proprietary search engine

October 16, 2025

by a searcher from Harvard University - Harvard Business School in Los Angeles, CA, USA

What are some good resources for setting up the pipes of a proprietary search engine? I'm curious about things like tech stack, process flows, email domain health, sequence of calls and emails, templates, etc... I'm more familiar with the best practices for software companies and agencies doing outbound sales, and I'm interested in comparing these with search. Happy to aggregate resources and share if we get a lot on input.

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Reply by an investor
from McGill University in San Diego, CA, USA

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "proprietary". The typical traditional searcher will use Grata/SourceScrub/Zoominfo to collect contact information of business owners in an industry, and will then send cold emails. Because this is a high volume approach, they will also use a CRM (like Pipedrive or Hubspot), a software tool to verify email addresses (like ZeroBounce), and an email outreach tool (like SalesLoft or Instantly). If you want to talk about what a high touch approach looks like, feel free to DM me

Reply by a searcher
in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

From my experience working with 20+ searchers, we have observed that the tech stack has always been widely varied. Most of the time, they have tried different tools based on what works for them and decide that this would be good for them. Most of the time, it is different only. Process flows go something like this: They identify the type of companies they go after, and they use my team of Virtual Assistants to build the prospecting list. Sometimes, they get the list from somewhere, and my team helps filter out potential companies to reach out to. Contact information is then found, and a series of emails starts being sent out, along with cold calls sometimes, and a few have sent physical mail as well. I do not have access to templates, but the sequence varies again. I have seen typically three emails and two calls. A few people have also visited the companies they had a strong interest in if it was within the range. Hope this helps.

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