US Client
Acquisition Plan

Email templates — send these, not a pitch

Subject: A referral question, not a pitch

Hi [Name],

I run Stray Theory, a small applied AI and service design consultancy. My background is sixteen years of enterprise engineering, currently an engineer at American Airlines, and before that shipping iOS platforms for Bank of America and Diligent across more than twenty App Store apps. I also built and run swiftchronicle.com, an independent tracker for the iOS SDK.

I am not looking for a fractional VP of Sales, so this is not a sales call in either direction. I am looking for one sourcing partner: someone who has personally closed consulting engagements above $250k into US enterprise or public sector, who still has live relationships there, and who would take a small retainer plus a real percentage of what closes.

You have been in the Dallas sales community far longer than I have. Who should I be talking to?

Happy to return the favour if anything I know is useful to you.

Fahad Shafique
Cofounder, Stray Theory

Subject: From the GDS side, now doing this work in the US

Hi [Name],

We may have crossed paths around [department or project]. I spent several years across the GDS ecosystem, working within HMRC, the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Transport and HM Courts and Tribunals Service. At the Cabinet Office I led service design on the Procurement Pathway project, working alongside developers, policy experts, researchers and auditors to make procurement guidance usable across government.

I have since cofounded Stray Theory with Fahad Shafique, who spent sixteen years building enterprise systems in the US and is currently an engineer at American Airlines. We work on the same problem in a different country: fragmented services, manual hand offs, and AI that gets funded before anyone has framed the actual problem or understood the operational consequence.

We are starting to do this work in the US, and I am trying to understand something before we go further. How do state and county digital teams here actually buy this kind of work, and where does the equivalent of a discovery phase sit in your process?

Twenty minutes would be genuinely useful. I am not selling you anything. I want to know what translates from the UK model and what does not.

Zahid Ali
Cofounder and CEO, Stray Theory
straytheory.com

Subject: Service design from UK central government, now working in North Texas

Hi [Name],

I led service design inside UK central government, across HMRC, the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Transport and HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Services used by millions of people, built to strict accessibility, security and regulatory standards. At the Cabinet Office I ran design on the Procurement Pathway project.

I cofounded Stray Theory with Fahad Shafique, who is based in the DFW metro and has spent sixteen years building enterprise systems, currently as an engineer at American Airlines.

The pattern I keep seeing in government on both sides of the Atlantic is the same. Money gets committed to a platform or an AI programme before anyone has properly framed the problem, and the rework shows up two budget cycles later. We do the framing part. A three week diagnostic that tells you what deserves investment and what does not, at a fixed $18,000, with no commitment to anything larger.

If [city or county] has an AI or modernisation decision coming up in the next budget cycle, I would value twenty minutes to hear how you are approaching it.

Zahid Ali
Cofounder and CEO, Stray Theory
straytheory.com