Every Fortune 1000 has Kafka somewhere. The job is finding which orgs are running it at scale, hitting the operational wall, and ready for Confluent Cloud — before MSK eats the deal. Clay makes that a daily workflow.
Self-managed Kafka users are everywhere. Finding the ones with operational pain, a data-platform leader on the buying committee, and active MSK lock-in pressure — that's the entire commercial game.
Score every account on Kafka-cluster size signals, recent data-platform hires, and streaming-architecture mentions in engineering blogs. Surface the 1,500 self-managed users most likely to convert to Cloud this fiscal year.
Confluent renewals run through Heads of Data Platform and VPs of Engineering — not just the dev who installed Kafka. Clay maps the right buying committee at every account.
Claygent reads engineering blogs, scans job posts for Kafka-pain mentions, and surfaces architecture-modernization timing — real research on every account.
Each one maps to a real Confluent motion — Cloud upgrade, Flink land, MSK displacement, and stream-governance expansion.
Watch self-managed and MSK customers for the signals that predict migration — outage post-mortems on engineering blogs, data-team turnover, RFPs on streaming spend. Clay surfaces them with current cluster-scale estimates and a tailored switch-cost analysis.
Combine cluster-scale signals (job posts mentioning topic counts, GitHub config repos), recent Platform Eng hires, and recent funding. Push the top 1,000 self-managed accounts to your AE queue weekly.
Streaming architecture decisions follow data-platform leadership changes. Clay monitors LinkedIn + press releases across the named-account list, drafts a personalized opener referencing the new exec's prior stack, and routes to the right AE.
Pull every company with public references to real-time analytics, fraud detection, or RT recommendation systems — across engineering blogs, conferences, and AI-engineer job posts. Clay enriches with stack context and routes to the Flink specialist team.
Data-platform-led, engineering-credible, AI-native GTM orgs already running on Clay.
“In my professional opinion, Clay has one of the most practical and exciting applications of AI, in a decades-old practice that has long been stale.”
“Clay should be an essential pillar of every company's GTM stack, enabling outbound built on the highest quality data foundation possible. Now you can automate hours of manual research so sales teams can focus on selling.”
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“This job has always been about creativity, despite how it might seem, and Clay enables me to answer more 'what if we could…' questions from our GTM teams than I ever could before.”
“I love using and working with Clay because its extensive customization options allow it to seamlessly integrate into various systems, making it an essential part of our tech stack. Their hands-on customer support ensures we build out flows in the most efficient way possible.”
“Clay is a game changer for marketing, data, and operations. We have 3x our enrichment rate with Clay's combination of data providers. Clay makes it easy to use AI for GTM initiatives, unlocking new workflows that were infeasible before.”
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“Clay is a central part of our outbound campaign program. It's helped us fully automate lead enrichment that previously required expensive and time consuming manual research. We can use the hours we've saved on manual work for more interesting, creative, and important tasks.”
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“Clay saves us hours a week that we previously spent researching and vetting companies that applied to our startup program. Our auto-approval rate has jumped to ~40% — with no manual work needed.”
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“Scaling inefficient SDR work isn't possible without an infinite flow of capital. Clay helps automate mundane tasks like contact data enrichment, including pulling signals and triggers, so SDRs can focus their time on prioritized selling and spend their days more effectively.”
“Not having Clay would hugely reduce our ability to run good outbound campaigns. We wouldn't be calling people as much, because it's hard to get good phone numbers. We wouldn't be emailing as much because we'd be likely to bounce or go to spam. Clay is a reliable source of data enrichment.”
“Clay is the Rippling marketing team's secret weapon. It has helped us build an experimentation-driven GTM motion that iterates on ideas and scales what works. We've greatly improved our outbound email performance, deeply enriched our customer base with AI, and more.”
Send us your toughest segment — Cloud upgrade, MSK displacement, or Flink land. In 30 minutes we'll build a working Clay workflow against it, ready to push to your CRM.
What you'll walk away with
