🏢 Your First Step: Find Companies

⚙️ Get as precise as you can in starting your search

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 are often asked which providers are behind the Find Companies/Find People Datasets – and the answer is a lot. We’re combining data across various different providers and layering on our own best practices and data cleaning methods to give you the best starting point we possibly can. 

Let’s dive in. 

🔢 Understanding Workbooks and Tables

First things first, we must understand workbooks and tables - as they’re both at the core of everything we do in Clay. 

• A Workbook is to a table as a Spreadsheet is to a Sheet. A place to organize and house multiple tables.
• When in doubt, create a Workbook; it's your space to bring related tables together for a cohesive view.
  
  

Navigating to Your New Workbook

• Begin with a blank workbook to access a suite of import options.
• Familiarize yourself with the different sources available to import data; these are your tools to start building.

ℹ️ Mastering the 'Find Companies' Source

‍Once you’ve gotten your workbook up and running, it’s now time to start building that list.

If you have any prior experience with prospecting tools, you’ll feel very comfortable with the Find Companies/People/Jobs modals. Similar to Sales Nav or Apollo, you can quickly filter by a variety of company attributes like industry, headcount, location, and more to narrow your list down to a specific hypothesis or group within your ICP that you want to test. 

You can get as detailed as you want in this modal. In fact, the more detailed the better. Every GTM strategy is different (and should be), but we’re big believers in creating small, focused, targeted lists of 1K to 3K people that give you ample room to test your offer and gather data on what’s working and what’s not working. That said, not everything is discoverable from the Find Companies modal. For example, revenue or tech stack are enrichments you’ll need to add after first narrowing down your list. If you don’t see something natively in the Find People modal, then you’ll have to get that data via a provider waterfall or AI web scraper - both of which we’ll cover in subsequent lessons. 

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🌀 Iterate, refine, and preview your Search for Optimal Results‍

Your first set of search parameters is almost certainly not going to be your last. The key to building good lists in clay is to iterate, iterate, iterate. Look at the size of your list and the initial data you’re getting. If some job titles feel off, then add terms to the negative exclusion criteria. Feel like your list is too small? Add more headcount ranges to broaden your search, or remove a narrowing filter like location.

• Revisit and adjust your filters to expand or narrow down your list.
• Regularly preview company profiles to ensure alignment with your ICP.
• Remove restrictive limits to capture the full spectrum of your target companies.

Once you’ve tweaked and refined your list to your heart’s content, you’re ready to hit the blue import button and pull that list of companies into your very first Clay table!

Note that when you click import, you’ll be presented with the option to auto-add certain enrichments to that list, as shown in the screenshot above.

Do NOT do this, as it’s the fastest way to burning all of your credits by accident. Once you really know your way around Clay, then maybe you’ll make use of those out-of-the-box recipes. 

That’s a wrap on Find Companies, but we’re truly just getting started. Now it’s time to start enriching these companies with the rest of the data we’re looking for, before we get down to finding people.