Put us in the room to those early days. You have a bunch of problems you could solve on the board, but there are only six of you. What did you research first and why? Matt: We were developing APIs for developers and products. One of our first products was a Watchlist API, which is for OFAC compliance. Then we built an enrichment API, which is our most popular product today. It takes an email domain name and turns it into over 100 data points. We have a buy email list Prospector API, which is all about lead generation and finding new contacts. We would launch a new product every two months.
We were looking at all the initial customer feedback, getting our first users started, and then one of the big things that happened quickly was personality development. Originally, we created APIs that engineers could use to build and add functionality to their buy email list products. Very quickly, we started to attract interest from sales and marketing professionals who wanted to use it in their CRM and marketing automation toolkit. They wanted to personalize their website and emails, and we didn't have products for that; we had APIs. So that was a big part of the first year: figuring out how to go in that direction.
Adam: It's an interesting challenge. Where did you start? Matt: We buy email list started with a Salesforce integration. Looking back, we were lucky to take this step because it became such a big part of the business. We built a Google Sheets integration, a Gmail integration, and more and more integrations as we understood where they hit and how people got the most value out of them. Adam: Does growth now cover the entire top-to-bottom sales funnel? Where does your team work? Matt: At Clearbit, we put all marketing under Growth Marketing; we don't have a traditional marketing arm.