Account-based outreach starts with the account. You know you want to talk to a particular 200-person manufacturer; you do not yet know whether the right person is the COO or the head of operations, and you should not have to guess before the company can enter your pipeline.
You can now add a company as a lead with no person attached. It sits in your segment as a real record you can filter, enrich, and qualify. When you are ready, the decision-maker and email-finding enrichments fill in the contact.
Company records with a public contact address use it directly, so a lead is reachable from the moment it lands even before you have a named person.