Clay

Clay lets a solo founder do the prospecting work that normally takes a small sales team. It looks like a smart spreadsheet: you bring in a list of companies or people, then enrich each row by pulling from dozens of data providers in sequence to fill in emails, titles, company details, and signals, instead of paying for a stack of separate data tools.

The standout for a one-person business is Claygent, its built-in AI agent. It goes past structured data to research a company or person on the web and answer questions you write yourself (“what do they sell”, “do they use Shopify”), and those answers feed straight into personalized outreach. That means you can target and message at the level of a dedicated SDR while still being the only person in the company.

Pricing is the thing to watch. There is a free tier to learn on, but paid plans start around $149/mo and run on credits, so it is easy to burn through allowance once you scale enrichment. It earns its keep when sales is your bottleneck and outreach is your growth engine. It is overkill if you only need to enrich the occasional contact. Expect to spend an afternoon learning it before it clicks.