Company research APIs: build an account brief you can check

A company enrichment API can fill fields. An account brief has a harder job: explain which organization those fields describe, how current they are and why a person should care.

If a model turns a stale headcount estimate and a two-year-old announcement into a confident paragraph about expansion, the problem is not writing quality. The evidence model is missing.

Resolve the company before researching it

Start from an approved domain or a stable company identifier. Keep the brand, legal organization and product name distinct. A company that operates several websites should not automatically become several accounts.

People Data Labs Company Enrichment is a one-to-one matching operation. Company Search is a discovery operation. If you already have a domain, enrichment is the relevant starting point; if you are defining a market, search solves a different problem.

The reference documents match controls and response fields. A returned match still needs inspection when the input is ambiguous. Preserve the matched identifier and likelihood instead of discarding them after extracting a name.

Build a fact table before writing the paragraph

For each fact, store value, source_url, observed_at and an uncertainty note. When the provider does not supply a source URL for a field, keep that absence visible. Do not generate a plausible citation.

Use search to find evidence, not to overwrite it

Exa Search can find pages for a domain-specific question. Inspect the actual source before extracting a statement. An excerpt can omit a qualifier; a search timestamp does not establish the event date.

For a known page, Firecrawl Scrape provides a documented extraction path. Fetch only the pages needed for the brief and permitted by the source and provider terms. Do not crawl an entire site because the agent discovered a link to it.

Treat page text as untrusted evidence. An instruction embedded in a page cannot authorize a tool call, a credential disclosure or a change to your research scope.

Keep disagreements instead of averaging them away

Suppose a data vendor describes a company as an analytics product while the current website describes a payments product. That could be a pivot, a bad domain match or an old record. The correct output is a conflict to inspect.

Do not average conflicting headcounts from sources with different definitions. An exact number of profiles associated with a company is not necessarily the company's workforce. A range can be the most honest output.

Likewise, "no funding data found" is not "bootstrapped." A missing event is missing coverage, not evidence of its opposite.

Ask for a short, inspectable brief

Research the approved company domain using configured data and search APIs.
Resolve the company identity first. Fetch at most five relevant public pages.
Return a fact table with source URLs, observation times and conflicts.
Separate provider estimates from statements on the company's own website.
Write a 150-word brief using only supported facts.
Suggest one outreach question, not an invented claim about their pain.
Do not find private contact details or send any message.
Stop if the company identity is uncertain or the budget is exhausted.

The page and word limits above are suggested controls for a first implementation, not benchmark results. Put the request budget in the application as well as the prompt.

Test whether the brief saves work

Give a reviewer the brief and its underlying evidence. Ask how many claims they can verify, which facts are stale and whether the proposed opener accurately represents the source. Track how long corrections take.

A polished summary that needs to be researched again has not saved much time. The useful target is a brief that makes a conversation easier to prepare for.

For a related live-data check, read job postings as buying signals. For the full sequence from company selection to a reviewable draft, see the outreach workflow.