Thread by @asanwal

Your startup wants to get into @CBinsights research and in front of tech buyers, investors, acquirers?

You can now brief our analysts

100% free

Tell us about the cool isht you're building, the problems you're solving and where you're going

Step 1 👉🏾cbinsights.iad1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eW…

Alright, some tips on what a good @CBinsights analyst briefing looks like

Do NOT have your PR firm do the briefing. PR firms should tell clients but won't lead them

We don't do briefings w/ PR firms

3/ Marketing, product, sales, or founders should lead or be involved in briefings (stage-dependent)

You should understand the market, roadmap, competition, pricing, client pain points & value your technology delivers

4/ articulating customer value is key

Specific, measurable outcomes you’ve delivered for named clients is ideal

Generalities on value or describing a client as a ‘Fortune 500 bank’ are suboptimal

5/ company metrics follow the same guidance

None of the “we grew ARR 300% since last year” bullsh1t

Be specific and clear

We aren’t going to put a financial or operating metric directly into our research

6/ quick digression

We charge a subscription to the 'buy side'

aka people who buy technology (mostly for big cos) and people who buy equity in or buy controlling stakes in companies (investors & acquirers)

Our job is to get great cos (like yours) in front of them based

7/ ...on their needs/asks

And so specifics and measurable helps our analysts to see that

so if you remember 2 things from these tweets, here is one big one

specific, measurable > vague

8/ On competition

a/ tell us who you compete with. If you say you have none or say your competition is FAMGA or $XYZ billion market cap co, 🤔

b/ tell us why you're better. It doesn't have to be in a shit-talking way (can be) but be clear on why your co/tech is superior

9/ Back to proof points, you can and should share demo videos, PDF case study links, etc

Those are certainly valuable/helpful

But be able to boil it down

Assume analysts won't have time to go through every video and PDF

Make it easy for them

10/ The initial part of the analyst briefing does require writing through responses to ?s

Concise & precise is key here

If you're copying text off your website as the response, you're most likely doing it wrong (unless you've built the rare jargon free, clear tech co website)

11/ Make your responses readable

I'd recommend 2-3 tweets in length

If you put in big blocks of chunky text, try not to

Or at a minimum, break it up into bullets to make it easier for analysts to learn about out key details

12/ Subtle but write like a human

Some of you are building game-changing technology which may be complicated so the ability to convey that in a simple, clear way is key

Define acronyms if you must use them

Pro tip: Read Ogilvy on Advertising or stuff by @nevmed

13/ Be able to specifically articulate the ideal customer profile for your market and company

This helps match our clients to you

good - P&C insurers
better - underwriters at P&C insurers
best - VP and SVPs of commercial auto underwriting

14/ Be clear on what geos & industries you serve or want to serve

"We are global and industry-agnostic" 👎🏾

Avoid the allure of being all things to everyone

We understand you don't want to be put into a box but remember, the buy side often wants to know how to classify you

15/ Don't spend time talking about VCs, $ raised

1st, @CBinsights already has the data :)

More importantly, if you're spending time talking about this and not the product/customers, that's a problem

Esp for tech buyers, they car abt how you solve their problems

focus on THEIR

16/ Pricing

Folks get precious w/ pricing cuz they're worried they'll get boxed into some one size fits all price

Help us understand pricing ranges and what are the drivers of price cuz that is what buyers want to understand

"It depends" w/ no clarification is a sh1t answer

17/ btw, for participating, we also provide back to you the vendor research on your space/mkt that we might issue

And we'll share anonymized benchmarking data of cos in your space/cohort

So beyond CBI and buyer visibility, you also get market intel/data back

For free!

18/ went thru some briefing responses

In response to ?s on the problem your co solves, seeing some 'lazy TAM' answers

"Fraud for credit card cos is a $45B problem per yr"

Ok

But why is what you've created different (or at least better) than alternatives? And why now?