A signal is an observable, dated event that suggests a company’s situation has changed. Not an inference about intent, not a probability score bought from a data vendor — an event that happened, on a date, somewhere you can go and look at.
Signals are the raw material. On their own they decide nothing. They become evidence when they are attached to a claim and a source, and evidence is what the qualification argument runs on.
Definition#
Something is treated as a signal only if all four of these hold.
- Observable. A person could find it without privileged access.
- Dated. It has an observation date, and where possible an occurrence date. These are different things and both are stored.
- Attributable. It belongs to a specific company record, not a category.
- Sourceable. There is a URL, a filing reference or a document the claim can be traced back to.
Anything failing one of those is not discarded — it is stored as context, and context can inform a message. It just cannot support a verdict.
Signal families#
Signals are grouped into families. Families matter because stacking counts across families, not within them: three job posts are one hiring signal repeated, not three independent reasons to believe something.
| Family | Typical sources | What it usually indicates |
|---|---|---|
| Hiring | Careers pages, job boards, role reposts | A function is being built or is under strain |
| Funding | Regulatory filings, registry records, press | Budget exists that did not exist before |
| Leadership | Appointment announcements, profile changes | A new owner with a mandate and a first-90-days plan |
| Expansion | Planning records, new site listings, registrations | Operational load is about to increase |
| Tech change | Job descriptions, case studies, public integrations | The stack is in motion and a slot may be open |
| Commitment | Published targets, compliance deadlines, contracts | A dated obligation someone has to meet |
| Distress | Filings, closures, restructuring notices | Budget is being defended, not deployed — often a reason to hold |
Recency and decay#
Signals lose weight with age, and they lose it at different rates. A funding round is still meaningful nine months on. A job post that has been open for nine months means something different from a job post published last week — possibly that nobody is being hired at all.
Every signal carries a half-life by family. Weight decays continuously rather than expiring at a cliff edge, so an account does not drop out of a shortlist overnight because a date rolled over.
| Family | Default half-life | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Funding | 180 days | Deployment lags announcement; the window opens later than the news |
| Leadership | 120 days | Strongest in the first 90 days of tenure |
| Expansion | 120 days | Occurrence date matters more than observation date |
| Hiring | 60 days | Reposts are re-dated; long-open roles are down-weighted |
| Tech change | 90 days | Rollouts are slow and the evidence is usually late |
| Commitment | Until the stated date | Decays toward the deadline, not away from the announcement |
Signal stacking#
One signal is a coincidence. Three signals from three families, inside one window, is a situation. Stacking is how the engine tells those apart, and it is the mechanism that most directly produces the shortlist.
The trace below is one account over a single quarter. Read left to right: a weak hiring signal alone would not move anything; by the time an operations leadership hire, a second depot and a telematics rollout are all inside the same window, the account has an argument behind it.
- Hiring
- Posted 2 warehouse supervisor roles 2026-05-02
- Hiring
- Posted first Head of Operations role 2026-06-19
- Hiring
- Reposted the same role at a higher band 2026-07-11
- Expansion
- Planning consent granted, second depot 2026-05-28
- Expansion
- Depot listed as operational on site 2026-07-24
- Tech change
- Telematics vendor named in a case study 2026-06-30
Three rules govern stacking.
- Cross-family only. Repeats inside a family reinforce that family’s own weight; they do not count as separate reasons.
- Inside a window. Signals must overlap in time. Two strong signals nine months apart describe two different situations.
- Order can matter. Funding then hiring reads differently from hiring then funding. Where the ICP names an expected sequence, out-of-order stacks are down-weighted.
What is not a signal#
These are excluded deliberately. Some of them are what other platforms sell as their core feature.
| Not a signal | Why |
|---|---|
| Website visitor de-anonymisation | Attribution to a company is inference, and the person doing the browsing is usually not the buyer. It cannot be cited. |
| Purchased “intent” scores | A number with no observable event behind it. If the source cannot be shown to you, it cannot support a claim. |
| Email opens | Unreliable since image proxying, and tracking pixels cost more in replies than the data is worth. See deliverability. |
| Technology detected on a marketing site | Describes the site, not the company. Stored as context, never as a trigger on its own. |
| Company anniversaries, birthdays, generic news mentions | Events that happen on a schedule regardless of whether anything changed. |
| Anything behind a login you do not own | If it is not observable without privileged access, it is not sourceable. |
Next: evidence — what a signal has to be attached to before it can decide anything, and the strength grades that follow from it.