| Tool | Built for | Data sources | Finds pre-company relationships | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orbb | B2B revenue teams working named accounts | Email and calendar metadata, CRM, public work history, investor and board records | Yes | Ranked warm paths naming the colleague to ask |
| Introhive | Enterprise CRM relationship analytics, strong in professional services | Email, calendar, CRM | Partially | Relationship scores and analytics inside the CRM |
| Connect the Dots | B2B sales, with a graph shared across its customers | Email, calendar, plus the shared network | Yes | Paths through your network and other customers' |
| Affinity | Investors and dealmakers | Email, calendar, deal records | Partially | A relationship CRM for managing a network over years |
| 4Degrees | Investors and dealmakers, smaller | Email, calendar | Partially | Relationship CRM and reminders |
| UserGems | Tracking known contacts who change jobs | CRM contacts, public job data | No | Alerts when a contact moves |
| Clay | Enrichment and research at scale | 100+ data providers | No | Enriched records and researched fields |
| ZoomInfo / Apollo | Contact and company data | Proprietary contact database | No | Who exists, and how to email them |
Does it see relationships from before your company existed? The strongest path into an account is usually someone who worked alongside the buyer two jobs ago. A tool that only reads interactions inside your tenant cannot see that, and it is the difference between a useful graph and a list of people you already email.
Does the output name a next action? "You have 11 connections at Acme" is a fact. "Your VP of Engineering worked with their CTO at Datadog for four years" is a play. Only the second one gets run.
Whose graph is it? Connect the Dots pools a graph across its customers, which buys coverage and changes the data-governance conversation. Orbb and Introhive keep each customer's graph private. Both models are legitimate; they are a deliberate choice, not a detail.
Hand each vendor 50 accounts from your real target list - not their sample - and count three things: how many came back with any path, how many name a colleague who would genuinely make the introduction, and how many you already knew. The third number is the one that decides whether the tool is earning its price.
Cresta ran this shape of evaluation and closed a $160,000 deal within 90 days of the first warm path. Walnut used relationship strength to decide which accounts to work at all.