About Gigi AI and the people who approve your outreach
Gigi AI is a LinkedIn outreach platform and managed service for B2B sales teams, founders and recruiters. AI researches each prospect from their profile and company page, drafts a personalised message sequence in the sender's voice, and a person approves every send. Irina Stoicescu (sales and operations) and Lucian Cretu (product and technology) run it as co-founders.
Why does Gigi exist?
Gigi exists because Irina Stoicescu ran lead generation for more than 60 companies and watched the same mistake repeat. Teams judged outreach by volume, so they sent more messages to more people. Cold email reply rates published by the senders themselves run from 0.45% of emails sent in Belkins' 2025 study of 7.5 million emails (Belkins, updated June 2026, vendor data) to 3.43% platform-wide in Woodpecker's 2026 figures (Woodpecker, June 2026, vendor data).
In her words, "The reply rate is mostly decided by who you do not message." Choosing the right people matters more than polishing the pitch, and no clever sequence rescues a list full of poor fits.
Audience also changes results by sector. Expandi's analysis of 13.2 million connection requests, sent between May 2025 and April 2026, found a 28.5% average acceptance rate, with staffing near 36.5% and apparel near 19.9% (Expandi, May 2026, vendor data, as of October 2026).
The same logic applies to the first touch on LinkedIn. "The connection request should earn the accept and nothing else." So Gigi's connection requests carry no pitch and no question, and they stay under 300 characters.
Lucian came at it from the other side. He ran outbound for his own staffing agency for years, to clients and to candidates, and he got tired of how manual and volume-driven it was. He wanted every message to be worth sending, so Gigi scores fit before it drafts anything.
For every prospect, Gigi reads the LinkedIn profile and the company page, scores fit from 0 to 10 with a written reason, and drafts three messages in the sender's voice. It does not read posts, comments or activity.
A second reason is risk. AI can write something confident and wrong to a real person under your name. As Irina puts it, "One confident, wrong sentence in a client's name costs more than a hundred good messages earn." So a person approves every send.
How do the two of us work?
Irina runs sales and operations, and Lucian runs product, technology, finance and legal. Irina owns every client campaign, Lucian owns the platform those campaigns run on, and they decide strategy together against an agreed business case.
- Irina builds every managed client's target profile and messaging brief herself. She sends sample outputs, iterates until the client signs off, and approves every managed message before it goes out.
- Lucian builds and runs the platform, including the Claude connector that lets a user manage campaigns and review drafts from inside Claude. He also tests new routes to market, such as the recruiter offer and self-serve.
Managed clients get the full version of that process, described on our managed LinkedIn lead generation page. Once the brief is right, approving a message takes seconds.
How does a managed campaign run day to day?
Doing LinkedIn outreach properly takes 10 to 15 hours a week, in Irina's experience, and a managed campaign takes that work off the client. Each LinkedIn account sends at most 25 new connection requests per working day, and Irina approves every managed message before it goes out.
Six steps run in the same order for every campaign.
- 01
Input. A Sales Navigator search, a LinkedIn Recruiter or Recruiter Lite search, or a CSV of named people.
- 02
Research. Gigi reads the profile and company page, then scores fit from 0 to 10 with a one-line reason per criterion. It adds three to five talking points and a read on how the person writes.
- 03
Drafts. Three messages in the sender's voice: a connection request under 300 characters, a first message that sends the moment they accept, and a follow-up on a delay.
- 04
Approval. Irina sees the score, the reasoning and the drafts. She edits, rejects or approves, and only approved messages send.
- 05
Sending. Messages go through the client's own LinkedIn session from the cloud, with no browser plugin. Requests spread across a working-hours window, follow-ups sit outside the 25-a-day cap, and requests not accepted within 21 days are withdrawn automatically.
- 06
Replies. Gigi tracks replies and classifies them as positive, neutral or negative. The sequence stops when a prospect answers, and warm conversations are handed over or handled.
Clients get a weekly report. Before the first send, Irina builds the brief and the client signs off on samples.
How we got here
Gigi grew out of a client relationship. Lucian was the first customer of Ready Set Sell, and that trust gave Irina what she needed to quit Bunnyshell and start her own practice. The two had also run sales campaigns together for Coverletter.tech.
After selling his company and taking a sabbatical, Lucian launched MVP Hub. By then Irina had already started building Gigi, so they joined up. About eighteen months before we wrote this page in October 2026, she showed him the idea and he wanted to invest.
Along the way they co-founded LeanOps, a LinkedIn CRM test that is now folded into Gigi. Managed outreach became the main business in May 2026, and it pays the bills today. Self-serve stays live. In 2026, Recruiter and Recruiter Lite searches also became a prospect source, and the Claude connector shipped.
The table lists dated milestones and the campaign figures that sit behind them.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| February 2023 | Lucian sells Coverletter.tech, the tech recruiting and staffing agency he built to about 150 consultants. |
| February to October 2026 | Gigi's own outbound account, with Irina selling Gigi, sends 1,657 connection requests to second and third degree contacts. 735 are accepted (44%), 284 reply (39% of accepted) and 83 calls are booked. |
| May 2026 | Gigi moves to managed outreach as its main business. Self-serve stays live. |
| August to October 2026 | The Career Shift campaign to HR and L&D leaders and coaches in Romania and the UK sends 1,357 requests. 766 are accepted (56%), 330 conversations open (43% of accepted) and 114 people ask for a call. |
These are examples, and results depend on timing, industry and offer. Reply rates are replies as a share of accepted connections. The case studies show specific campaigns with their numbers.
What do we believe about outreach?
Four beliefs decide what Gigi will and won't do.
- 01
The request earns the accept and nothing else. No pitch, no question, under 300 characters. The conversation starts after they say yes.
- 02
A person approves every send. Nothing goes out in a client's name until someone has read it. No account running Gigi has been restricted to date. That's a track record, not a guarantee.
- 03
Hacks expire; relevance does not. Send-time tricks and clever templates stop working once enough people copy them. A message that shows you read the person's profile keeps working.
- 04
We do the first part. Getting the right people into a conversation is our job. Closing is yours, which is why we don't take commission-only deals.
The company
Gigi is a product of MVPHub LLC, a Delaware company based in Dover, DE. The team is based in Europe. We work with clients in the US and across Europe, and the US is our current focus. The quickest way to reach us is by email at irina@usegigi.ai.
You can also follow the Gigi AI company page on LinkedIn, or connect with Irina on LinkedIn.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
On managed campaigns, Irina approves every message before it goes out. She has 18 years in B2B sales and builds each client's target profile and messaging brief herself. On self-serve, you see the fit score, the reasoning and the drafts, then edit, reject or approve them. Only approved messages send.
Gigi is a product of MVPHub LLC, a Delaware company based in Dover, DE. The team is based in Europe. Gigi works with clients in the US and across Europe, and the US is the current focus. The quickest way to reach the team is by email at irina@usegigi.ai.
Irina spent 18 years in B2B sales, was head of sales automation at Bunnyshell, then founded the consultancy Ready Set Sell and ran lead generation for more than 60 companies. Lucian spent ten years at Volksbank Romania and six at Capgemini, then built the staffing agency Coverletter.tech to about 150 consultants and sold it in February 2023.
Gigi is a platform and a managed service, so you can approve every message yourself on self-serve or have Irina run a campaign for you. Each prospect gets a researched draft in the sender's voice, and only approved messages send. Managed work is priced per engagement and is never commission-only.
Next step
Book an intro call.
If you sell something worth $5,000 or more a year and know who you should be talking to, a 30-minute call with Irina will tell you quickly whether managed outreach fits. If you'd rather approve every message yourself, the free tier gives you 40 credits and needs no card.