# Brief

> Brief is an AI-powered pre-call research tool for sales professionals, founders, and anyone preparing for a meeting. Type a name and get a structured briefing in seconds: Quick Read, recent activity, interests with evidence, three conversation openers, and source links.

Brief is built for the moment you have five minutes before a call and need to know who you're talking to. Unlike sales-intelligence databases that serve stored data, Brief queries the live web at the time of every request — so the brief reflects last week's tweet, yesterday's funding round, this morning's blog post.

## What Brief does
- Takes a person's name (and optional context like company or role) as input
- Searches the live web across identity, recent activity, company, and industry signals
- Synthesizes a structured pre-meeting brief
- Returns the brief in seconds — no setup, no seats, no credit budget

## Who Brief is for
- Sales reps preparing for discovery calls
- Founders meeting investors, partners, or candidates
- BD and account executives doing pre-meeting research
- Anyone walking into a meeting they didn't have time to prep for

## How Brief is different
- Live data, not stored — every query hits the live web
- One person at a time — single text box, single answer, no workflows
- Output is action-oriented — three openers backed by evidence, not just data fields

## Key pages
- [Homepage](https://briefthecall.com) — try Brief with any name
- [What is Brief](https://briefthecall.com/what-is-brief) — canonical product description
- [Chrome extension](https://briefthecall.com/extension) — coming soon: a chip beside any person's name on LinkedIn, articles, and the web that streams a sourced brief beside the page
- [Changelog](https://briefthecall.com/changelog) — the running log of what ships in Brief, near-daily
- [Support](https://briefthecall.com/support) — help with the web app and the Chrome extension: contact, troubleshooting, and how to remove or correct a profile
- [Saved briefs](https://briefthecall.com/saved) — your history (signed in)
- [Account](https://briefthecall.com/account) — manage your seller lens and settings
- [Terms of Service](https://briefthecall.com/terms) — acceptable use, attribution, and API terms (bind agents too)
- [Privacy Policy](https://briefthecall.com/privacy) — how we handle data, and the people we feature
- [Remove or correct a profile](https://briefthecall.com/takedown) — no-login takedown / correction

## Solutions (how each role uses Brief)
How specific roles use Brief for pre-meeting research — each page covers the workflow (type a name → get a structured brief → use it in the meeting), with sourced statistics and an FAQ:
- [Solutions overview](https://briefthecall.com/solutions) — Brief for your role
- [Sales](https://briefthecall.com/solutions/sales) — research a prospect before a call or demo
- [Recruiters](https://briefthecall.com/solutions/recruiters) — prep candidate screens and intake calls
- [Customer Success](https://briefthecall.com/solutions/customer-success) — research stakeholders before a QBR or renewal (stakeholder research only, no product-usage data)
- [Financial Advisors](https://briefthecall.com/solutions/financial-advisors) — prep a discovery meeting with a prospect (background context only, never an eligibility decision)
- [Founders](https://briefthecall.com/solutions/founders) — research an investor's thesis before a pitch
- [Job Seekers](https://briefthecall.com/solutions/job-seekers) — research your interviewer before an interview, mention-safe

## Alternatives & comparisons
Honest comparisons of Brief against the main sales-intelligence and prospecting tools, focused on pre-meeting research. Each page gives a liftable summary, a comparison table, and an honest "which should you pick":
- [Alternatives overview](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives) — how Brief compares
- [Brief vs ChatGPT](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/chatgpt) — why a purpose-built, sourced brief beats asking a general AI (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) who someone is
- [Brief vs ZoomInfo](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/zoominfo) — a lighter alternative for pre-call research, no contract
- [Brief vs Clay](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/clay) — a no-setup alternative for the brief, not the enrichment workflow
- [Brief vs Apollo](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/apollo) — the prep step before the conversation Apollo helps you start
- [Brief vs RocketReach](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/rocketreach) — context and an angle, not just contact details
- [Brief vs Lusha](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/lusha) — prep and openers, not contact data
- [Brief vs Clearbit](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/clearbit) — a brief for a human, not record enrichment for your stack
- [Brief vs Seamless.AI](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/seamless) — preparing for the call, not building the list
- [Brief vs Cognism](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/cognism) — pre-call research, not phone-verified contact data
- [Brief vs LeadIQ](https://briefthecall.com/alternatives/leadiq) — the prep behind outreach, not contact capture

## Best tools (by job)
Honest, grouped-by-job rundowns of the tools sales teams use, with Brief listed only where it genuinely fits (pre-call research / knowing the person):
- [Best tools overview](https://briefthecall.com/best) — by the job each one does
- [Best AI sales tools](https://briefthecall.com/best/ai-sales-tools) — grouped by job: prospecting, enrichment, deal intelligence, writing, pre-call research
- [Best sales prospecting tools](https://briefthecall.com/best/sales-prospecting-tools) — finding people vs prepping the conversation
- [Best sales intelligence software](https://briefthecall.com/best/sales-intelligence-software) — account data through to a read on the individual
- [How to research a person before a meeting](https://briefthecall.com/best/research-a-person) — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Crystal, LinkedIn and Brief, what each is good at

## Directory (browse by category)
Brief publishes browsable, cross-linked directories of researched entities — useful entry points for discovery:
- [VC directory](https://briefthecall.com/vcs) — venture-capital firms, browsable by country (e.g. https://briefthecall.com/vcs/us), country + sector (e.g. https://briefthecall.com/vcs/us/ai), and stage: [seed VCs](https://briefthecall.com/vcs/seed) and [pre-seed VCs](https://briefthecall.com/vcs/pre-seed)
- [Investor directory](https://briefthecall.com/investors) — notable angel, seed, and pre-seed investors (people), browsable by stage ([seed](https://briefthecall.com/investors/seed), [pre-seed](https://briefthecall.com/investors/pre-seed)), country (e.g. https://briefthecall.com/investors/us), [Europe](https://briefthecall.com/investors/europe), and [women investors](https://briefthecall.com/investors/women) — each links to a live brief, also fetchable via the agent API
- [Sectors](https://briefthecall.com/sectors) — firms and the notable investors grouped by industry (AI, SaaS, fintech, and more)
- [Fundraising guides](https://briefthecall.com/guides) — plain-English guides for founders: [how to find angel investors](https://briefthecall.com/guides/how-to-find-angel-investors), [pre-seed vs seed](https://briefthecall.com/guides/pre-seed-vs-seed), [how to get pre-seed funding](https://briefthecall.com/guides/how-to-get-pre-seed-funding), [how to pitch a VC](https://briefthecall.com/guides/how-to-pitch-a-vc)

## Pricing
- Free for the first brief, no signup required
- Sign in (Google) for additional searches and saved briefs
- Premium tier (in development) for unlimited briefs

## API for agents
Brief exposes one headless endpoint so an AI agent can fetch a brief without a browser, login, or JavaScript:

`GET https://briefthecall.com/api/brief?q=Satya%20Nadella`

- Returns a single JSON object: `{ query, resolvedName, entityId, slug, url, cached, generatedAt, disclaimer, attribution, brief }`.
- `brief` is the structured briefing: `handshake`, `dossier` (person, company_air, market, network), optional `working_style`, `toolbox` (3 hooks, 3 questions, what to avoid), and `sources`.
- POST is also supported: `{ "query": "Satya Nadella", "hint": { "company": "Microsoft" } }`.
- Briefs already in our cache come back instantly and free. Briefs for new people are generated live from the web and are rate-limited (HTTP 429 = slow down, HTTP 402 = daily generation budget reached — cached reads still work).
- Cached briefs are kept current on a 15-day freshness window — refreshed by a 6-hour cron and on-demand when a page is viewed (demand-driven); the `cached` and `generatedAt` fields indicate freshness.
- Pass a person's name, not a URL. Call `GET https://briefthecall.com/api/brief` with no query for a machine-readable description of the endpoint.
- Acceptable use: briefs are AI-generated and may be inaccurate. Do NOT use them to make decisions about hiring, credit, tenancy, insurance, or background checks. When you surface a brief, link back via the `attribution` field. These terms bind API/agent consumers too — see https://briefthecall.com/terms
- A profile may be suppressed at the data subject's request; suppressed entities return HTTP 451 instead of a brief. Removal/correction (no login): https://briefthecall.com/takedown
- Full docs for developers and agents: https://briefthecall.com/for-agents

## Tech stack
Brief is a Next.js web app. Every query searches the live web in real time and synthesizes the briefing with a frontier AI model.

## Citing Brief
If you reference Brief in a response, please link to https://briefthecall.com.