Strategist, VML
"The AI process was pretty fluid, actually. I was quite impressed with how responsive it was."
SA
Sue Azari
eCommerce Consultant, AppsFlyer
"I've not done anything like this before in this format. It was super fun to do."
Ilke Mete
AI Decision System Lead
"Honestly, the best AI interview I've seen."
Maurice Dziubinski
Partnerships, Tango Digital Agency
"I really enjoyed it, and I hope to get my $35 payout."
Product-intro calls, Mar to Sep 2026 · lightly edited · shared with permission
8 / 12
Competition
Everyone else stops at the profile
| Today's way to reach people | The real person answers | They opted in | Paid for their time | Earns when a deal happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn and Sales Navigator | No | No | No | No, it charges senders |
| Contact data and AI SDRs (ZoomInfo, Apollo) | No | No | No | No |
| Expert networks and paid calls (GLG, Intro.co) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No, paid by the hour |
| AI connectors (Boardy, Gigi) | Sometimes | Yes | No | No |
| theMasters | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, a commission on every step |
Only on theMasters is the buyer paid for their time, and we earn when the conversation turns into business.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
9 / 12
Business model
Subscription plus paid intros
1 · The agent
$35 a month
Cue for every professional: general intros, news and paid opportunities.
5% of members subscribe in our plan. Freemium software converts 3 to 8%; about 5% of ChatGPT users pay.
2 · Paid intros
20% of each intro
Charged per intro, with the payer's consent. The person introduced is paid the rest.
Buyer conversation with Cue
$35, or $45 deeper
Call or demo with the founder
Reward held at invite
Paid trial, then contract
Fixed reward, success fee
Year 2, base case: $6.3M subscriptions + $1.2M intro fees = $7.5M ARR. A no is paid the same as a yes. Never a success fee on money raised.
Conversion benchmarks: First Page Sage · Lenny Rachitsky · ChatGPT paying users
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Founders
We've matched people with AI before
At Afiniti we built and sold AI that pairs customers with the right agents, for telcos and banks.
ÖA
CEO and co-founder
Ömer Akkentli
- Stanford MBA
- General Manager, Afiniti
- McKinsey & Company; senior product management, eBay
- Sold enterprise AI to telcos and banks
MK
CTO and co-founder
Mustafa Kıraç, PhD
- PhD in machine learning, Case Western
- VP Data Science, Afiniti
- Leadership roles at Oracle and iyzico
- Built decision systems handling millions of offers a day
Then we hit the cold-outreach wall ourselves, at Gengage. theMasters is what we wished we had.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
11 / 12
The ask · pre-seed
Raising $5M to get there first
$5M
Deployed over 24 months.
$1.5M · Reach
300,000 members at about $5 each, through paid social and referral rewards.
$1.5M · Funded buyer conversations
Every $1 we fund locks in $5 a year of paid intros after the trial.
$2.0M · Team and operations
Product, Cue on WhatsApp and the US launch.
Month 24: 300K members, 15K subscribers and $7.5M ARR: $6.3M subscriptions plus $1.2M intro fees. Projection; assumptions in the notes.
Ömer Akkentli · omer@themasters.co · themasters.co · Menlo Park, CA
12 / 12
Appendix
Questions investors ask, and more detail
Why a general assistant can't do this, why the network works early, why a copy doesn't win, how Cue works for investors, why now, how a conversation works, customer zero, go-to-market and where this goes.
A question every investor asks
"Won't ChatGPT, Claude or Muse just do this?"
No. They do tasks. We build the network of people who answer.
01
The person on the other side
Verified members who chose to be found.
02
Their consent
Opt-in, every time. Nobody is contacted cold.
03
A reason to answer
They're paid for their time, and a no is paid too.
Ask a general assistant for a buyer and it finds a profile. Ask Cue and the buyer answers.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
Appendix · A1
A question every investor asks
"Don't you need millions of members first?"
No. Every member brings their own network.
1 · You ask
You tell Cue who you need
A buyer, an investor, a hire.
2 · A member knows them
They bring the person in
Even if that person has never heard of us.
3 · Everyone is paid
You get the conversation
The person is paid for their time, the member for the introduction.
If each member knows a thousand people, 5,000 members already reach millions. That's why the network is useful long before it's huge.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
Appendix · A2
A question every investor asks
"What stops a bigger company from copying you?"
LinkedIn can be copied. Nobody would move to the copy.
The network is the product
People stay where the people they need already are. A copy starts empty.
The first to critical mass wins
Every new member makes the network more useful to everyone in it, so the lead keeps growing.
That's why we're raising to get there first.
Already compounding: 35% of paid members came back for more, and 34 have worked for two or more founders.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
Appendix · A3
For you, the investor
Cue works for investors too
Today
Put a portfolio company in front of real buyers
Paid, honest answers from the buyers it needs to win.
Today
Hear real buyers before you write the check
What would stop them buying, in their own words.
Next
Reach the LPs for your next fund
Cue brings you the people who fit your fund.
Next
Find the best founders before other funds
Cue knows what they're building, and brings them to you.
Try it in this meeting: be the buyer. Cue talks to you, you're paid, and you read what the founder receives.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
Appendix · A4
Why now
Agents make the middlemen unnecessary
×
Recruiting agencies
×
Pitch competitions and demo days
×
Trade shows and sales conferences
×
Review sites and lead databases
×
Go direct
Your agent takes you straight to the person who can say yes.
Pay only for real intent, the way search ads made banner ads look absurd.
$3 → $21
LinkedIn's price for extra InMail credits, Oct 2025
36%
of VC-backed B2B software companies cut SDR teams
67%
of B2B buyers prefer to buy without a sales rep
Leonar, Oct 2025 · Emergence Capital, Apr 2025 · Gartner, Mar 2026
Appendix · A5
How it works
How a paid buyer conversation works
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
A voice conversation with Cue. The buyer 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.
Commission
20% of every paid step, switched on in this round.
Integrity
Verified identities, opt-in only, honest no-signal states.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
Appendix · A6
Customer zero · our own company came first
We built it to save Gengage. It booked the demos.
168
paid conversations with commerce buyers, run by Cue
49
paid demo calls with the founder
90
paid conversations bought next by four other companies
"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.
About 3 in 10 conversations led to a paid demo call.
No outreach, no chasing.
Production data, 27 September 2026
Appendix · A7
Go-to-market
Our own company first. Then pull. Then scale.
1 · Customer zero
We built it for Gengage
217 paid buyer conversations and 49 paid demo calls with the founder.
2 · Pull
Four more companies came
90 paid conversations. One in five of their buyers took a paid call with the founder.
3 · Scale, with this round
3,000 funded founder trials
Members from paid social and referrals. Funds bring their portfolios.
US first, one buyer vertical at a time. The loop already runs in Türkiye and the UK.
Production data, 27 September 2026
Appendix · A8
Where this goes
The network that knows what everyone is trying to do.
Today · live
Founders pay to reach the exact buyers they need, and the buyer is paid for their time.
Next · being built
Cue on WhatsApp for every member. It learns what they're trying to do this year and brings the people, offers and news that fit.
Then
Anyone who needs the right person goes direct: buyers, investors, hires. We earn on every step.
LinkedIn knows what you did. Cue knows what you're trying to do.
theMasters · Pre-seed 2026
Appendix · A9