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Talk to the customers, operators, and domain specialists who live inside the market you're about to back — before the term sheet, at diligence speed, priced for venture budgets.
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Buyer calls pre-term sheet
Thesis Meets Reality
The fastest way to test a startup's claims is five conversations with its supposed ICP — pain intensity, current spend, willingness to pay — fielded inside your decision window, priced for venture budgets.
Where We Plug In
Screening
One or two practitioner calls to sanity-check the TAM story and the problem's actual urgency — before the deal consumes partner time.
Pre-Term Sheet
Calls with the ICP the company claims to serve — pain intensity, current spend, willingness to pay, and what would actually trigger a purchase.
Diligence
Operators who know the incumbents and specialists who can assess the technical moat — switching barriers, build-vs-buy risk, roadmap credibility.
Thesis Building
Structured expert programmes to build a defensible view on an emerging category — before the hot deals in it reach your inbox.
Portfolio
Give founders access to customers, channel experts, and senior operators for GTM, pricing, and expansion decisions — value-add your portfolio actually feels.
Follow-On
Independent market signal ahead of an inside round or pro-rata decision — has the category moved the way the board deck says it has?
What Your Team Gets
Competitive processes don't wait for slow research. The service is scoped per deal, sized per question, and run to your IC date.
Test us on the next deal
Three to five buyer calls before the term sheet — judge the signal quality yourself.
Submit a Project01
We recruit the actual ICP — the procurement lead, the department head, the user who lives in the workflow — screened for genuine, current exposure to the problem space.
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AI infrastructure, climate tech, digital health, fintech rails — our research-trained sourcing reaches practitioners in categories too new for stale databases.
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No retainer, no annual minimum, no enterprise platform fee. Three calls on a Series A check is a perfectly good engagement — pay per completed call.
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Structured per-call summaries and a short synthesis across calls — the market evidence section of your memo, ready before the partner meeting.
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Experts never learn the fund's name or the company being evaluated. In a hot round, the fact that you're diligencing is itself confidential — we treat it that way.
When You Need Numbers
A 50–150 respondent survey of the ICP turns "the buyers we spoke to liked it" into a number the partnership can debate — fielded fast, under the same engagement.
FAQ
Something specific? Write to sales@astuteconnect.com — we respond within one business day.
Often, yes — for reachable buyer and operator profiles we can typically source, screen, and schedule within days. Tell us the IC date in the brief and we scope to it; if a profile genuinely can't be reached in the window, we say so on day one.
Yes — emerging categories are where recruiting beats databases. We identify practitioners through the adjacent roles that actually exist: early adopters, pilot customers, builders at incumbent firms, and operators from analogous workflows.
No. A single call is a valid engagement. Most VC diligence briefs run three to six calls; sector thesis programmes run larger. You pay per completed consultation.
Yes. Funds set up access for portfolio companies — founders submit briefs directly for GTM, pricing, hiring-market, and expansion questions, under the fund's relationship or their own.
No. Experts learn only the consultation topic and that the client is an investment firm. Neither the fund's identity nor the company under evaluation is disclosed, and consultations are framed as market research.
Send the thesis and the IC date — matched buyer and operator profiles typically within days.
Expert Network
Expert Calls Moderated Expert Calls Expert Meetings Transcripts & Insight Library Speakers & Workshops Expert RecruitmentPrimary Research
In-Depth Interviews Focus Group Discussions B2B & B2C Surveys Respondent Recruitment Retail Store Audits CX & NPS ResearchCompany
Industries How It Works Compliance Case Studies Blog About