Find every company or person that fits a description

A complete list is only possible when "fits the description" has a clear answer, so Kite first breaks your description into separate conditions. Suppose you ask for "every agency that runs paid social for dental practices in the US." Kite reads that as four conditions: the company is an agency, it runs paid social campaigns, dental practices are among its clients, and it operates in the US.

Kite settles the details that your words leave open. It decides whether "dental practices" includes orthodontists, whether a freelancer counts as an agency, and whether "runs paid social" means the agency lists it as a service or shows client work to prove it. When a choice would change the list a lot, Kite asks you before it starts. It also uses what it already knows about your business to set exclusions, such as leaving out your current customers and competitors when the list is meant for prospecting.

When your conditions are facts that business databases store, Kite filters those databases directly, because one filtered search returns the whole matching group with the facts already attached. Kite's built-in sources include Apollo for companies, people, and work emails, and Crustdata for funding, hiring, leadership, and technology use. You don't need an account with either one.

Company searches can filter by industry, size, and location, with further filters for headcount growth, funding, and technology use. People searches can filter by title, function, seniority, location, and current employer. If you already have a few companies that fit, Kite can also find others similar to them.

If you have a DataForB2B account, connect it and Kite can search there too. DataForB2B adds filters for things such as a person's skills, past employers, and investors, and it can find people similar to a profile you give it.

Many useful descriptions can't be expressed as database filters, so Kite searches the public web to find who fits them. "Tools that turn podcast episodes into blog posts," "agencies that specialize in Shopify migrations," and "people who have written in depth about pricing for developer tools" are all examples. No company database has a field for any of them.

For these, Kite uses Exa, a built-in source for searching the public web, to discover companies, people, articles, and other entities that match your description. Kite also runs its own searches using different vocabulary, because the same kind of company describes itself in different ways. A search for "AI meeting notes apps" and a search for "call transcription software" will surface different products that belong on the same list.

For lists of people, the web route finds experts by what they have done in public. Kite looks for people who have written about the topic, spoken at conferences, appeared on podcasts, or been quoted in the press. It can also search public conversations on X and Hacker News to find the practitioners other people turn to.

A name only goes on the list after Kite has checked it against every condition, because candidates from any search include near misses. A web search for dental marketing agencies also returns agencies that wrote one blog post about dentists, and a database search for "Head of Marketing" also returns people who left the company last quarter.

For each candidate, Kite records whether each condition was met, the reasoning behind that decision, and the page that supports it. That might be the agency's own services page, the tool's pricing page, or the article an expert wrote. Candidates that fail a condition are left off the list, but Kite keeps the reason so you can see what was excluded and why.

Kite also merges what every search found. The same company can appear in a database result and a web result under slightly different names, so Kite combines them into a single entry with everything it learned from both.

Kite tells you how much of the market your list covers, so you know whether you have every match or only the first batch. Alongside the list, it reports how many candidates it found, how many passed the test, and which searches it ran to find them.

When Kite can tell that the list isn't complete, it says so directly. For example, it might report that the database search covered US agencies thoroughly, but that agencies without a website listing their services can only be found through referrals or directories it hasn't searched yet. Kite then asks whether you want to widen the search, narrow the description, or stop with what you have.

Markets change, so a list you build today will miss next month's new entrants. You can ask Kite to repeat the search on a schedule and point out the names that weren't on the previous list.

A list is usually the start of a job, so Kite can carry it into the work that follows. With a connected CRM or spreadsheet, it writes the companies and people there. It can find professional emails and LinkedIn profiles for the people on the list, score each entry from one to five against your ideal customer profile, and draft personalized outreach that you approve before anything is sent.

The list can also feed other research. A list of every tool in your category becomes the starting point for a competitive analysis. A list of experts becomes a list of podcast hosts to pitch, writers to brief, or speakers to invite. Kite saves useful findings in your team's knowledge base so later work can build on them.