Coco
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Research accounts with AI

Coco researches accounts at the depth a careful human would: recent funding and news, hiring signals, public problem mentions, decision-makers and their backgrounds, mutual connections, competitive context. About 5-12 credits per account, depending on depth. The output is a structured account brief you can read in 90 seconds, with the source for every claim linked back. From there, Coco can shift directly to drafting outreach grounded in that research, same plan, no context handoff, about 4-6 additional credits per draft.

Try Coco for free → · 1,000 credits free · no card · ~2-min setup

What "research" looks like when humans do it well

Good account research is 15-25 minutes per account. You read the company's LinkedIn page and recent posts, check the careers page for hiring signals, skim recent podcasts and conference talks, pull the funding history from Crunchbase, scan recent news, check whether anyone you know works there, and pull each decision-maker's background. After 20 minutes you have a paragraph in your head about who this company is, what they're working on, and what hook would land.

Almost nobody does this at scale. An SDR with 50 target accounts can't spend a thousand minutes a week on research. So most teams skip it, send templated outreach, and accept the templated response rate.

Coco's bet is that you can keep the research and skip the calendar tax. The work is structured enough that an AI co-worker can run it at the depth a human researcher would, source the claims, and surface a brief in 60-120 seconds per account. The judgment stays with you. The mechanical research work doesn't.

How Coco runs an account brief

You point Coco at an account (by name, URL, CRM record, or list). Coco proposes the plan with the credit cost. You approve. Coco runs each source in parallel and synthesizes.

The sequence per account:

  1. Identify the account. Match against your CRM if connected; otherwise create a working record. Pull the firmographic baseline from Apollo or ZoomInfo.
  2. Run public-source research. Recent news (last 90 days), funding history, LinkedIn company page activity, careers page hiring signals, podcasts and conference talks, Twitter/X and other public commentary.
  3. Identify decision-makers. Pull the relevant titles for the buying committee. For each person, gather LinkedIn background, prior companies, public commentary, role tenure.
  4. Pull connected enrichment. Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clay, whichever you've connected. The data layer for verified emails, company size, tech stack signals, and other structured fields.
  5. Surface mutual connections. Via LinkedIn: who on your team has a path in, what introductions are credible.
  6. Synthesize the brief. Coco assembles the brief in a structured format with every claim source-linked. About 5-12 credits per brief depending on depth.

The credit-cost knob is the depth setting on the plan card. Light research is about 5 credits (basic firmographic snapshot plus a quick public-signal scan). Standard is about 8 credits (adds decision-maker research and recent activity). Deep is 12+ credits (adds podcast and conference appearance scans, deeper LinkedIn history, niche problem-signal hunting). You see the cost before you approve.

What's in a Coco account brief

Each brief has the same structure so the read is consistent across accounts. The sections:

  • Company snapshot. Stage, employee count, founding year, industry, headquarters, recent funding. The basics in one paragraph.
  • Recent activity (last 90 days). News announcements, public commentary, product launches, hiring waves. Each item is dated and linked.
  • Problem signals. Specific public mentions of the kind of problem you solve, with the source linked. If Coco finds none, the brief says so rather than inventing a signal.
  • Decision-makers. Relevant buying-committee members with background, prior companies, role tenure, and any public commentary on the problem space.
  • Mutual connections. Who on your team has a path in, with the relationship strength inferred from LinkedIn signal.
  • Suggested outreach angle. A draft anchor: the most specific, most recent, most credible hook from the research. Use it as-is or override.
  • Competitive context. Tools the account is publicly known to use (from job listings, public posts, case studies), where relevant to your wedge.

Every claim links to its source (news article URL, LinkedIn post URL, podcast episode, careers page screenshot). You can verify any single line in 5 seconds. The brief earns trust by being inspectable, not by being confident.

From brief to outreach

The bridge is what makes the workflow worth running over a one-off research tool. Coco can chain straight into drafting outreach using the brief as context. No context handoff. Same chat, same workflow.

You approve the brief; Coco drafts the outreach in your voice anchored to the research. About 4-6 additional credits per drafted outreach. The hook in the draft is pulled from the same source that anchored the brief. See how Coco drafts cold outreach in depth for the voice-training and editing model.

For early-stage founders whose job is finding 10-20 design partners rather than outreach at scale, the same research workflow feeds into Coco's design-partner search. Credit cost is similar; the output is shaped differently.

Try Coco for free → · 1,000 credits free · no card · ~2-min setup

Bulk research mode

For a target list of 20 to 50 accounts, Coco runs briefs in parallel. The plan card shows the total credit cost (20 accounts at standard depth is about 160 credits) and the runtime, typically 15-25 minutes.

Configure Coco to surface the top N by fit signal once the batch is done. "Research these 30 accounts. Surface the top 5 by fit against my ICP. Queue outreach drafts for those 5; ignore the rest until I say so." That bulk pattern is where the math shifts: instead of spending two days researching and triaging 30 accounts, you spend 25 minutes of Coco-time and 15 minutes reading briefs.

The approval gate still applies. Drafts queue with your approval before any send. Bulk mode runs the research step in parallel instead of serial; it doesn't bypass the trust model.

Why this beats Apollo, ZoomInfo, or your VA

Apollo and ZoomInfo are data layers. They give you firmographic and contact data: accurate, queryable, useful. They don't do the research; they provide ingredients. Coco uses both as sources. The synthesis, the public-signal hunting, and the decision-maker context come from Coco's own work on top.

Clay sits in a different spot: a workflow-building layer for enrichment. Powerful, and right for teams that want to construct custom pipelines. The trade-off is setup time. Coco's account-research workflow ships pre-built; you tune it but you don't build it.

The other alternative is hiring a VA. A competent research VA runs 4-6 accounts an hour at meaningful depth and costs $25-50/hour. Coco runs the same 4-6 accounts in 6-12 minutes at the same depth and costs 30-72 credits, roughly $0.50-$1.50 on the Founder tier. The VA is still right for some teams; some judgment work travels better with a human. For mechanical research, the gap is roughly 50x in cost and 10x in time.

Frequently asked questions

How deep is the research?

Depth-configurable on the plan card. Light is about 5 credits per brief (basic snapshot + quick public-signal scan). Standard is about 8 credits (adds decision-maker research and recent activity). Deep is 12+ credits (adds podcast and conference scans, niche-source hunting). You set the depth before you approve.

Are sources linked back?

Yes. Every claim links to its source (news article URL, LinkedIn post, podcast episode timestamp, careers page screenshot, Crunchbase page). You can verify any line in seconds. Claims that lack a source are flagged ("no public commentary found on this dimension") rather than guessed.

Can Coco research private companies?

Yes. The limits are the same as a human researcher: public signals (LinkedIn, news, podcasts, careers pages, conference talks) plus your connected enrichment tools. For very stealthy companies with little public footprint, the brief is honest about gaps rather than fabricating signal.

How long does a brief take?

60-120 seconds per account at standard depth. Light is faster (about 30-60 seconds), deep is longer (3-5 minutes). Bulk batches run in parallel; a 20-account batch typically takes 15-25 minutes total.

Can I research 50 accounts at once?

Yes. Bulk parallel mode is built for target-list workflows. The plan card shows the total credit cost and runtime estimate up front. You can also configure Coco to surface only the top N by fit signal once the batch finishes, so you don't have to triage 50 briefs to find the 5 worth approaching.

Get started

Hand Coco one account this week. Approve a standard-depth brief. Decide whether the research matches what you'd have produced with 20 minutes of manual work.

Try Coco for free → · 1,000 credits free · no card · ~2-min setup

Or book a walkthrough → if you'd rather see a brief run on a real account first.