Every investment is a bet on what customers will do next. So is every product launch and every move into a new market. The best way to test that bet is to ask the people closest to it. Why did they choose one product over another? What would make them switch? Which unmet needs could shape their next purchase?
Anyone who has tried to get those answers knows the problem. Finding the right expert takes time and is further burdened by coordinating calls and conducting long-form interviews before you can begin to synthesize the findings. For many teams, bespoke research is just too slow or expensive to commission routinely, but strategic decisions keep moving, whether teams have to-the-minute primary evidence to support decisions or not.
Qualitate is building an AI-native expert network and primary intelligence platform that brings together expert access, interviews, and analysis in one place. Enterprise customers already use it across product, go-to-market, and strategy to understand buying decisions, competitive dynamics, and customer needs. Investors across hedge funds, private equity, and private credit use it to diligence new opportunities and support existing investments, with greater speed and volume than traditional expert networks can offer.
Primary research, built for speed and trust
Qualitate knows that the foundation of good research is getting the right perspective. That’s why the company builds and operates its own panel of decision makers, budget holders, and market experts, giving it control over how participants are identified and verified.
The AI moderator conducts interviews and adapts its follow-up questions to what it hears. Say a buyer expects software spending to rise. The natural follow-up is whether that means more employees will be using existing products or investment in new tools. The answer changes how you read the whole spending plan.
Interviews can run in parallel, removing the need to schedule each discussion with a researcher. This consistent structure allows Qualitate to organize responses into data that teams can compare across vendors and over time. Findings link back to the underlying discussions, so users can examine the evidence behind a conclusion.
Research that builds on itself
What sets the AI moderator apart is that it is informed by Qualitate’s ongoing research that regularly updates the library available to all platform users. When that evidence raises a new question, teams can commission a custom study informed by what the library already knows. Custom discussions remain private, separate from the shared library. Compliance is built in as well, including screening for material non-public information and firm-level access controls.
This changes what a team can ask of primary research. A product team could investigate why buyers choose a competitor, use those findings to inform its roadmap, and return to the question after a release. Research becomes part of the recurring work of improving a product.
From customer to lead investor
We were Qualitate customers before we were investors. We rely on the platform to support our investment decisions and our portfolio companies’ strategic decisions, where understanding the voice of the customer and the broader market is essential.
That gave us a view of the product from the user’s seat and was a big part of why our conviction runs as deep as it does. We believe Qualitate can disrupt the traditional expert-network model by making high-quality primary intelligence faster to get and cheaper to run. As AI makes existing information easier to analyze, we see growing value in companies that own both a body of primary research and the means to expand it.
But like most great businesses, it comes back to the founder. Sagar Kadakia, Qualitate’s founder and CEO, has spent more than 15 years developing data products for enterprises and investment firms. His experience translates to innate customer empathy that shows up in every new feature added to the platform.
We are thrilled to lead Qualitate’s Series A and partner with Sagar and the team as they make primary intelligence an integrated and accessible part of how businesses operate and investors make decisions.
Qualitate is an Insight Partners portfolio company.
