Need to quickly research companies before meetings or sales calls? This guide will show you how to build a simple AI agent that can automatically research any company and provide information about their products and industry. You don’t need technical skills—just follow these steps to create your own company research assistant.

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Step 1: Create a New Agent

To get started with your company research agent:
  1. Navigate to the Agent Builder section in Agent.ai
  2. Click “Create Agent”
  3. Select “Start from scratch”
  4. Name your agent (e.g., “Simple Company Research”)
  5. Add a description like “This agent will take the name of a company and do some research on what products the company sells”
  6. Create a URL for your agent (e.g., “company_research”)
  7. Choose an icon for your agent
  8. Set the visibility to private or public (if public, it will go through an approval process)
  9. Add relevant tags (e.g., “sales and marketing”)

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Step 2: Set Up the Trigger

For this simple agent, you’ll use a manual trigger:
  1. In the trigger section, select “Manual”
  2. This means users will manually start the agent when they need company information

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Step 3: Create the Input Action

Now you’ll set up how the agent collects the company name:
  1. Go to the Actions screen
  2. Click to add a new action
  3. Select “Get user input”
  4. Choose “Text box” as the input type
  5. Add a prompt like “Enter the name of the company”
  6. Optionally, add an example (e.g., “Upsot”)
  7. In the “Store value in” field, enter “out_company” (this creates a variable to store the company name)
  8. Save this action

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Step 4: Create the Research Action

Next, set up the AI to research the company:
  1. Add another action
  2. Select “Use AI” then “Use Gen AI”
  3. Choose an LLM model (e.g., GPT-4 Mini for cost efficiency)
  4. In the instructions field, enter your prompt:
  5. You are an experienced researcher. I am giving you the name of a company: . I would like you to research this company and list out the products this company sells and what industry it is in.
  6. In the “Store output in” field, enter “out_company_research”
  7. Save this action

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Step 5: Display the Results

Finally, set up how the agent will show the research results:
  1. Add a final action
  2. Select “Show user output”
  3. Choose the variable “out_company_research” to display
  4. Save this action

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Step 6: Test Your Agent

Your company research agent is now ready to use:
  1. Click the “Run” button to test your agent
  2. When prompted, enter a company name (e.g., “Pigment.com”)
  3. The agent will process the request and display information about the company’s products and industry

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Example Output

When testing with “Pigment.com”, the agent might return something like: “Pigment operates in the field of business intelligence and data visualization, focusing on helping organizations manage their data more effectively. Their main product is a SaaS platform that offers business planning, forecasting, and analytics solutions.”

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Advanced Options

Once you’re comfortable with your basic agent, you can explore more advanced features:
  • Set up automatic email generation of results
  • Create more complex research workflows
  • Add additional data sources
  • Customize the output format
Have questions or need help with your agent? Reach out to our support team or community.