One SDR, 130 Meetings, and a 90% Show-Up Rate — Outbound for a Founder Who Used to Do It Himself

BaseRock AI is an agentic AI-powered software testing platform that automates unit and integration testing. Founded by Rishi Singh — former CTO of Harness.io, a $5.5B DevOps unicorn — the company is backed by 8VC and targets senior engineering leaders at US-based technology companies. BaseRock's buyers are VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and technical leaders who manage developer teams — personas who are notoriously hard to reach through traditional outbound and deeply skeptical of anything that feels like a sales pitch.

Before Sellerate, Rishi was running outbound himself. As CEO of an early-stage startup, he had limited time and no dedicated prospecting infrastructure — outbound was getting done, but inconsistently and at the expense of everything else on his plate. BaseRock needed a reliable engine that could generate a steady pipeline of qualified meetings with senior engineering buyers in the US, without requiring Rishi to manage the mechanics day to day.

Sellerate embedded one SDR — Noé Ilinczyk — under BaseRock's brand, operating inside their HubSpot and Slack. But this wasn't just execution against a playbook handed down by the client. Sellerate designed and owns BaseRock's entire outbound strategy: the campaigns, the targeting logic, and the messaging angles.

The team developed a multi-profile LinkedIn strategy, rotating outreach across three accounts — the CEO's, the co-founder's, and the SDR's own — to maximize exposure while keeping messaging tone calibrated to each profile. Noé discovered through pattern recognition during prospecting that targeting senior engineering leaders of Indian origin who relocated to the US — leveraging Rishi's own background (IIT Delhi, Indian-origin founder) — created an authentic peer-to-peer dynamic that significantly boosted response rates. This became one of the highest-performing campaign angles and was never suggested by the client.

The core messaging strategy inverts the typical sales pitch: instead of leading with product, outreach is framed as Rishi seeking expert feedback on what BaseRock is building. Soft CTAs, consultative tone, and personalized video follow-ups combine to create outreach that feels like a conversation between peers — not a cold email.

Sellerate doesn't just execute — it builds the strategy.

‍Every campaign angle, targeting insight, and messaging framework for BaseRock was designed by Sellerate's team. The India Connection campaign — the highest-performing angle — was discovered through the SDR's own pattern recognition, not client direction.

A 90% show-up rate signals targeting precision, not just volume.

‍Industry benchmarks for cold outbound show-up rates hover around 60-70%. Hitting 90% consistently over 12 months means the right people are being reached with the right message.

Founders shouldn't be doing their own prospecting.

‍Rishi went from running outbound himself — inconsistently, alongside everything else — to treating pipeline generation as a reliable engine running in the background. One embedded SDR replaced a CEO's fragmented effort with a structured, scalable motion.