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This post is for our fellow engineers doing GTM / sales!

I used to think doing enrichment was for big companies with massive outbound sales functions.

Then one day, we set a goal: find 10 pre‑sales customers before launching Val Town for Teams. My day became dashboards, Google, and DMs searching for teams who could be the right fit.

We funneled new user emails from Clerk into Discord and did the “scroll a long feed of emails and hope you recognize someone” routine. But that of course, quickly became unsustainable.

Clearbit's Enrichment API used to be the obvious answer, but post‑HubSpot acquisition, it's no longer an option for small new customers.

Clay was great, but we wanted to use it like an API so anyone on our team could use it programatically, without Clay knowledge or set-up.

We asked on X, the CEO replied, and that nudged us to build an API proxy ourselves.

You can pass in data via a webhook and pass it to any system after that

— Kareem Amin (@kareemamin) May 1, 2025

We turned Clay into an API / SDK on Val Town via our Clay API Proxy.

Here's how it works:

Your val calls clay() with an email or GitHub username. We verify your identity, generate a request id, and forward the payload to Clay with that id. Clay enriches and POSTs the result back using the same id. While your request is open, we poll for it. When it returns, we give you the JSON back as if it's a normal request/response.

Enriching emails with Clay is now as simple as:

Create val
import { clay } from "https://esm.town/v/charmaine/clay-proxy/sdk.ts";

const result = await clay({
  email: "charmaine@val.town",
  source: "user_signup"
});

Everything changed when we started funneling this new enriched data directly into our Discord. Our users were no longer a long list of anonymous emails.

We were able to more efficiently spend our time interacting with our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) as soon as they sign up, instead of combing through endless dashboards in search of a unicorn.

User enrichment is a big part of how we successfully found our first 10 pre-sales customers.

• We see new users joining in real-time, with their enriched profiles
• Anyone can start a thread, tag the right person, or notify everyone else that they've already reached out. For example:
• Warm intros were easy to track
• The team then starts building intuition about: how many new users joined, are we attracting ICP, who owns follow‑ups etc.

Once you have this data on Val Town, there's lots you can do.

Here are some examples:

• Enrich yours' or your competitors' GitHub repo stargazers
• For fellow devtool companies, we reach out with an auto‑generated Val that runs their SDK so the first touch includes a working demo. This got some great responses!
• Get Townie to build custom outbound demos etc. based on their profile - Patrick Spychalski has a great example post with a similar workflow.

We've been loving these experiments and would love to help more engineers scale the traditional GTM function. More to come!