Use the power of your paid subscription and the extensive Crunchbase dataset to learn more about your customer base. To get started, all you need is a customer list.
The steps you'll need to take are:
- Build a customer list that Crunchbase can use
- Upload your list
- Examine your list and identify knowledge gaps
- Create a new search to help you identify prospects you can reach out to
Building a Customer List that Crunchbase Can Use
You likely already have a customer list somewhere, hopefully in a CRM. Please ensure that your customer list is Crunchbase-friendly, and has these four qualities:
- Column 1 contains the company name
- Column 2 contains the company domain (where possible)
- The headers of the first two columns are "Name" and "Domain"
- There are less than 1000 rows (excluding the header row) in the CSV file
You can easily download our template to make sure your customer list will work with Crunchbase's uploader.
Once you've created your customer list, you’re ready to import it! First, head to My Dashboard.
Click the Import List button.
Uploading your List to Crunchbase
Simply drag and drop the CSV file or click the Choose File button to upload your file.
When you've successfully uploaded your file to Crunchbase, you will receive a success message that indicates the number of Crunchbase profiles we were able to match to your list. Click View Your List.
Examine Your List - See What Crunchbase Can Add
When you click this button, you'll be taken to a list that includes all of the companies that you imported that Crunchbase matched to a profile. The list will automatically include certain fields - industries, headquarter locations, description, and CB Rank. Select the Add Column button to see additional data fields.
Select the data fields that interest you, then click Apply Changes to add their respective columns to your list. For our example, we’ll use Diversity Spotlight and Hub Tags.
You’ll see that your results will update to display the new columns.
Continue adding new columns to drill down your search further. Let’s use Number of Employees for our example. You can find this filter under the Team category.
Again, after hitting the Apply Changes button, the additional information I requested will be automatically added to my list results.
By simply adding columns to your original customer list, we’ve learned a couple of interesting things:
- Your customers tend to be smaller companies (60% of this customer list falls in the 101-500 employee count)
- You have a significant number of women-founded unicorns in your customer list
Combining this new information with what you already know about your customers (that you handle the financial services industry, and your territory is San Francisco), you can now move onto the final step, which is building a new search to identify new prospects.
Building a Search to Find New Prospects
Start a Company Search by selecting Companies from the Advanced Search dropdown in the top navigation.
Open the Overview category of the filter menu to add some key information that pertains to your target customers. We’ll add Headquarters Location as San Francisco, and Industry as Financial Services.
Use the slider to indicate the Number of Employees you’re looking for is 101-500 employees.
To ensure that you aren’t duplicating efforts and reaching out to companies that are already in your customer list, open up the Notes, Lists, Tags category to find the Include/Exclude From This List filters.
In this example, we’ve included a list “2025 Prospects” and excluded another list we may have, “Companies w/ recent layoffs”. In doing so, we can focus our efforts on prospects with a healthier, more steady trajectory. Learn more about filtering with growth signals HERE.
You now have a list of solid prospects to reach out to, and a clear understanding of what makes them like my current customers. Use the tips in this article to go find your own prospects!
Questions? Post in the Crunchbase Community to engage with fellow Crunchbase users, or connect with our support team at prosupport@crunchbase.com.