What is you favorite database to search for companies?

I used salesgenie.com. It's part of Infogroup. I found that it let you slice and dice by geography, industry (NAICS or SIC codes), roles within the company, etc. You could screen based on revenue size, but I found that those numbers were not really accurate. There really aren't any limits on the number of searches you can run, so I had 8 or so different slices. Their starter plan is a 12 month license, but they agreed to a 6 month with very little negotiation. I found that a good way to use it was to run a search, find some companies that I liked then put in their secondary NAICS codes to find other relevant ones, etc.

They also can do outreach for you, either email or direct mail. I didn't use them for that, but their prices for direct mail were competitive with Office Depot and standalone mailer shops.

I also recommend Hunter, RocketReach, Snovio, and the like to find email addresses for interesting companies. Lusha also works for LinkedIn. Basically, they'll dig up email addresses for you. You can pay for them, or just use the monthly limits on each to keep it free. I had an intern do that for me once I found the companies I wanted to target.

Being a brazenly cheap person, I like to avoid spending money whenever possible, but I would describe this technology (the database, email finders, direct mail services) like power tools. You can cheap out and suffer through, or spend a little more and make your work so much easier. I recommend not being penny wise and pound foolish in this respect.

Glad to share more to anyone interested. I don't claim to be an expert in how all this works, but I can share my limited experience. In full disclosure, I didn't get to fully deploy all these tools in my search, as I found my soon-to-be-purchased company 6 weeks into my search, so I am gratefully not an expert.

What types of companies, in which geographies? More criteria.