$ man apollo-wiki/people-search-first

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People search is step one of every GTM motion. Finding the right people at the right companies with the right titles. And for most teams, it is still manual. Open LinkedIn Sales Navigator, scroll through results, export a CSV, import it somewhere else, start enriching. The sourcing step - the very first step - is where teams burn the most time. Everything downstream (enrichment, scoring, outreach) can be automated. But sourcing? Most teams still do it by hand.

PATTERN

Apollo has the richest people database in B2B SaaS. 275M+ contacts, 73M+ companies, verified emails, direct dials, job titles, seniority levels, company technographics. And the API is free for the first 10,000 credits per month. That changes the economics completely. You don't need to start with Clay (which charges credits for every enrichment call). You start with Apollo to get the raw people data - names, titles, emails, company info - and then you orchestrate everything else downstream. Apollo is your sourcing layer. Clay is your enrichment and routing layer. They solve different problems.

PATTERN

Old way: open Apollo browser UI, search, export CSV, import to Clay, run enrichment waterfall, push to CRM. That is four manual steps before you even start outreach. New way: Apollo API call returns structured JSON with people + company data. Script writes to Supabase. Enrichment runs on the delta. CRM sync happens automatically. The sourcing step went from 30 minutes of clicking to a single API call. And it runs on a cron, not on your calendar.

PRO TIP

Clay is still the best orchestration layer for enrichment waterfall, multi-provider lookups, and AI-driven research (Claygent). The point is not to replace Clay. The point is to stop using Clay for sourcing. Apollo handles the people search. Clay handles the enrichment and routing. Supabase handles the storage. Each tool does what it does best. That is the architecture.