What is CannyList?
CannyList is account research and prioritization software for teams that work from lists. You import a CSV or XLSX of companies and people, CannyList consolidates the rows into accounts, researches each account from public sources, scores it against what your team offers, and gives everyone one place to triage people, plan accounts and draft outreach. It is a workspace for deciding, not a database of contacts and not a sending tool.
Every workspace carries a scoring profile: who you are, what you offer, and the phrases that show an account needs it. The same product therefore serves different companies and different purposes, from sales prospecting to partner search, investor targeting, customer expansion and event preparation.
How does CannyList work?
Import
Upload a CSV or XLSX, or paste a table. Columns such as name, company, title, bio, email and LinkedIn URL are mapped, and the original rows are kept unchanged. A title or company that only appears inside a bio is read out of it and marked as coming from the bio.
Consolidate
Rows become accounts by company domain or by an unambiguous company name. Conflicts are flagged for review instead of guessed, and lists with companies but no people work too.
Research
Started explicitly, for selected accounts or a filtered scope. Company registries and filings (SEC, GLEIF, Wikidata), official websites and public web search answer what they can. Every accepted fact keeps its source, date, scope and confidence, and what could not be verified stays visibly unknown.
Score
Choose a purpose and score accounts on Fit, Value, Timing and Access. Each score is explained dimension by dimension with the evidence behind it, and it is marked stale, never silently changed, when the evidence or the profile changes.
Triage and plan
Shortlist or skip people, assign owners, set next actions and follow-up dates, and move accounts through a pipeline. Every change is logged with the teammate who made it.
Draft outreach
CannyList drafts a first message in your profile's wording and shows the evidence it used. You review it and send it from your own tools. CannyList never sends anything itself.
Who is CannyList for?
- Go-to-market leaders choosing which meetings are worth taking at a conference or trade show.
- Sales and partnerships teams qualifying an inbound list, a customer list or a partner directory before they reach out.
- Researchers and analysts validating organizations, roles, company scale and contact channels with sources they can show.
- Teams that want one shared, reviewed account dossier before a conversation instead of a thread of screenshots.
How does CannyList score an account?
A commercial score has four dimensions. Each is answered only from accepted evidence that cites a source and is recent enough to count, and the weights are set per workspace.
| Dimension | What counts as evidence | Default weight |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | Sourced business facts that match the purpose's target signals or the workspace's own offer phrases. An explicit exclusion sets Fit to zero. | 35 |
| Value | A quantified scale fact such as employees, revenue, audience reach or fund size, used as an upside proxy, not a forecast. | 20 |
| Timing | A dated change within the last 180 days, such as a launch, a hire, funding or, for event purposes, the event itself. It supports timing, not purchase intent. | 25 |
| Access | A verified professional contact path to a decision maker, or, for events, sourced presence at the event. | 20 |
Accounts score High at 70 and above, Medium at 40 and above, otherwise Low. An account without supported Fit plus at least one other dimension is marked Watch rather than ranked, and missing evidence is shown as unknown, never counted as a negative. Six built-in purposes come with editable target signals and exclusions: sales prospects, partner targets, investor targets, customer expansion, event account prioritization and a custom commercial list.
What will CannyList not do?
- It never sends email, LinkedIn connection requests or event meeting requests. Outreach drafts are text for a person to review.
- It never guesses a personal email address or phone number. Professional contact channels are kept only with a source and an explicit verification state.
- Research is read-only and stops at sign-in walls, CAPTCHAs, paywalls and rate limits. LinkedIn itself is never fetched.
- Research never changes a score, a rank, an owner or a pipeline stage. Scoring is a separate, explicit action.
- A visible profile, a meeting-program role or an event match is not treated as consent to be contacted.
How does CannyList handle your data?
A team owns its workspaces and everything in them: imports, triage, pipeline, notes, scores, scoring profiles and activity. Organizations and their public evidence are shared across teams because they are public facts about companies and carry nothing team-private. Sign-in is by Google, Apple, Microsoft or Facebook, or by a six-digit code sent to your email, so there are no passwords to store. The privacy and data handling page describes what leaves the server during research, which is deliberately little.
Frequently asked questions
Is CannyList a CRM?
No. A CRM records a relationship over its whole life. CannyList works on one list at a time, before and around a conversation: it turns the list into researched, scored accounts and a shared plan of who to talk to. Your CRM stays the system of record for everything after that.
Is CannyList a contact database or a data enrichment vendor?
No. CannyList has no database of people to sell. It researches the companies and people you bring, from public sources, and keeps only facts that cite where they came from. It records a professional contact channel only when a source supports it and never guesses an email address or phone number.
What can I import into CannyList?
CSV and XLSX files up to 10 MiB, 10,000 rows, 500 columns and 10,000 characters per cell, or a pasted table. Formula-shaped cells are treated as text and never evaluated. Lists of companies without people work too.
Does CannyList contact the people on my list?
Never. It drafts outreach for you to review and send with your own tools, and it sends no email, connection request or meeting request on its own.
Where does the research come from?
From public, permitted sources: company registries and filings (SEC, GLEIF, Wikidata), official company websites, and public web search results. Each accepted fact carries its source, date, scope and confidence. Anything that could not be verified is shown as unknown rather than filled in.
How do I sign in to CannyList?
With Google, Apple, Microsoft or Facebook, or with a six-digit code sent to your email address. CannyList has no passwords. A session lasts 30 days from its last use and never more than 90 days.
How much does CannyList cost?
CannyList is in a private beta. There is no billing yet. Access is by invitation from a team owner, and an invited person signs in at cannylist.com.
Can one CannyList serve several companies or purposes?
Yes. Each workspace has its own scoring profile with the company, its pitch, up to three offers and their matching phrases, so an agency or a group can run workspaces for different sellers side by side, and one company can run a workspace per purpose.