SE360 / PRACTICES / RESEARCH & STRATEGY
PRACTICE 07 — RESEARCH & STRATEGY
Judgment travels on evidence.
The institute arm of SE360. Market studies, pricing research, competitive war-games, and commercial diligence — built with an AI-accelerated research method that compresses twelve-week studies into three, without compressing the standard.
IN BRIEF
SE360's Research & Strategy practice is the firm's institute arm — market studies, pricing research, competitive war-gaming, win-loss research, and commercial diligence, AI-accelerated and evidence-grade. It serves operators, boards, investors, and acquirers. Engagements take four shapes: the Diagnostic, the Sprint, the Retainer, and the Embedded.
01 — THE PROBLEM
Strategic research has a speed problem and a truth problem. The traditional study takes a quarter and costs what a senior hire costs — so decisions that needed evidence get made on anecdote instead. And much of what is sold as research is report-buying: syndicated data re-warmed, expert calls summarized, a market size with three significant figures and no falsifiable reasoning underneath.
We rebuilt the research method around a different stack: AI-accelerated collection and synthesis across filings, pricing pages, hiring data, review corpora, and trade sources — directed and verified by senior researchers, and grounded where it matters in primary work: practitioner interviews, buyer panels, win-loss calls. The machine does the reading. The humans do the judgment. Every claim in the document carries its evidence and its confidence level.
The output standard is simple: a document a board can act on and a skeptic cannot dismantle.
02 — WHAT WE DO
| MARKET STUDIES | Sizing from first principles, structure and share analysis, demand-driver modeling, and scenario forecasting with stated assumptions — the study that survives diligence. |
|---|---|
| PRICING RESEARCH | Willingness-to-pay measurement, value-metric analysis, competitive price architecture, and monetization redesign grounded in buyer evidence rather than benchmark folklore. |
| COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE & WAR-GAMING | Deep competitor teardowns — strategy, economics, roadmap signals — and facilitated war-games that pressure-test your plan against their most rational responses. |
| WIN-LOSS & BUYER RESEARCH | Structured post-decision interviews and buyer-journey research; the unfiltered account of why you actually win and lose, delivered without anesthesia. |
| COMMERCIAL DILIGENCE | Market and GTM diligence for investors and acquirers: the target's growth story, tested against evidence, on a deal timeline. |
03 — HOW IT RUNS
01
Diagnose
Two to three weeks. We map the revenue system as it actually operates — data, motion, message, market. The output is a written diagnosis, not a workshop.
02
Design
The GTM blueprint: where to play, how to win, what to build, what to stop. Falsifiable, sequenced, costed. A board-grade document your team can execute without us.
03
Build
We construct the system alongside your team — positioning, playbooks, pipeline infrastructure, enablement, measurement. Working assets, not recommendations.
04
Run
For engagements that continue: we operate inside the motion, own numbers with you, and transfer the system as your team compounds.
04 — DELIVERABLES
DOCUMENTS
the study — with methods appendix, source ledger, and confidence levels on every material claim
SYSTEMS
reusable market model · competitor tracking cadence · win-loss interview program · diligence data room analysis
05 — ENGAGEMENT SHAPES
Four ways to work. Every scope is bespoke.
| THE DIAGNOSTIC | Two to three weeks. The written diagnosis of your revenue system and the sequenced recommendation. The smallest honest engagement we offer. |
|---|---|
| THE SPRINT | Four to eight weeks. One defined problem — a pricing study, an entry study, a launch architecture — taken from question to decision-grade answer. |
| THE RETAINER | Quarterly. Design and build, held to numbers agreed in advance. Reviewed — and cancellable — at every quarter boundary. |
| THE EMBEDDED | We operate inside the motion: a partner and pod accountable for a revenue outcome alongside your team, until the system runs without us. |
FEES ARE SCOPED PER ENGAGEMENT AFTER THE FIRST CONVERSATION. WE DO NOT PUBLISH RATE CARDS, AND WE DO NOT PRICE AS A PERCENTAGE OF MEDIA SPEND.
06 — QUESTIONS
Yes. It powers every other practice and sells independently.
Focused studies in three to four weeks. Diligence runs on deal timelines.
Every deliverable ships with a methods appendix — sources, sample, confidence levels. If we estimated, we say so and show how.
Senior researchers directing AI-augmented pipelines. No analyst pyramids. No outsourced summarization sold as insight.
As inputs to be verified, never as conclusions to be resold.
Bring us a hard problem.
Engagements begin with a conversation, not a proposal. Tell us where growth is stuck. We will tell you — plainly — whether we are the right instrument, and what we would do first.