With your account connected and ICP approved, the path to a first real message has three stages: find, accept, approve.
1. Run discovery
Start a discovery run from the dashboard. The engine turns your ICP into multiple LinkedIn searches (in the right languages for your target market), pools and dedupes the results, drops anyone matching your "Don't target" exclusions, and scores the most promising candidates against your ICP — see How lead scoring works. You set the target number of leads; the run shows a funnel of what was searched, filtered, scored, and suggested.
2. Accept the leads you want
Suggestions arrive with a score, the reasoning behind it, and a one-line bio. Accept the ones you want to pursue; reject the ones you don't. Both clicks teach the system — future runs are biased toward what you accepted and away from what you rejected.
3. Approve the messages
Each accepted lead enters a sequence. It does not start with a pitch — the engine first warms the lead up (profile view, a like, often a comment you approve like any message), then drafts the connection note for your review. Nothing sends without your approval, and drafts wait for you indefinitely.
When the invite is accepted, the follow-up draft appears in your queue — written with full awareness of what the note already said. When the lead replies, the sequence stops and the conversation is yours: Reply classification explains exactly what happens for each kind of reply.
Timing expectations
Sequences respect daily caps and the 08:00–20:00 send window in your account's local timezone, and new accounts ramp up slowly by design. A first reply typically takes days, not minutes — that's the safety model working, not the system being slow. See Warmup and account safety.