How to search for people and companies in Distill

Search lets you find people, companies, and investors across your network, other users’ networks, all of Distill, and LinkedIn and the web, depending on what you are looking for. Search is designed to let you write your request naturally, and Distill interprets your intent and surfaces the most relevant matches as identifiable traits.

Here’s how to use People Search

1. Start Your Search

You can begin a search in two ways:

• Use the search bar at the top of Distill to search for what you are looking for.

• Go to your Dashboard to access the full Search options.

2. Describe what you want to search using natural language

Type your request the way you would explain it to a colleague. Distill understands natural language and automatically interprets the traits and criteria you describe.

3. Provide scope of what you’re looking for (Optional)
You can specify if you’re looking for a person, company, or investor.
Recommended: Select Auto to let us interpret what you’re looking for.
4. Mention a specific Person or Company as an example (Optional)

You can mention specific entities as a reference for your search to help us match straights of that person or company for your search. See our article on Mentioned Entities to learn more.

5. Distill Breaks Down Your Criteria

The AI analyzes your request and extracts traits such as role, industry, location, stage, expertise, and more. This helps you clearly see how your intent is being interpreted.

6. Review Matching Traits

Your results will show how each person or company matches the traits you specified, with each trait in a column.

• If a match is found, it will be indicated with a “Match” message.

• If something does not match, you will see the trait as “Miss” to indicate that the search result does not match that specific trait and what you’re looking for.

Save What You Find in a List

Once you are happy with your results, you can save them to a List.