Guides

How sequences work

View as MarkdownFor AI assistants: llms.txt

A sequence is a flow of steps that starts when a contact is enrolled: send an email, wait, check for a reply, branch, hand off to you. You build it on a canvas in Outreach → Sequences (or have Claude build it), and FounderDB runs it for every enrolled contact.

Steps

Step	What it does	Paths out
Email	Sends a template, or an email written by AI from an instruction	next
Wait	Waits a number of hours	next
Wait for reply	Waits up to a number of hours for a reply	replied, timeout
AI intent branch	Classifies a reply (interested, not interested, question, out of office…) with your AI key	one per intent, plus other
Set stage	Moves the contact in your pipeline	next
Set variables	Sets contact variables	next
Call external API	Sends the contact to your API and stores what it returns — see integrations	done, failed
Branch on variable	Checks a contact variable	yes, no
Hand off to human	Stops the sequence so you (or your AI agent) take over	—
Unsubscribe	Marks the contact do-not-contact	—
End	Finishes	—

A path with nothing connected simply ends the sequence for contacts who take it.

When emails go out

Send window. Each sequence has sending days and hours in one timezone (Sequence settings). Default: Monday–Friday, 9:00–16:00 New York time. Weekends are skipped.
Waits count from the previous step, then move to the next allowed time in the window, plus a few random minutes.
Pacing. Each email takes the next free slot on a mailbox — 4 to 18 minutes after its previous send, within the mailbox's daily cap. When a day is full, it rolls to the next sending day. With several mailboxes, the one with the earliest free slot sends. See SES and Gmail for their caps.
Threading. Once you've emailed a contact, every later email goes in the same thread ("Re: …" your first subject), so follow-ups read as a conversation.
AI name detection. Turn it on for an email step and {{firstName}}, {{makerName}} and {{productName}} become the maker's real first name and the product's short name — "Amit", not "amit_kushwaha99"; "Kiiboard", not "Kiiboard : Keyboard for Coding". Your template's wording stays exactly as written. Unknown first names become "there". It uses your own AI key (Settings → AI), once per contact: one call gives the first name, product name, likely gender and — for the India enrollment rule — how likely the maker is India-based, saved as the variables first_name, product_name, gender and india_likelihood, which you can correct on the contact.
Unsubscribe. Every automated email has a one-click unsubscribe link and List-Unsubscribe headers. Opens and link clicks are tracked.

When someone replies

Replies arrive through your receiving domain or a connected Gmail mailbox and are matched to the contact.

The contact moves to Engaged (active) and the conversation appears in Inbox → To do.
If they were on a Wait for reply step, the sequence takes its replied path immediately. Anything it sends from there goes within a minute or two, from the same mailbox, in the same thread.
If they weren't, and stop on reply is on (the default), the sequence stops — no more automated emails.
A short reply asking to unsubscribe ("stop emailing me", "remove me"…) marks them do-not-contact.

Put a Wait for reply after each email so every reply lands on a path you designed — that's what the recommended sequence does.

Hand off to human

Hand off to human stops the sequence, cancels anything queued for that contact, and moves them to Engaged (active). From there the conversation is yours — or your AI agent's: Claude can read the thread, draft a reply for you to approve, send it, and schedule follow-ups, each labelled as the agent's. Resume the sequence from the contact's page if you ever want it back on autopilot.

Stages that change on their own

When	Stage
The first email goes out	Outreach sent
They reply	Engaged (active)
72 hours pass with no activity after they engaged	Engaged (ghosted)
48 hours after the last email, no reply and no sequence running	Ignored (never replied)

Sequences can also set stages with a Set stage step.

Enrolling contacts

Mark one sequence as default. With Launch auto-enroll on (the Webhooks page), makers from new launches with a safe-to-send email are enrolled in it every 30 minutes.
Enroll anyone from their contact page, import past launches (Contacts → Import previous data), or ask your AI agent to enroll_contact.
Test mode runs waits in minutes instead of hours — enroll yourself to try a sequence end to end.

Enrollment rules

Sequence settings → Enrollment rules decide who a sequence emails at all. They're checked right before each contact's first email — however they were enrolled (launch auto-enroll, import, by hand, or by an AI agent):

Only products launched on chosen weekdays, by the launch's own date (for Product Hunt, the Pacific-time launch day — what shows as "Monday" in the app is Sunday's launches).
Skip makers likely based in India, scored with your AI key from the maker's name, email and product, with a threshold you set (65% by default). The score is saved on the contact as india_likelihood.

Contacts outside the rules leave the sequence before anything is sent, with a note on their timeline saying which rule. Anyone already emailed isn't affected.

Editing a live sequence

You can edit a sequence while contacts are in it. If a change removes the step some contacts are currently on, FounderDB tells you how many and asks before saving — they'd stop where they are.

Steps

Step	What it does	Paths out
Email	Sends a template, or an email written by AI from an instruction	next
Wait	Waits a number of hours	next
Wait for reply	Waits up to a number of hours for a reply	replied, timeout
AI intent branch	Classifies a reply (interested, not interested, question, out of office…) with your AI key	one per intent, plus other
Set stage	Moves the contact in your pipeline	next
Set variables	Sets contact variables	next
Call external API	Sends the contact to your API and stores what it returns — see integrations	done, failed
Branch on variable	Checks a contact variable	yes, no
Hand off to human	Stops the sequence so you (or your AI agent) take over	—
Unsubscribe	Marks the contact do-not-contact	—
End	Finishes	—

A path with nothing connected simply ends the sequence for contacts who take it.

When emails go out

Send window. Each sequence has sending days and hours in one timezone (Sequence settings). Default: Monday–Friday, 9:00–16:00 New York time. Weekends are skipped.

Waits count from the previous step, then move to the next allowed time in the window, plus a few random minutes.

Pacing. Each email takes the next free slot on a mailbox — 4 to 18 minutes after its previous send, within the mailbox's daily cap. When a day is full, it rolls to the next sending day. With several mailboxes, the one with the earliest free slot sends. See SES and Gmail for their caps.

Threading. Once you've emailed a contact, every later email goes in the same thread ("Re: …" your first subject), so follow-ups read as a conversation.

AI name detection. Turn it on for an email step and {{firstName}}, {{makerName}} and {{productName}} become the maker's real first name and the product's short name — "Amit", not "amit_kushwaha99"; "Kiiboard", not "Kiiboard : Keyboard for Coding". Your template's wording stays exactly as written. Unknown first names become "there". It uses your own AI key (Settings → AI), once per contact: one call gives the first name, product name, likely gender and — for the India enrollment rule — how likely the maker is India-based, saved as the variables first_name, product_name, gender and india_likelihood, which you can correct on the contact.

Unsubscribe. Every automated email has a one-click unsubscribe link and List-Unsubscribe headers. Opens and link clicks are tracked.

When someone replies

Replies arrive through your receiving domain or a connected Gmail mailbox and are matched to the contact.

The contact moves to Engaged (active) and the conversation appears in Inbox → To do.

If they were on a Wait for reply step, the sequence takes its replied path immediately. Anything it sends from there goes within a minute or two, from the same mailbox, in the same thread.

If they weren't, and stop on reply is on (the default), the sequence stops — no more automated emails.

A short reply asking to unsubscribe ("stop emailing me", "remove me"…) marks them do-not-contact.

Put a Wait for reply after each email so every reply lands on a path you designed — that's what the recommended sequence does.

Hand off to human

When

Stage

The first email goes out

Outreach sent

They reply

Engaged (active)

72 hours pass with no activity after they engaged

Engaged (ghosted)

48 hours after the last email, no reply and no sequence running

Ignored (never replied)

Enrolling contacts

Mark one sequence as default. With Launch auto-enroll on (the Webhooks page), makers from new launches with a safe-to-send email are enrolled in it every 30 minutes.

Enroll anyone from their contact page, import past launches (Contacts → Import previous data), or ask your AI agent to enroll_contact.

Test mode runs waits in minutes instead of hours — enroll yourself to try a sequence end to end.

Enrollment rules

Only products launched on chosen weekdays, by the launch's own date (for Product Hunt, the Pacific-time launch day — what shows as "Monday" in the app is Sunday's launches).

Skip makers likely based in India, scored with your AI key from the maker's name, email and product, with a threshold you set (65% by default). The score is saved on the contact as india_likelihood.

Contacts outside the rules leave the sequence before anything is sent, with a note on their timeline saying which rule. Anyone already emailed isn't affected.