From download to your first dataset.

There are four build artefacts and they are not interchangeable.

• Apple silicon Mac — the arm64 disk image. Apple menu → About This Mac: if the Chip line says “Apple M-something”, this is yours.
• Intel Mac — the disk image whose name ends -x64. If About This Mac shows a Processor line naming Intel, take this one.
• Windows — the setup .exe is the ordinary route: it asks where to put LeadCo, makes the shortcuts, and needs no administrator rights. A portable .exe also exists for a locked-down machine or a USB stick — it installs nothing and runs from wherever you put it. Both are the same build, and the Windows build ships as a beta.

The wrong Mac build will not open, and macOS does not say why in so many words. If a download refuses to launch at all, check this first. The download page lists all four.

This is expected, and it is not a problem with your download or your licence. The installers are not yet signed with a paid developer certificate, so both operating systems hold them on first launch. Every unsigned application gets the same treatment.

• macOS. Drag LeadCo out of the disk image first — do not run it from the mounted window. Then right-click the app (or hold Control and click) and choose Open. macOS shows a warning with an Open button; press it. You do this once; a normal double-click works from then on. Depending on your macOS version the wording is “Apple could not verify LeadCo is free of malware”, “cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified” or “is damaged and can’t be opened”. None of the three is true of the file you downloaded.
• Windows. SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC”. The control that gets past it is More info, then Run anyway.

If you ever see either warning for software you did not deliberately download, do not do this. It exists for a reason.

If the app opens and closes again immediately, that is a crash rather than a block. Note anything on screen and send us your operating system and its version — the version is the part that identifies it.

Yes. LeadCo reads the map through your own proxy account, and the Start button stays switched off until one is connected. No proxy ships with the application and none is included in any licence — you buy the traffic directly from a provider at their published rate, and they bill you for it.

The reason is capacity, not concealment. Sustained volume from a single connection gets rate-limited and the run stalls part-way through; a rotating pool spreads the requests across many addresses so a long run finishes.

Any provider offering rotating residential proxies over HTTP works. DataImpulse is simply the one the in-app instructions are written for. What the application needs from any of them is a host, a port, a username and a password.

Work through it in this order, testing after each change.

• Prefer the connection line over the four fields. Settings → Connect proxy takes a single pasted string in the form host:port:username:password and splits it itself, which removes the two most common mistakes at once.
• If you are filling the fields by hand: host and port belong in separate boxes. A host still carrying :port on the end will not resolve.
• The username and password are the proxy’s own credentials from your provider’s dashboard — not the email and password you sign in to DataImpulse with. Mixing those two up is the most common cause of all.
• A stray space picked up by a copy will fail exactly like a wrong password. So will an exhausted plan: check the account still has traffic on it.
• If your provider restricts access to allow-listed IP addresses, add the address of the computer running the application.
• Office networks, VPNs and security software block outbound proxy ports often enough to be worth ruling out. Try the same credentials on another network.

The test answers one question — can the application reach the internet through your proxy — and answers it in seconds, against the exact area you are about to search. Use it after every change rather than starting a run to find out.

A run that starts fine and fails later is usually the address it is going out through rather than the application. A single residential IP serves a limited number of map requests in a session before the far end starts refusing them. There is no fixed figure — it varies with the address, the area and how hard you run — so treat it as a ceiling that exists rather than a number to plan against.

What helps, in the order worth trying:

• Use a rotating plan, so a long run is spread across the pool instead of loaded onto one connection.
• Split a large area into several smaller runs, and leave a gap between them.
• Reduce the radius. Area grows with the square of the radius, so doubling it is roughly four times the ground to cover.

If instead everything fails from the very first request, it is the connection and not the volume — go back to the proxy test.

Two things arm it, and the application will not begin a run without both.

• A proxy. The chip in the top-right of the window reads Not configured until one is connected. Settings → Connect proxy.
• A place. Type a city into Where, or click the map to drop the pin yourself.

Nothing else is required. The default is All local businesses with the filters at their defaults, so you do not have to pick a niche before your first run.

Separate the two possible failures first: reset the filters and run the area again. If businesses appear, the search was fine and your filters removed everything. If nothing appears even at the defaults, it is the search itself.

• Categories. You are selecting exact map categories. If the businesses in that street are filed under a neighbouring one, they are not in scope. Add the related categories, or switch to All local businesses.
• The pin. A small radius dropped one street off centre can miss the whole cluster you were aiming at.
• Filters. No site at all, Has a phone and 4.5+ together can legitimately leave an empty list in a small area. Remove them one at a time.

Check the file first: open the folder the application wrote to and confirm it is there and is not zero bytes.

• Every field crammed into one column is a separator setting in the program opening it, not a broken export. European Excel expects a semicolon — choose it under Choose columns…, or re-import and set the delimiter explicitly.
• Accented characters showing as mojibake is a character-encoding setting in the same import dialog. The file itself is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark.
• If nothing was written at all, the destination is the usual cause: a folder the application cannot write to, or a file still open in a spreadsheet and therefore locked. Close it, or export somewhere else, and try again.

Your key is shown on the confirmation screen immediately after payment, with a button to copy it. That screen is the delivery: copy the key and keep it somewhere you will find it again.

If you closed the page before copying it, write to us with your order reference and we will send it to you. The order reference is on the receipt from Creem, the seller of record on your statement.

That is correct for the build you install today, and nothing is missing from your order. Version 5.0.0 ships with activation switched off: the licence panel in Settings is hidden rather than shown inert, because a panel about a system that cannot be used is worse than no panel. Nothing in the application is locked behind it, so you can install and run straight away.

When a version ships with activation, the Licence panel appears in Settings and you paste the key you already have. Version 5.0.0 has no in-app update channel, so that version arrives as a download from this site rather than as an update inside the application. Keys are in the form LCO5-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.

Until then: keep your key, and do not worry that you have not been asked for it.