Why you're getting this: You've interacted with Haven or AdTribe before, and this is my weekly-ish update on my journey to building an AI-native agency. Zero pressure to stick around, just click unsubscribe if you don't want to get it.
Alright, let’s get into it.
I built an AI SDR with Claude
I'm the entire sales function at two companies, AdTribe and Haven. And I was letting warm leads die in my inbox.
Not because I'm bad at sales. I just kept forgetting to follow up. A founder likes three posts in a row, I don't notice. Someone replies to a DM, it gets buried. A company posts they're hiring a media buyer (literally a buying signal for what I sell), and I miss it completely.
So I built a thing. Four Telegram messages hit my phone every morning at 10am.
Accountability. How many LinkedIn DMs did I send yesterday vs. my target of 10. Progress bar and everything. If I'm short, it tells me how many I owe. Nowhere to hide.
Warm signals. Who liked a post, commented, viewed my profile, or replied in the last 24 hours. Sorted by recency, clickable links. Basically a "who's thinking about me right now" list.
Hiring signals. This one's my favorite. It scans LinkedIn Jobs and posts for anyone hiring paid media roles, finds the CEO or founder, checks if they're in my network, and surfaces them. If a founder is hiring a media buyer, they probably need what I sell. Buying signal hiding in plain sight.
Follow-ups. Pulls from my CRM, ranks who I should message based on last contact and pipeline stage. Each one comes with a suggested message in my voice based on actual conversation history.
The stack: Unipile for LinkedIn API access, Phantombuster for scraping job posts and profiles, Airtable for storing every signal, Claude for drafting messages, Telegram Bot API for delivery. Runs on a cron job, fully automated.
Whole thing took about a week to build with Claude Code.
Next step is training the agent to actually book calls for me so I can finally write one of those LinkedIn posts: "My AI SDR made me a millionaire while I was drinking pinacolada in Mexico" haha
What companies actually want when hiring media buyers
We placed 9 media buyers into agencies and product companies over the last few months. I went back through every brief to see what the market is actually asking for.
Everyone wants senior. 7 out of 9 wanted someone who owns strategy. 3-5 years minimum, 5+ for the bigger roles. Nobody asked for juniors.
Attribution is table stakes. Every single brief mentioned it. GA4, AppsFlyer, CAPI, GTM, call tracking. If a buyer can't set up and read attribution, they're not getting hired for anything serious.
AI in the workflow is becoming a hard filter. One company made it an explicit requirement. Their words: "No AI in their workflow in 2026 is a real signal about how they think about leverage and speed." This will be universal within 12 months.
The biggest insight: "media buyer" is not one job. It's four. Lead gen (CPL-driven, $2,500-4,500/month), consumer apps (CAC/LTV, $5,000-10,000/month), ecommerce (ROAS-focused, $2,000-3,000/month), and B2B/SaaS (pipeline-driven, $3,000-6,000/month). The experience that gets you hired in one actively disqualifies you in another.
The ecom trap surprised me. Ecom is the most common media buyer background. It's also the most disqualifying for everything else. Lead gen clients said it explicitly: ecom buyers over-index on platform ROAS and under-index on lead quality. App companies: "primarily ecom background is a no." The mental model just doesn't transfer.
Salary comes down to three things: budget scale, strategy ownership, and whether it's an agency or product company. Product companies pay more. Always.
We have capacity for 2 more placements this month. If you know someone hiring media buyers, we pay $1,500 for referrals that close. You know where to find me 🙂
Talk soon,
Dmitry