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How to find top companies by category
Describe the category you want to target
Tell Sculptor the category or industry you want, plus the target title for outreach. Sculptor compiles a matched list from Clay's B2B company data.
Sculptor builds and enriches your company list
Sculptor assembles a list of top companies filtered by your category, industry, and headcount, then waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified email for the target title on matched rows.
Get your table of companies and verified emails
The finished table has company name and a verified contact email where the waterfall found a match. Push to Smartlead, Instantly, or your sequencer to trigger a campaign the moment a row lands.
Why Clay for finding top companies by category
Precise category filters from one B2B database
Get a focused list of top companies in your target category in minutes. Clay's B2B company database lets you filter by industry, headcount, revenue range, funding stage, tech stack, and hiring signals to match your exact ICP.
Claygent classifies companies your filters can't
Get deeper category precision when standard filters fall short. Claygent browses each company's website and returns a custom classification, such as B2B vs. B2C, GTM motion, or niche subcategory, on matched rows.
Waterfall enrichment finds verified contact emails
Get verified emails for your target title on matched rows. Clay waterfalls through 150+ providers in sequence and only charges credits when a provider returns a hit, keeping your bounce risk low.
Push enriched lists to Salesforce or Outreach
Send your finished table of companies and verified contacts directly to Salesforce, HubSpot, or Outreach. Auto-refresh keeps records current as new companies enter your category filters.
Our most successful campaigns are built on data that doesn’t exist in off-the-shelf tools. Clay helps us find those signals — and transform ambitious ideas into executable, high-performing campaigns.
Frequently asked questions
How does Sculptor find top companies by category?
Sculptor uses Clay's Find Companies feature, which draws from a dataset spanning 100+ providers. You type a target category (like "enterprise HR software"), and AI filters for sub-industry, revenue stream, and business type remove misfits before rows are counted. It then runs Find People at These Companies to identify the CEO, and a multi-provider waterfall enrichment step queries sources like Hunter, Apollo, and Prospeo in sequence to return a verified email.
How accurate are the company and CEO email results?
Clay's waterfall enrichment lifts email coverage from roughly 30% with a single provider to around 80% by chaining 10+ sources. In Clay's 2025 work email benchmark, a cheapest-first waterfall chain cleared both 95% accuracy and 90% coverage, thresholds no single provider hit alone. Company matching relies on description keywords rather than broad industry labels, so the list stays tightly aligned with the category you specify.
Can I find top companies by category in bulk?
Yes. Sculptor generates the full list in one shot from your category prompt, so you get hundreds of rows without running individual searches. You can also paste a list of categories into a Clay table and pipe each row through the same enrichment steps. Finished rows sync directly to HubSpot or Salesforce, or export as a CSV for your outbound sequencer.
Is it legal to collect company data and CEO emails for outreach?
CAN-SPAM permits B2B email outreach as long as every message includes a visible opt-out mechanism, a physical address, and honest subject lines. Under GDPR, B2B cold email can rely on legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) if the message is relevant to the recipient's role and you provide a clear unsubscribe. California's CCPA/CPRA B2B exemption expired in 2023, so business contact data there is now fully protected.
Always include an opt-out link, honor removal requests promptly, and check the rules for your jurisdiction before launching outreach.