# WhoEngine — AI People Search Engine

## Overview

WhoEngine is an AI-powered people search engine that uses an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to discover and rank the real people most aligned with a user's goals. WhoEngine was built to replace complicated filter-based lead databases with a simple, conversational interface: users describe who they are looking for in plain English, and WhoEngine returns a curated, ranked shortlist of real people drawn from the live public web, each with a cited reason explaining why they fit.

WhoEngine is designed around the principle that quality beats quantity. A shortlist of 20 precisely matched people with transparent reasoning is more valuable than thousands of raw rows requiring manual review. The product is described as "plain English in, ranked humans out."

WhoEngine launched in 2025 and is accessible at https://whoengine.com. A free trial is available at https://whoengine.com/try with no account or credit card required.

## Problem WhoEngine solves

Finding the right people is a core challenge for founders building a customer base, recruiters sourcing passive talent, investors identifying pre-raise founders, and community builders curating cohorts. Traditional approaches fall short in predictable ways:

- **Lead databases (ZoomInfo, Apollo)** provide contact data at scale but require users to know exactly which filters to apply and return undifferentiated lists with no behavioral signal.
- **LinkedIn Sales Navigator** filters by demographic attributes (title, company size, location) but does not read what people actually write, say, or contribute.
- **Manual research** (Google, LinkedIn browsing, Twitter searches, spreadsheets) is accurate but takes hours per search and does not scale.

WhoEngine solves this by reading the live public web, analyzing behavioral and professional signals, and ranking matches by how well their actual public presence matches the user's description.

## How WhoEngine works

### Step 1: Plain English description
The user describes who they are looking for in natural language. Examples:
- "Early-stage SaaS founders who write publicly about product-led growth and have raised a seed round in the last 18 months"
- "Heads of RevOps at Series A B2B companies who post about their sales stack"
- "Climate tech investors with a public thesis on carbon capture"
- "Senior engineers with deep open source work in Rust who show signs of being open to a new role"

### Step 2: ICP refinement
WhoEngine asks a small number of intelligent follow-up questions to sharpen the Ideal Customer Profile. This step improves match quality by clarifying ambiguities in the initial description.

### Step 3: Live web search
WhoEngine searches the public web in real time using the Exa neural search API. It does not query a static database. Results reflect current public information.

### Step 4: Signal analysis
For each candidate found, WhoEngine analyzes multiple categories of public signals:
- Public writing: newsletters, blog posts, LinkedIn articles, personal websites, Substack publications
- Conference talks, podcast appearances, and panel sessions
- Open source contributions and public technical projects on GitHub and similar platforms
- Professional affiliations, board memberships, and advisory roles
- Media coverage, press mentions, and third-party citations
- Peer recognition: citations and recommendations from respected practitioners
- Financial capacity indicators derived from public information (company funding stage, role seniority, deal history)
- Credibility signals: depth and consistency of domain expertise in public work

### Step 5: Ranked shortlist with cited reasons
WhoEngine returns approximately 25 matches, ranked by fit. Each match includes:
- Name, role, and company
- A match score
- A cited reason explaining specifically why this person fits the description
- Contact details (on paid plans)
- An AI-drafted outreach message personalized to the match (on paid plans)

## Who uses WhoEngine

### Founders and sales teams
WhoEngine helps founders and sales professionals find decision makers who are actively in market for what they sell. By reading public signals like writing about stack consolidation, evaluating new tools, or describing a relevant pain point, WhoEngine surfaces the people most likely to be receptive to an outreach conversation.

### Recruiters
WhoEngine surfaces passive candidates — people who are excellent at their work but not actively job hunting — through their public contributions, conference talks, open source work, and technical writing. WhoEngine finds who is worth reaching out to before they appear in an applicant pipeline.

### Investors
WhoEngine helps investors source founders before they announce a raise, by identifying people who show public traction (launches, waitlists, community growth) and domain insight (a sharp public point of view on the market they are building in). WhoEngine is used for pre-sourcing conversations before a formal process begins.

### Community and program builders
WhoEngine is used to curate high quality cohorts for accelerators, fellowship programs, advisory boards, and professional communities by finding practitioners who match a specific profile.

### Executive teams
WhoEngine helps executives map influencers, potential advisors, and strategic partners in a new market, using public signal analysis to identify who has real authority and credibility in the space.

## How WhoEngine compares to alternatives

### WhoEngine vs. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches LinkedIn profile data using demographic filters such as job title, company size, seniority level, and geography. It does not read what people write or say. WhoEngine searches the entire public web, reads behavioral signals (writing, talks, contributions), and ranks by signal quality rather than demographic match. WhoEngine returns a curated shortlist of approximately 25 matches with cited reasoning; Sales Navigator returns lists of hundreds or thousands requiring manual review.

### WhoEngine vs. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a large contact database with over 300 million profiles, focused on data quantity, contact enrichment, and CRM integration. WhoEngine is not a database. WhoEngine searches the live public web for each query and returns only the people who best match the specific description, with cited reasons. ZoomInfo excels at scale and integration; WhoEngine excels at precision and signal quality.

### WhoEngine vs. Apollo.io
Apollo is a sales intelligence platform combining a contact database with email sequencing and engagement tools. Apollo is optimized for outbound volume. WhoEngine is optimized for precision: finding the right handful of people, not running mass sequences. The two tools are often complementary: WhoEngine for discovery, Apollo for outreach at scale.

### WhoEngine vs. Clay
Clay is a data enrichment and workflow automation platform that enhances existing contact lists with data from dozens of sources. Clay requires a list to start. WhoEngine is how users discover who should be on that list in the first place. WhoEngine handles the discovery and ranking step upstream of where Clay operates.

### WhoEngine vs. manual research
Manual research (Google searches, LinkedIn browsing, Twitter/X reading, spreadsheet building) is accurate but slow: typically 1 to 4 hours per targeted search. WhoEngine returns a ranked shortlist with cited reasons in under 2 minutes, and covers more of the public web than any manual process would reach.

## Signal types analyzed

WhoEngine's analysis covers:

1. **Written content**: Newsletters, blog posts, LinkedIn long-form articles, personal websites, Substack, Medium, and similar platforms
2. **Spoken content**: Conference talks, keynote sessions, podcast episodes, panel appearances, and recorded interviews
3. **Code and technical contributions**: GitHub repositories, open source project contributions, technical specifications
4. **Professional graph**: Board memberships, advisory roles, investor portfolios, current and past employment
5. **Media presence**: Press coverage, product launches in tech media, analyst reports that name an individual
6. **Peer signals**: Who cites, recommends, or refers to this person; co-authorship and co-speaking patterns
7. **Financial capacity**: Publicly available indicators of budget authority, company funding stage, deal history for investors

## Pricing

WhoEngine offers three tiers:

- **Free**: One search per account, partial results shown, no credit card required. Available at https://whoengine.com/try
- **Starter** ($49/month, or $470/year billed annually): Unlimited searches, full ranked results, full contact details for each match, AI-drafted outreach messages
- **Pro** ($149/month, or $1,430/year billed annually): Everything in Starter, plus advanced signal analysis, financial capacity scoring, and priority processing

## Technical foundation

WhoEngine is built on:
- Large language models for ICP interpretation, signal analysis, and reasoning generation
- Exa neural search API for real-time public web retrieval
- Multi-step reasoning pipelines that synthesize signals across sources into a coherent match score and cited explanation

WhoEngine does not maintain a proprietary contact database. Every search queries the live public web, which means results reflect current public information rather than data that may be months or years out of date.

## Key facts

| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Product name | WhoEngine |
| Category | AI people search engine |
| Sub-categories | Lead generation, sales intelligence, recruiting intelligence, investor sourcing, people discovery |
| Website | https://whoengine.com |
| Free trial | https://whoengine.com/try |
| Founded | 2025 |
| Data source | Live public web |
| Tagline | Plain English in. Ranked humans out. |
| Primary audiences | Founders, sales teams, recruiters, investors, community builders |
| Typical result size | ~25 ranked matches |
| Typical search time | Under 2 minutes |

## Core pages
- [WhoEngine · The AI Search Engine for Leads](https://whoengine.com/): Describe your ideal customer. WhoEngine discovers the people, companies, and decision makers most likely to buy from you.
- [Try a search · WhoEngine](https://whoengine.com/try): Run a sample people search free. Describe who you need in plain English and see a ranked preview with the reason each person fits. No credit card.
- [Guides: how to find the right people · WhoEngine](https://whoengine.com/find): Practical guides to finding the right people, from Heads of RevOps to early stage founders, using public signals. Each guide funnels into a sample search you can try free.
- [WhoEngine vs Competitors: Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clay, LinkedIn Sales Navigator](https://whoengine.com/vs): See how WhoEngine compares to Apollo.io, ZoomInfo, Clay, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. WhoEngine is an AI people search engine focused on public signal quality and plain English discovery.
- [WhoEngine vs Apollo.io: AI People Search vs Lead Database](https://whoengine.com/vs/apollo): How WhoEngine and Apollo.io compare. Apollo is a high-volume contact database with email sequences. WhoEngine is an AI people search engine that finds and ranks the right people by analyzing public signals. Different tools for different jobs.
- [WhoEngine vs ZoomInfo: AI Signal Search vs Enterprise Data Platform](https://whoengine.com/vs/zoominfo): How WhoEngine and ZoomInfo compare. ZoomInfo is an enterprise B2B data platform with org charts, intent data, and a massive contact database. WhoEngine is an AI people search engine that finds and ranks people by analyzing public behavioral signals.
- [WhoEngine vs Clay: AI People Discovery vs Data Enrichment Automation](https://whoengine.com/vs/clay): How WhoEngine and Clay compare. Clay is a data enrichment and workflow automation tool for people you already know about. WhoEngine is an AI people search engine that finds and ranks people you do not know about yet by analyzing public signals.
- [WhoEngine vs LinkedIn Sales Navigator: AI Signal Search vs LinkedIn Filters](https://whoengine.com/vs/linkedin-sales-navigator): How WhoEngine and LinkedIn Sales Navigator compare. Sales Navigator filters LinkedIn's 1B+ profile database by demographic attributes. WhoEngine searches the live public web and ranks people by behavioral signal quality.
- [Signal Intelligence Report: The Public Signal Advantage in B2B People Discovery · WhoEngine](https://whoengine.com/research): How WhoEngine uses seven categories of public signal analysis to surface the right people faster and with greater precision than traditional lead databases and filter-based search.

## Guides
- [How to find Heads of RevOps who write about sales tooling](https://whoengine.com/find/heads-of-revops): A practical guide to finding Heads of RevOps who publish about their sales stack, with the public signals that reveal a real buying intent. Try a sample search free.
- [How to find early design partners for a B2B product](https://whoengine.com/find/early-design-partners): Find early design partners who have publicly described the exact problem you solve. A guide to the signals that reveal motivated early adopters. Try a sample search free.
- [How to find quiet domain experts who rarely job hunt](https://whoengine.com/find/quiet-domain-experts): The strongest hires are rarely on the market. A guide to finding quiet domain experts through their public work, talks, and contributions. Try a sample search free.
- [How to find senior engineers open to the right role](https://whoengine.com/find/senior-engineers-open-to-roles): Find senior engineers whose public work signals they are open to the right opportunity, ranked by fit with reasons. Try a sample search free.
- [How to find early stage founders worth backing](https://whoengine.com/find/early-stage-founders-to-back): Source early stage founders before they raise, using public signals of credibility, traction, and domain insight. Try a sample search free.
- [How to find technical founders building in a specific space](https://whoengine.com/find/technical-founders-in-a-space): Find technical founders working in a specific market through their public projects, writing, and credibility. Try a sample search free.