How to Find Decision Makers for Seed-Funded Companies With Clay

This guide shows you how to scrape and enrich a list of seed-funded companies using Clay. Follow the steps to connect with decision makers at early-stage startups and open doors to potential partnerships.

Christy Cañete

Updated November 24, 2023

find seed-funded company

find seed-funded company

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Difficulty: Easy. Might help to know the basics of this tool/topic
Time Required: ~10 minutes

Seed-funded companies are startups that are in the early stage of product development. 

If you’re a sales professional, targeting these companies can present a lot of opportunities:

  • Seed-funded companies often require new tools, services, and other business essentials. That means it’s easier to close a deal with them.
  • Engaging with a startup in its early stages can help you build a business relationship.
  • Startups typically have fewer layers of decision-making which makes your sales process quicker and more straightforward.

Crunchbase is one of the largest directories of startups. Here, you can track a company’s funding rounds, key personnel, and much more. 

Many professionals prospect seed-funded companies from this platform due to its accuracy and extensive database.

So, if you’re looking to connect with early-stage companies, then read this guide. I’ll walk you through how to scrape companies from Crunchbase and then enrich them using Clay

By the end, you'll have a robust list of prospects like this:

find decision makers email addresses

Finding Decision Makers for Seed-Funded Companies Using Clay

1) Install Instant Data Scraper

Let’s use Instant Data Scraper to automatically scrape data from a web page. 

So, go to the Chrome Web Store. Look for "Instant Data Scraper" and select 'Add to Chrome' to get the extension.

install Instant Data Scraper

2) Find Seed-Funded Companies on Crunchbase

Visit Crunchbase and sign in. Select 'Companies' from the main menu. Next, click on 'Funding Rounds' to filter the results. 

find seed companies on Crunchbase

Choose 'Seed' from the left sidebar. This will display a list of seed-funded companies.

find seed companies on Crunchbase

3) Scrape the Data

Click on the Instant Data Scraper icon in your toolbar.  

click Instant Data Scraper

In the pop-up, set the delays between 1 and 20 seconds. The minimum and maximum delays protect your IP from being banned or rate-limited. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that modern websites load content dynamically as you scroll down the page. That means your scraping tool might only capture a fraction of the available data. To ensure that you won’t miss out on any data, turn on the ‘Infinite Scroll’ option, as shown below. 

Instant Data Scraper settings

Then, click ‘Start crawling.’

After it’s finished, download the data as CSV.

4) Add Your Data to Clay

Go to your Clay dashboard and create a new table. 

create Clay table

Pick 'Companies' to describe your list. Then, click 'Browse' to upload the CSV. 

Your dashboard will show the scraped data from Crunchbase. Delete the information you won’t need and change the column names as needed.

import data on Clay

5) Find the Company Domain

For this guide, we’ll need to get the domains of our target companies to easily find the contact details of the decision makers.

Let’s go ahead and enrich our list. 

Right-click your table and choose ‘Add Enrichment.’

add enrichment on Clay

Choose Clearbit from the available enrichment tools on Clay. 

get domain from company using Clearbit

In the settings, pick Clay's API (or your Clearbit API if you have an active Clearbit account) and choose the column with company names as input. 

Clearbit enrichment tool settings

Click 'Continue to Add Fields'. Let's add the domain to our table. 

add domain as column

Then, save and run the integration. Your table will now have a new column with company domains. Use these domains later to identify company decision makers.

find company domain using Clay

6) Find the Decision Makers

Start a new enrichment and select ‘Find Contacts at Company.’

Find Contacts at Company

In the settings window, use the company's domain as the 'Company Identifier'. 

Now, a company’s decision maker will likely have any of the following titles:

  • Chief Human Resources Officer 
  • Human Resources Director 
  • Talent Acquisition Director 
  • Human Resources Manager 
  • Talent Acquisition Manager 
  • HR Business Partner 
  • Head of Recruitment 
  • VP of Human Resources 
  • Procurement Manager 
  • Chief Operating Officer

Let’s go ahead and enter these keywords into the ‘Job Title Keywords.’

enrichment tool to find company domain

Click continue to add fields and choose details like name, title, and LinkedIn URL to add to your table. 

enrichment tool settings

Then, save and run the integration.

After it’s done, you should see the additional columns added to your table. Note that some information might be missing due to the tool’s limitations or unavailability of public data. 

find company contacts

7) Get the Email Addresses of Decision Makers

Clay allows you to use a 'Recipe' by combining multiple integrations and getting all the relevant information in one step. I find this a quick solution if you only have a few data available. 

For instance, we can use the SMB recipe to get not just the decision maker’s name, job title, and active work email.

Another option is to use the waterfall method. This is ideal if you’re searching for specific data, like a name or email address, without using a pre-set recipe. You can even add more integrations to improve the accuracy of the results.

So, for the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to use the waterfall method.

Add enrichment to your table and click on the 'Waterfall' tab.

find work emails of decision makers

Then, choose 'Work Email.' A new window will show you different options to retrieve email addresses.

Use Clay Enrichments, Datagma, and Hunter as your email providers. Set the contact's name and domain as inputs.

To validate the emails, we’ll use Debounce. 

Clay enrichment tool settings

After setting it up, click save and run.

Check your table. It should now list the work emails of the decision makers from your chosen companies.

finding work emails of decision makers

What’s Next?

You’ve just learned how to scrape and enrich a list of companies using Clay. Now, it’s time to unlock the doors to potential partnerships and opportunities. 

We all know that first impressions count. And crafting that perfect cold email can make all the difference. 

If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed about reaching out to each of your leads, we’ve got your back. Check out our other tutorials to learn how to leverage Clay and ChatGPT to make your outreach effective.

Before you go, don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments, or spread the word by sharing this article. 

Cheers to many fruitful connections ahead!

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Written by Christy Cañete

Christy Cañete is a software engineer who's passionate about front-end web design. Not only can she code, but she writes too! She loves breaking down technical topics into super easy tutorials. If you're looking to learn without the jargon, she's your go-to.

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