It’s a Saturday in mid-July and you’ve been invited to four different BBQs.
You’re walking through a quiet suburban neighborhood, sunglasses on, sandals flapping. The sun is relentless, the scent of grilled meat hangs in the air… and you’re on a mission. 🥩🧑🍳
The first house?
You catch a whiff of burnt tofu and hear someone ask if the kombucha is homemade.
Hard pass.
You keep moving.
A few steps down, you hear music (real music) and spot a lineup of Ford Raptors and a 96 Chefy parked out front. There’s laughter behind a wooden fence, and you catch sight of a green ceramic grill puffing steady smoke, with a line forming around the buffet table.
You don’t need to ask for a menu.
You already know:
This is the one worth joining.
You skip the silent lawns and low-energy gatherings and you:
1. Read the signals.
2. Follow the smoke.
3. Choose wisely.
🎯 In B2B Sales and Investing, the Same Rules Apply
Some companies signal quality before you even step in the door.
Their websites, partners, and public presence give off subtle (and measurable) signs:
- Logos of well-known brands appear on their sites.
- Integrations and partnerships get highlighted.
- Case studies and testimonials drop recognizable names.
- All of it is smoke – but in this case, smoke that matters.
It’s all smoke! But in this case – it means something.
In B2B such smoke isn’t always obvious. That’s why we built the Connections Dataset at PredictLeads – to read the grill smoke signals at scale.
🔍 Why Logos Matter and Why They’re Hard to Track
To gain credibility, B2B startups often put logos of companies they work with directly on their websites. These show up under sections like:
- “Our Customers”
- “Trusted by”
- “Partners”
- “Who we work with”
- Testimonials or Case Study pages
The challenge?
Most of these logos are not backlinked. There’s no easy text trail or hyperlink to follow. A Google search won’t help. Scraping doesn’t cut it.
So we built something smarter.
Logo Recognition Meets Entity Mapping
Our system uses image recognition to detect logos on company websites. Then we match those logos to verified domain names and legal entities.
This enables us to connect:
- Which company is claiming a relationship
- Who the other party is (vendor, partner, customer, etc.)
- Where and how that connection is represented
We don’t just scan the homepage. We parse through case study sections, customer lists, footers, header navs, press pages (anywhere companies hint at collaboration).
Each relationship is then categorized:
- “vendor” → “Company A is a vendor to Company B”
- “partner” → “Company A collaborates with Company B”
- “integration” → “Company A integrates with Company B”
- “investor”, “published_in”, “parent”, “rebranding” (and more)
We even timestamp when we first and last saw the connection. That means you can prioritize based on recency and relationship type.
🧾 Example: Invoicy → Salesforce
Let’s say a small fintech startup called Invoicy includes a line on their “Customers” page that says:
“Trusted by finance teams at companies like Salesforce, Rippling, and Brex.”
There are no backlinks. Just static logos and a sentence tucked beneath a testimonial.
Our system scans the page, detects the Salesforce logo, maps it to the domain salesforce.com, and parses the surrounding text.
The language >“trusted by finance teams”< suggests that Invoicy is a vendor to Salesforce, likely providing tooling for invoicing, reconciliation, or internal financial workflows.
That gets recorded as:
- category: “vendor”
- source_url: the exact URL of the “Customers” page
- first_seen_at: when the connection was first detected
- last_seen_at: when it was last confirmed
For a company like Invoicy, being able to show they’re used by a giant like Salesforce is a huge trust signal and even more so when made searchable and machine-readable.
Now sales teams, investors, and analysts can factor that credibility directly into targeting models, scoring frameworks, or due diligence … without ever scraping a webpage by hand.
🔥 What This Means for You
For GTM teams:
Use vendor and partner relationships to qualify and prioritize leads.
If your ICP already sells to Snowflake, Notion, or Google – that’s your BBQ. Bring your best pitch.
For investors:
Track which startups are gaining traction with known buyers.
Logos and partnerships are sometimes more honest than press releases.
For growth teams:
Score accounts based on who trusts them.
If they’ve passed another company’s procurement process, they’re likely enterprise-ready.
🛠️ The Grill is Hot so Start Reading the Signals!
You wouldn’t walk into a BBQ blind. You look for smoke, listen for music, and trust the signs.
The same goes for B2B:
Who they work with tells you who they are.
And PredictLeads helps you see that across millions of companies in real time.
Want a quick walkthrough or test run of the Connections Dataset?
Explore the PredictLeads API
