Glossary
The vocabulary of receiver-side outreach.
Short, plain definitions for the concepts PitchGate is built on. If you've been reading the manifesto and want the precise terms, start here.
AI gatekeeper
A receiver-side, cost-gated, AI-mediated inbound channel for high-value attention. The gatekeeper sits in front of a person whose time is the scarce resource and decides — on the receiver's rules — what gets through.
Buyer attention
The genuinely scarce resource in modern outreach. Sender capacity is essentially infinite; receiver attention is finite, undifferentiated by current tooling, and increasingly defended.
Receiver-side outreach
Positioning a product on the receiver's side of an inbound transaction rather than the sender's. The differentiation lever that creates room for a new category in a market crowded with seller tools.
Cost-gated inbound
An inbound channel where the sender bears a real, non-zero cost to make contact. The cost is the filter — even a small price defeats spray-and-pray and forces senders to self-select.
Pitch screening
The work an AI gatekeeper does between the sender pressing submit and a notification reaching the receiver — running an intake, scoring against the receiver's preferences, and routing the result.
Pitch quality rubric
The conceptual framework an AI gatekeeper uses to turn a pitch into a comparable score — relevance to the receiver, specificity, credibility, and how clearly the ask is stated.
Cold-outreach ROI
The return on cold email and LinkedIn outbound has trended down for years — not because outbound has stopped working on the merits, but because the channel itself was strip-mined by free-to-send tooling.