Finding people to reach out to

You don't need a contact list before your co-founder can help you find customers. Early on it searches the open web for businesses or people who look like the customers you're trying to serve, and hands you a short list with names and links so you can decide who's worth approaching.

Where the list comes from

The list is built from your business profile — who you serve, what they struggle with, and where they are. If none of that is filled in there's nothing to search on, and your co-founder says so instead of guessing. Correct any of it in conversation and the next search uses your version.

Sometimes how you've described your customers isn't something a business puts on its own site — "companies doing $5M-$100M in revenue", say. Describe them as they'd describe themselves and it'll go again.

One audience this can't reach is individual people. If your customers are private individuals — homeowners, students, parents — a search only turns up competitors and directories, because your co-founder finds organizations, never named individuals. Reaching individuals is a job for your website, word of mouth, and ads.

Every entry links to a real, public page it found — nothing is invented. Your co-founder keeps a running list, so the same business won't be added twice, even across separate searches.

What your co-founder will and won't do with it

• It will research and hand you the list, so the tedious part is done.
• It won't contact anyone on the list without asking you first. Reaching out personally is still what works best this early — a LinkedIn message, a personal email, a call — and that part is yours.
• It can email some of them for you — the ones that publish a contact address — asking first and sending nothing until you say yes. See "Emailing businesses you haven't met yet".
• It won't go hunting for contact details. It reads the business's own website and takes only a general address published there — never a named person's, and never a guessed one.
• It won't add these businesses to your marketing list. Only people who have opted in belong there — see "Sending marketing email to your list".

Two kinds of prospect on the same list

The list splits in two, by whether the business publishes a way to email it:

• Ones it can email for you. Some publish a general contact address (the hello@ or info@ sort); your co-founder writes the introduction and sends it once you've said yes.
• Ones that are yours to approach. Plenty publish a contact form, a phone number, or nothing. Your co-founder won't invent an address, but it still brings these to you one at a time with a link, so you can reach out however suits, then tell it you've reached out or to skip. Those two are kept separate: a few days after you say you've reached out, it checks in once to ask whether that business got back to you.

The second group is usually bigger, and that's normal. If emailing businesses you haven't met isn't switched on, every prospect is in it.

Asking for more

Your co-founder brings you one business at a time — whether it can email it or it's yours to approach — and doesn't fetch the next until you've dealt with the current one. When it runs out it goes looking for more on its own, so you don't have to remember to ask, though you always can.

You can ask anyway. Say "find me more businesses" or "I've run out of prospects" and it will go and look. If it's already looking it will say so rather than starting again, and if emailing businesses you haven't met isn't switched on for your account it will tell you that plainly instead of promising a search.

You can ask even early on, while your website is still being built — it goes looking right away.

Two things it won't do, however you ask: search endlessly, and invent names. There's a cap on how often it looks — searching the web costs real money — so an occasional "already on it" is the system working.

This is separate from your own contacts

Your co-founder will also ask for your own contacts — friends, former clients, people who already know you. That list is different and more valuable: those people opted into hearing from you, so your co-founder can draft and (with your approval) send email to them.

You don't have to dig up a whole list to get started. Your co-founder drafts the launch email first, then asks who the first few people are who should get it — even three names is enough, typed into the chat. If you're not ready, it holds the drafted email and won't keep asking. The prospect research above happens either way, so you're never stuck waiting.

For the other things that bring people to your business, see "Running ads and getting found online".