seed2c
Gino D'Notti's path to founding seed2c wasn't a typical "scratch your own itch" story—it was more about discovering a repeatable playbook. He was living in New York when a CMO friend asked him to help lead a sales team for a Canadian startup expanding into the US. That startup was Touch Bistro, a point-of-sale system for iPad. Gino's success taking Touch Bistro into the US market caught the attention of Falcon Social, a Danish company that wanted the same treatment. After successfully expanding Falcon Social, a private equity firm approached him with an even bigger ask: move to Argentina and build outsourced sales development teams for their struggling portfolio companies.
Gino made the move to Argentina and built something unconventional—a team of expat college kids who didn't want to "go into a cubicle." He'd recruit young talent and offer them a chance to live abroad for a year or two while doing sales development work for US-based clients. It worked. He proved that you could build effective SDR teams remotely, in different geographies, selling to premium US markets. The model was efficient, scalable, and the results spoke for themselves.
After proving the model worked for the PE firm, Gino asked himself: "Why am I only doing this for one private equity firm? Why not do this for anyone?" He transitioned from serving a single client to building a service business. His initial clients were SaaS founders who needed to scale their sales operations but didn't know how to hire and manage SDRs effectively. The word-of-mouth traction came from founders seeing tangible results—booked meetings, qualified SQLs, and working SDRs who actually knew what they were doing.
Gino's key insight was that most founders hire SDRs and leave them to flounder. His solution: every SDR comes with a coach who does two one-on-one sessions per week. For $2,500/month (part-time, 20 hours/week) or $5,000/month (full-time), founders get an SDR plus a manager. He also pioneered a "golden handshake" model—if a client wants to convert an outsourced SDR to full-time, seed2c takes just 15% of the first annual base salary, not a percentage of salary plus commission. This aligned incentives: Gino benefits from successful placements, and clients get a clear path to hiring.
Gino also built a free Slack community called "SDR Ready" with 2,200+ members and hosts "Wine Wednesday" videos every week, creating brand awareness and goodwill in the SDR community without relying on paid ads.
As of the interview, seed2c manages just under 70 SDRs across roughly 20 client companies. Gino deliberately caps himself at 20 clients at a time to avoid being stretched too thin. The company averages 3-5 full-time placements per month as satisfied clients convert outsourced SDRs to permanent hires. He's also negotiated discounted deals on enterprise software (HubSpot, Outreach, Apollo, Usher Connect) for his clients, further reducing their friction and increasing the value proposition. Gino is 37, married, just moved to Palm Beach, and works 16-hour days while sleeping 8 hours—a testament to his philosophy that "you get out what you put in."
- •By packaging SDR labor with ongoing coaching and management, Gino solved a problem founders didn't know how to articulate—that raw SDR hires fail without structured support—which made results tangible enough to drive word-of-mouth referrals.
- •The 'golden handshake' placement fee (15% vs. percentage of salary) aligned incentives between the agency and clients, turning contract SDRs into a genuine hiring pipeline rather than a dead-end service, which increased client lifetime value and referral likelihood.
- •Building a free community (SDR Ready) and consistent content (Wine Wednesday) positioned the agency as a trusted resource in the SDR space without paid acquisition, creating brand authority that made inbound referrals self-sustaining.
- •Deliberately capping clients at 20 allowed Gino to maintain quality and avoid capacity constraints, which protected the reputation needed for word-of-mouth growth in a competitive space.
- 1.Package your service offering with ongoing support or coaching bundled into the base price, rather than treating support as an add-on, so clients experience measurable outcomes that they'll naturally discuss with peers.
- 2.Create an alternative revenue model for your service's natural exit point (e.g., permanent hiring) that benefits both you and the client, such as a placement fee tied to actual salary, so satisfied customers have a clear upgrade path and you capture incremental revenue.
- 3.Start a free community or regular content initiative (Slack group, weekly video, etc.) in your target market and maintain it consistently, even before you have significant paying customers, to build credibility and create low-friction touchpoints for word-of-mouth.
- 4.Set an explicit cap on the number of clients you'll serve at once, and communicate it publicly, so you can maintain service quality and reputation—which is the foundation of word-of-mouth growth.
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