AI IT support startup recovers 20% more contact data with Hunter

Meet Risotto

Risotto automates support tickets for IT leaders at mid-market companies by offering an AI agent that connects to existing ticketing systems.

By automatically resolving Tier 1 requests  password resets, software access, Wi-Fi troubleshooting, and HR questions like payroll and benefits, Risotto frees lean support staff to focus on higher-priority work.

Risotto targets companies with 500 to 5,000 employees that are tech-forward and Slack-first. The company sells entirely through outbound, meaning Aron Solberg, Risotto's co-founder, needs to reach the right people with accurate, deliverable contact data. 

Getting that data - and trusting it enough to send - is where Hunter became essential.

The challenge

Risotto's prospecting workflow starts with SalesNavigator, but doesn’t provide the email addresses which are integral to Risotto’s outbound sequencing. 

To fill that gap, the team turned to Apollo, but soon found that 20% of contacts came back without a usable email address. And, if an email did appear, the confidence signals were hard to act on. 

Other tools returned labels like "accept all" - with no practical guidance on what that actually meant for email deliverability.

For a growing business reliant on outbound, with sequences of 7 to 12 touches across email, LinkedIn, and phone, every unverified address is a wasted touch - and a direct risk to sender reputation:

"SalesNavigator does not give you contact information, it doesn't give you the email address. You're kind of left to figure that out."

Aron Solberg, Co-Founder, Risotto

The solution

Risotto uses Hunter to close the gaps that Apollo creates. 

Their workflow: 

• When Aron's team identifies a prospect through Sales Navigator, Hunter steps in to find or verify their email address.
• Using the company or contact’s name, the team uses Hunter's Email Finder to locate one lead.. 
• When an email address is present but unverified, Risotto runs it through Email Verifier to assess confidence before sending. 
• Hunter's confidence score is used throughout to gauge if the contacts should be added into Risotto's outreach sequences, which run across email, LinkedIn, and phone, typically spanning 7 to 12 touches per prospect.

The results

The impact of Hunter is felt in lead coverage and confidence. 

Whereas Apollo returned incomplete records - roughly 20% of the time - Hunter reverses this. 

That means the team's prospecting list is 20% larger than it would otherwise be, with no additional manual research.

As Aron describes it: 

"When I get my information from Apollo, there's usually 20% of contact information missing and Hunter usually fills that gap and it allows us to verify the emails as well."

Aron Solberg, Co-Founder, Risotto

The confidence percentage has changed how Aron's team makes decisions about who to contact. Whereas other tools return ambiguous signals "accept all" with no practical guidance, Hunter gives a number Aron can reason about. 

As Aron puts it:

"I love the percentage of confidence for a given email… Hunter comes back and says we are 80% confident that this is the right email. That is so clarifying."

That clarity helps protect Risotto's sender reputation and ensure their messages land in the inbox.

The takeaway

For Risotto, Hunter isn't a standalone prospecting tool, it's the verification layer that makes everything else work. 

Sales Navigator finds the right targets. Hunter closes the gap between a name and an email address, all the while validating that the information is correct so the outbound motion can run with confidence.

As Aron says himself:

"When it comes to enriching data for key bits of information like email addresses, Hunter is one of the most effective, intuitive and adaptable tools out there."