Operation Zero Day Alpha: How We Use SEC Filings to Find LPs Before the Competition Knows They Exist.

Form D filings are undeniable, high-conviction proof that an LP is deploying capital. Here is how we turn regulatory data into booked meetings.

A couple of months ago, I recorded a beta handover video for a client and a number of freelancers asked me how I do it. So I thought this was a decent example to share, not just because of the strategy, but because of a lesson most freelancers and agencies completely miss.

We forget to market ourselves to our own clients.

That sounds obvious, but think about how most projects get delivered. You finish the work, you send a Loom link that says "here's your walkthrough," and you move on. There's no narrative. There's no excitement. No one is sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for your next update.

So I specifically labeled this project "Operation Zero Day Alpha." A little allusion to cybersecurity. Zero day meaning it's there before everyone else knows about it. And that small detail, giving the project a name, treating the handover like a product launch, changed the energy of the entire engagement. When your client is excited about the project you're building, they stay excited about working with you. That's the meta-lesson. Now let's get into the actual build.

The Signal: Why Form D is a Goldmine

We built this system for a VC client who needed to find Limited Partners that are actively deploying capital into alternatives. The problem with traditional LP outreach is the same problem everyone has: you're guessing. You're pulling lists from databases, sending cold emails, and hoping that someone on that list happens to be in a deployment cycle right now.

We didn't want to guess. We wanted proof.

And the SEC gives you that proof for free, every single day.

When a fund raises capital through a private placement, they're required to file a Form D with the SEC. That filing is public record. It tells you who is raising capital, what kind of fund it is, and the details of the offering. Between 200 and 400 new Form D filings hit the SEC's EDGAR database every single day. That's not inferred intent. That's not a "maybe." That is a regulatory filing that says, "We are actively participating in the alternatives market."

The challenge? The data comes in raw. The entity names don't look like company names. The filing might be for a special purpose vehicle, not the actual firm you want to reach. And there's no built-in way to differentiate filing types. So you need a system to make sense of it.

Here's how we built that system.

The Build: From Filing to First Email

Step 1: Extract Filings from the SEC RSS Feed

The SEC publishes an RSS feed of new Form D filings. We plug that directly into Clay and pull between 100 and 400 records every day. Each record gives us an ID, a link to the filing document, an accession number, a CIK number, and the SEC filing URL. Right now we're fetching around 100 per day as we ramp up. Once we're fully confident in data quality, we push that to 400.

Step 2: Scrape and Clean the Filing Data

The SEC gives us a document URL. We do a GET request to scrape that data directly. It's publicly available, no limits, totally fine. But the raw data is messy. So we run an AI step to extract and structure it: whether it's a pooled investment fund, a commercial trust, a real estate investment trust. We pull out the headquarters, the fund details, and how those differ from the sponsor or operating company details.

Step 3: Classify the Entity

This is a critical step. We need to distinguish between three things: the investment vehicle (the SPV), the operating company, and the sponsoring company. A special purpose vehicle won't give you the name of the company you actually need to reach. It'll give you garbage enrichment data. So we use AI to research the filing details, find the sponsoring company's LinkedIn URL, their website, and their actual name. Most of the time, this is different from the fund name recorded in the SEC filing.

Step 4: Verify the Data

Because we've done so much inference at this point, we want to make sure we're still on the right track. So we run a confirmation step that checks all the data we've collected against the original filing. Simple question: does everything match? If yes, we proceed. If something is off, it gets routed to manual review. Everything after this point needs to be clean.

Step 5: Qualify and Grade the LP

Now the interesting part. We run a qualification prompt that's specifically tuned to the client's ICP. For this engagement, we're looking at how well the LP fits the client's investment thesis. The prompt returns a letter grade, A through D, and a detailed reason why.

A grade D might say: "Primary sources confirm this entity is a real estate GP raising capital for its own funds, not an allocator to an external VC." Discarded immediately.

A grade B might say: "Confirmed as a substantial sophisticated allocator with established programs in PE primaries, co-invest, and secondaries. However, explicit VC early-stage focus is limited." Still worth a conversation.

We also get a full executive summary at this stage so we have context on hand. All Ds get discarded. A, B, and C move forward.

Step 6: Enrich and Generate Talking Points

For every company that passes qualification, we enrich their LinkedIn profile and then generate talking points. These talking points serve one purpose: they inform our email writer. They bridge what matters to the prospect with how that aligns to the client's core mission. So when we draft an email, it's not a generic pitch. It's a conversation about shared priorities.

Step 7: Find and Grade Decision Makers

Now we shift from company data to people. We search for decision makers by ICP job titles: CIO, Head of Alternatives, Head of Fund Selection, VC Allocator, Emerging Manager Allocator, Managing Partner, Founder, Principal. We fetch their LinkedIn profiles, enrich their emails, validate those emails, and then run a second grading at the person level.

A managing partner and founder gets an A: "Firm-level leadership with ultimate authority over capital allocation." A principal gets a B: "Senior investment influencer who leads strategy and influences decision-making." Grade C gets logged for review. A and B proceed to outreach.

Step 8: Draft and Approve Outreach

We draft a short, personalized email using the talking points, the executive summary, the grading reasons, and examples of emails that have historically closed meetings. That draft gets sent to aTable for manual review.

This step isn't always necessary. But when you're dealing with multiple six, seven, and eight-figure relationships, you want to make sure every word is right. The reviewer can see the company name, the decision maker's LinkedIn profile, the company website, and the full email copy. They can edit it, approve it with one click, or reject it with comments that feed back into the prompt.

Step 9: Send and Monitor

Once approved, a webhook fires the data back to Clay. Clay creates a lead in Email Bison, adds it to a campaign, and the sequence goes out. Positive responses show up in Slack or email. Clean, simple, and monitored.

The Stack

• •Clay for orchestration, enrichment, and the entire pipeline logic
• •SEC EDGAR RSS as the signal source
• •AI/LLM steps for classification, qualification, grading, email drafting, and data verification
• •aTable for the manual approval workflow
• •Email Bison as the sending platform

Why This Works

In capital markets, you don't need to guess who is active. Regulators force them to tell you. Every single day, the SEC publishes a list of entities that are raising or deploying capital into alternatives. That's not a lead list. That's a signal feed.

The "zero day" in the name isn't just branding. You are reaching out based on a filing that just hit the public record. Before the databases update. Before the aggregators scrape it. Before your competitors even know this LP exists.

The double-grading system, one for the company and one for the decision maker, means you're not just sending to the right firm. You're sending to the right person at the right firm, with a message that's built on actual context about why they're a fit.

And the manual approval step? At this deal size, it's worth it. One bad email to the wrong managing partner can close a door permanently. One great email can open a relationship worth eight figures.

Stop guessing who might be deploying capital. Start watching the filings.

If you want to build a signal-based GTM engine that finds your prospects before the competition knows they exist, let's talk. Book your GTM strategy call and we'll architect a system for your market.