Take the name from what the company files or publishes: its team and blog pages, company registries, regulator registers and fundraising filings. Confirm the person still holds the role in a second, recent source. Then find one address the company has published, copy its pattern, and verify the address you build in the week you send.

Where do buyer names appear in public?

In filings that companies must make, and in pages they write to be found. The right source depends on the market you sell into.

Source What it gives you Best for Limit
SEC Form D, via EDGAR full-text search Full name of each executive officer, director and promoter of a company raising private capital in the US US startups after a priced round Founders and directors only; no sales or growth titles
Companies House Current and past officers of UK companies, searchable by company or by officer name UK fintech, payments and B2B firms Companies House states it does not check the accuracy of what companies file
FCA Financial Services Register Firms and individuals approved for regulated activities, including directory persons UK payments, lending, brokerage and crypto firms Shows regulated roles such as compliance and finance, which may not own the budget you sell to
The company's team, careers and blog pages Names and titles the company chose to publish AI and developer tools companies that publish engineering and leadership posts Pages go stale after a reorganisation
Protocol docs, governance forums and conference speaker pages Named contributors, foundation staff and business development leads DeFi protocols and blockchain infrastructure Pseudonymous handles often have no linked real name

Form D is the least used of these. A company must file it within 15 days after the first sale in an exempt offering (SEC, accessed October 2026). Item 3 of the form asks for the full name of each executive officer and director (SEC Form D). At a seed or Series A company, the executive officers on the form are often the founders.

How do you confirm the person still holds the role?

Check two sources, and make one of them recent. A registry entry proves the person was an officer when the company filed. A conference talk from this year, a recent post on the company blog, or a current profile proves they are still there.

Two errors matter most, and we have hit both in our own lists:

  1. The wrong company. A hiring signal for one payments company matched a different firm with the same first word in its name (our data, October 2026). Before you search for people, confirm the company by its domain: the domain on the filing, the careers page or the press release must match the domain you will email.
  2. A title that belongs elsewhere. We found a co-founder title naming one firm on a contact record for a different firm (our data, October 2026). If a title names another company, drop it and look again.

How do you work out the email address?

Find one address the company has published for a named person, then apply its pattern to your buyer.

  1. Look for a published address on the company site: a press contact, an author box on the blog, a speaker bio or a partnerships page.
  2. Note the pattern. Common forms are first name only, first.last, and first initial plus last name.
  3. Build the buyer's address with the same pattern.
  4. Run it through a verifier. A verifier asks the mail server whether the mailbox exists, without sending a message.
  5. If the result is valid, keep it. If the domain is catch-all, the server accepts every address, so the check proves nothing. Mark those addresses unconfirmed and send to them last, in their own batch.

In our re-check of 520 B2B contacts, 10% came back catch-all (our data, October 2026).

Verification is the one paid step worth keeping. MillionVerifier offers 100 free checks, with paid plans from $39 and 50,000 checks for $89 (MillionVerifier, accessed October 2026). A first list of 50 accounts with up to 2 buyers each fits inside the free checks.

How long does a hand-built list stay accurate?

Weeks. When we re-verified 520 B2B contacts that a verifier had marked deliverable about 10 weeks earlier, 349 were valid (67%), 53 were catch-all (10%) and 118 were invalid (23%) (our data, October 2026; two different verifiers, fintech and B2B lists). A list you build by hand in one month needs another check before you send in the next. The full cadence is in how fast verified B2B email lists decay.

Which sources should you leave alone?

Any source whose terms forbid the use you have in mind. Two are common traps.

GitHub shows commit authors, and some commits carry a work email. GitHub's Acceptable Use Policies say you may not use information from the service "for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails to users" (GitHub, accessed October 2026). That covers scraped data and data from the API.

LinkedIn's User Agreement bans software, scripts and browser add-ons that scrape or copy profiles (LinkedIn, effective 3 November 2025). Reading a profile to confirm a title is normal use. Running a tool that copies hundreds of profiles into a spreadsheet breaks the agreement.

What rules apply once you have the address?

The same rules as for any purchased list. In the US, the FTC says CAN-SPAM "makes no exception for business-to-business email." Each email needs accurate headers, a truthful subject line, a postal address and a working opt-out honoured within 10 business days, and penalties reach $53,088 per email (FTC, accessed October 2026).

In the UK, the ICO says you can email any corporate body, such as a company or limited liability partnership, without prior consent. Sole traders and some partnerships count as individuals and need consent. You must give your identity and an opt-out address, and named addresses such as first.last at a company can raise data protection duties too (ICO, accessed October 2026).

What should each row of the list contain before you send?

  • Company domain confirmed against the filing, careers page or press release
  • Buyer name from a filing, registry or company page, with the source link stored
  • Current role confirmed in a second source from the last few months
  • Title checked for any mention of a different company
  • Address built from a published pattern and verified in the week you send
  • Catch-all addresses moved to a separate, later batch
  • Opt-out line and postal address in the email

If a row fails the first check, skip the company. For how we filter and match the signals that start a list, read which buying signals predict a B2B purchase.

To have your first list of target accounts and buyers built with you, start with The Diagnostic at $2,500.