32 cold emails, zero replies. What I changed before wave two

I am a solo founder doing my own outbound, so my numbers are small enough to
be embarrassing and small enough to actually read one by one.

First wave was 32 emails. Zero replies. Not one.

I expected the problem to be the writing, so I reread all 32. The writing was
mediocre but survivable. The real thing was that about a third of them went
to companies where nothing had happened recently. Good fit on paper, no
reason to be in their inbox that week. I had built a list, not a set of
reasons.

The filter I use now. An account enters a wave only if all three are true.

1. The company announced something itself in the last 60 days. A funding
   round, a first sales hire, a leadership change, a new market. If I only know
   it from a data provider and not from the company, it does not count.

2. I can say in one sentence why the specific person would care about that
   event. If the bridge takes a paragraph, the account waits.

3. The company is the size I actually serve, 51 to 200 people. A strong
   signal at a 12 person startup is still the wrong conversation.

Two things I got wrong before this.

Funding decays much faster than hiring. Three weeks after a round everyone
has already written, while a hiring push stays relevant for months.

Leadership changes are the most useful trigger and the least worked one,
because someone new is rebuilding a stack and has budget.

I also threw out every number that came from enrichment. Headcount from a
third party database goes stale and reads like surveillance, which is a bad
first impression when you are asking for attention. Only figures the company
published itself.

Wave two is 100 emails and it is running now. I will post the result here
whatever it looks like.

How long does a trigger stay usable for you? How many days after a round do
you stop treating it as a reason to write?