🏢 Your First Step: Find Companies in Clay

Welcome to the first lesson of Clay 101: Find Companies. This lesson dives into the art of sourcing companies using Clay’s native Companies dataset.

We often get asked which data providers power the Find Companies/Find People datasets. And the answer is: a lot. We combine data from 100+providers and enhance it with our own best practices and data-cleaning methods to ensure accuracy, completeness, and usability. This means you get richer, more reliable data that helps you identify the right companies and contacts with confidence.

In this lesson, we’ll show you how to find and import ICP-fit companies into a workbook using Clay.

How To Find Companies In Clay

Watch the guided demo to learn how to find companies in Clay, or skip ahead for a step-by-step breakdown.

Step 1: Create A New Workbook

In Clay, a workbook serves as a centralized space where you can manage and organize your data workflows. Within a workbook, you can create multiple tables, each designed to hold and structure specific datasets. Tables allow you to store, manipulate, and analyze data pertinent to your projects. This hierarchical setup enables efficient data management, with workbooks overseeing the broader workflow and tables handling detailed datasets.

Think of a workbook as a spreadsheet and a table as a sheet within it—just like in Excel or Google Sheets.

When in doubt, create a Workbook. It's your space to bring related tables together into a cohesive view.

To create a new workbook, navigate to your home dashboard in Clay and click on New > Workbook. Then select “Find Companies” from the import options to open the company search modal.

Step 2: Define Your Search Filters

Once your workbook is set up, it’s time to start building your list.

If you’ve used prospecting tools before, you’ll find Clay’s Find Companies/People/Jobs modals familiar. Like other prospecting tools, these modals allow you to filter by key attributes such as industry, headcount, location, and more, helping you narrow your list to a specific hypothesis or segment within your ideal customer profile (ICP) for testing. The more detailed your filtering, the better. 

While every go-to-market (GTM) strategy is unique, we strongly recommend creating small, highly focused lists of 1,000 to 3,000 people. This gives you enough data to test your offer effectively and analyze what’s working (or not).

Step 3: Preview Companies

Next, preview your list before importing. 

Your first search won’t be your last—iteration is key.

Check your list size and data quality. If job titles seem off, adjust negative exclusions. If the list is too small, expand headcount ranges or loosen filters like location. Regularly preview profiles to ensure ICP alignment and adjust as needed.

In the preview view, scroll down to see a list of all companies; scroll right to find company details like descriptions and LinkedIn company profile URLs.

Step 4: Import Your Data

Last, import companies when ready. 

Not all data is available within the Find Companies modal itself. Attributes like revenue or tech stack require additional enrichment after you’ve built your initial list. If a data point isn’t available in the Find Companies modal, you’ll need to source it through a provider waterfall or an AI web scraper in the table—both of which we’ll cover in upcoming lessons.

💡Tip: For new users, skip default enrichments (after hitting “Import”) to conserve trial credits. Add enrichments later once you understand how they work in Clay.

Congrats! 

That’s a wrap on finding companies in Clay, but we’re just getting started.

Next, we’ll enrich these companies with the exact data we need before diving into finding the right people.

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