Leveraging AlphaSense Expert Transcripts for Private Company Research

Sean Carmichael discusses how AlphaSense empowers private market investors with expert insights, AI-driven research tools, and transcript libraries to make more informed, strategic investment decisions.

Staying ahead of the curve in private market investments requires access to reliable and comprehensive private market research and company data. Unlike public markets, where company filings are readily available, the lack of transparency in private markets makes it challenging for investors to access reliable information.

Experiential insights from industry experts and expert networks help navigate this complexity by providing first-hand knowledge that can cut through ambiguity in private markets. As the world’s most sophisticated market intelligence platform, AlphaSense can help. Their purpose-built genAI capabilities “think” like an analyst, and, when layered over AlphaSense’s extensive content universe, can quickly surface key insights on private markets. AlphaSense’s expert transcript library offers on-demand and cost-effective access to 185,000+ expert transcripts, covering more than 18,000 private companies.

Since AlphaSense’s integration of Tegus in July 2024, researchers now have unparalleled access to extensive libraries of proprietary content covering private companies, as well as unmatched AI search tools that allow users to extract the most value from their insights in less time.

Below, AlphaSense explores how their expert transcript library can provide a competitive advantage in private equity investment research.

The Importance of Expert Calls in Private Market Research

Private market research on non-publicly traded assets, such as private companies, venture capital, private equity, and other alternative investments, relies heavily on alternative sources and specialised knowledge from experts to uncover deeper insights.

Expert insights, gathered from those with real-world experience in specific industries, fill this gap by providing timely, in-depth perspectives that can reveal both opportunities and risks that might otherwise go unnoticed. Expert calls are one-on-one interactions that offer investors a unique opportunity to interact with experts who possess in-depth knowledge of specific industries or emerging trends.

Where traditional research methods may fall short, expert calls provide access to first-hand, up-to-date information that can be invaluable in making informed investment decisions. A fully realised investment strategy incorporates expert calls to unlock granular insights to enhance research and maximise return on investment.

How to Conduct Private Market Research with Expert Insights

By leveraging AlphaSense’s Expert Insights, investors and researchers can enhance their primary investment research by gaining expert and customer perspectives on any company, industry, or topic across their expansive library.

Below are four ways to use AlphaSense’s Expert Insights to elevate your private market research.

1. Assess the Competitive Landscape

When formulating investment theses, assessing the competitive landscape of any opportunity is imperative to identify growth potential and mitigate any industry-specific risks.

Let’s take a private equity (PE) firm that is considering an investment in a privately held technology startup in the field of artificial intelligence. Even if the firm has conducted preliminary research into the company, it still needs deeper insights to fully understand the competitive landscape of the market.

The firm can use AlphaSense’s Expert Call Services to schedule an expert call with a veteran technology executive who has extensive experience in the AI industry. The expert will then provide critical insights into the current market dynamics, competition, threats, and potential opportunities, helping the PE team gain a comprehensive view of the startup’s landscape and assess its competitive position in the overall market.

The PE firm could also leverage AlphaSense’s expert transcript library to gain additional expert perspectives and a deeper understanding of the market.

For example, consider this excerpt from an expert call transcript with an engineer who has experience choosing between AI vendors. The expert breaks down some of the key differentiators they see between today’s AI startups:

“I can imagine the quality and the volume of data will eventually be also a reason some players can be ahead of others. For now I think on the frontier side data becomes less important because generally, everyone can get the entire Internet data right now for training the generative general purpose frontier models already. Data size, data volume is not a big issue but quality can still play a role in here.

“Especially in the future when we talk more multi-modality or the real-world model, things like that. On video generation maybe auto driving side, I think data in videos in the real world preceptors side will make some difference right now … The whole industry is very competitive, very dynamic. Technology breaks through. I think data revolution, the way you train your model, architecture change can all play a big factor in here.”

– Expert Transcript | VP and Head of Engineering, Quora

2. Understand Growth Potential

After assessing the competitive landscape, the PE team must understand the opportunity’s growth potential. One significant advantage of leveraging expert calls is the ability to uncover niche market knowledge and identify emerging trends early on that might be overlooked by traditional research methodologies.

The PE team would need to consult with a leading AI researcher who can provide insights into the latest trends and technological developments in the AI field. The researcher would then share their perspective on the startup’s product, its potential for growth, and areas where the startup could innovate to stay ahead of the competition.

3. Identify Industry-Specific Risks

Furthermore, experts can offer private company investors alternative perspectives that may challenge existing viewpoints, help mitigate potential risks, and identify potential red flags to make well-informed decisions. With AlphaSense’s Expert Call Services, PE researchers can access specialised legal experts to uncover any red flags and develop risk-mitigation strategies to make well-informed decisions.

After a PE firm understands the growth potential of the technology startup, the PE firm should then consult a legal expert specialising in technology and intellectual property (IP) law. The expert can offer insights into potential legal challenges and regulatory changes that may impact the startup’s operations and growth. These insights help the team evaluate potential risks and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Leveraging expert transcript libraries and expert call services from AlphaSense allows researchers to extract vital insights from IP attorneys without forgoing the consultation process entirely. Consider the following excerpt from an interview with an AI and data science expert breaking down the myriad legal and regulatory concerns for AI startups:

“At the moment, we have a number of international AI safety institutes being set up, like for example, we've got one in the U.K. We've got a number of other similar AI safety issues coming across the -- in different international jurisdictions. But what's happening is that because of the pace of these models being developed quite quickly, there are no current safety legislation or safety use cases coming out of these institutes.

“Which can help, let's say, companies or even application developers of these models essentially pick up and run with them to understand whether they're adhering to safety and risk -- and mitigating risk. So I think that's currently a gray area. It's currently a very high risk for a lot of GenAI application developers perhaps because there is nothing to say whether certain model outputs are going to have battle or incorrect consequences.

“So I think those are things which need to keep up with the pace of innovation, which needs to happen quite quickly in my view.”

– Expert Transcript | Director & CTO, Hazelcast; CTO, Fujitsu (Prior)

4. Validate Investment Theses

Investment theses often rely on assumptions and projections, especially in private markets where comprehensive data is scarce. Engaging with industry experts through AlphaSense’s expert transcript library allows investors to validate their investment theses and receive critical feedback on their assumptions with alternative perspectives.

For example, if the experts’ insights align with the team’s initial positive assessment of the startup, the firm could proceed with the investment. Conversely, if the experts raise significant concerns that the team hadn’t considered, they might reevaluate their decision.

After using Expert Insights to validate their theses, private company investors can gain the competitive edge necessary to move strategically and outperform competitors in the private market landscape.

Use Generative AI Tools to Uncover Relevant Expert Insights

One of the biggest challenges for those researching and investing in private markets is bridging the information gap that exists. Researching private companies is typically challenging due to lack of publicly available data, rapid industry shifts, and opaque markets that make it difficult for investors and analysts to stay informed.

AlphaSense’s generative AI capabilities can help by sifting through massive datasets to deliver meaningful insights in seconds - allowing researchers to keep pace with rapid advancements in their area of interest.

For example, you can ask AlphaSense’s Generative Search, “What are experts saying about the competitive dynamics for AI startups?” You can limit the results to expert transcripts, and Generative Search can quickly delve into thousands of documents, returning relevant research with citations:

Unlock the Power of Expert Insights for Private Market Research

As the private market investment landscape continues to evolve, leveraging AlphaSense’s expert transcript library and expert call services for private market research is imperative to building and executing a successful investment strategy and enhancing decision-making.

With Tegus integrated into the AlphaSense platform, they are able to provide deeper insights, faster research, and access to a larger network of experts than ever before.

Ready to elevate your private market research? Start your free trial of AlphaSense today.