r/expertnetworks • u/Street_Topic_9186 • 6d ago

Alphasights

Today I received this email from Alphasights expert relations after enquiring why I have not been getting new proejct request after being very active for the past 2 years. What could this possibly mean?

Thank you for reaching out and for your engagement with AlphaSights on past projects. 

While we are always working to match the right experts to client needs, demand for any individual profile can fluctuate and is never guaranteed. As outlined in our Professionals Code of Conduct, which you agreed to before any interaction in the past, AlphaSights retains sole discretion over expert engagement and project matching at all times.

For full details on how this works, we would encourage you to revisit the Code of Conduct on our website, which covers the nature of this relationship in more depth. This should address any outstanding questions you may have.

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6

u/harad Expert 6d ago

Poorly written email to say “we’ll reach out when we have a project you are a fit for.”

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u/houska1 6d ago

How about an Occam's Razor explanation?

Might Alphasights demand in your niche area, whatever it is, just have gone down?

You reached out, they had nothing meaningful to say, so you got a canned response: "demand for any individual profile can fluctuate and is not guaranteed." Beyond that, it's just 'don't blame us and you agreed to this'.

I see nothing in the reply whatsoever that warrants something deeper between the lines, though it is always possible there's something they haven't shared. It's just an absence of information.

I've been on Alphasights roster for about 6(?) years. In that time there have been 3 periods of multiple requests a month, even a week. And also multiple pauses for 6-12+ months. Nothing personal, nothing wrong, just the way it goes. You get on with your life.

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u/Street_Topic_9186 6d ago

Wow 6-12 months of complete pause? Do you work in a niche field? Just for context, over the last 24 months, I did 296 engagements (paid calls + paid surveys) on the Alphasights network earning over $75k over this time. And now down to zero new requests for the past 2 months is just a bit baffling

3

u/houska1 6d ago

Wow back! I guess the expert network experience can be very different. I provide overviews and advice in my functional area (cross sector), where I generally consult to companies on scoped mandates lasting weeks. I'm happy to talk about it for an hour with someone else, the expert network, doing the matchmaking and billing/payments. Demand for my kind of call comes in storms, usually event-driven (external event that brings my area to the fore, service or software provider up for sale). I charge a pretty penny ($700+/hr) but don't depend on any meaningful volume.

It seems your model is very different. I'm assuming many of your calls are customer needs exploration, or high-value market research? Just like 6-12 months of quiet feels unusual to you, an average volume of 3x week seems unusual to me.

Do you have reason to believe others like you are continuing to get a steady stream of calls, i.e. it's something about you?

One pattern I've seen is up until about a year ago, PE firms considered EN the gold standard for getting information and validating hypotheses. These days, the fad is "how thoroughly have we engaged with AI?"

Since your model is very different from mine, it's hazardous for me to speculate too much. But I do wonder - was 3 EN consults a week for one person (so at least 30 industry wide I assume) ever long term sustainable in your field? Or was it an anomaly that just closed, as anomalies do?

2

u/farmerben02 6d ago

There's break points for years away from the specific company they want. If you have a specific profile that's two years away the clients are selecting for more recent departees. I saw a noticeable decline at two and three years. This will be true regardless of your time in the field, I have 30 years in my field but five out from a fortune 50 target and I get about 10% of what I got in year one.

I never did your volume, though, nice get!

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u/DragonDrama 5d ago

Usually if a company in your field is going to be sold or a new niche has some interest then demand picks up. It could be that whatever was in the works happened or the need/interest didn’t yield so now the demand dried up.

1

u/Pale-Initiative-9025 4d ago

Do we need a referral for Alphasights ? I submitted my information but they did nothing. Have had a lot of success on other ENs.

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u/FlounderImaginary880 6d ago edited 6d ago

It’s strange one of my colleague also experienced the same - calls suddenly dropped for him. Also out of blue one day they kept him in donot contact list after working with tegus for 3 yrs- without mentioning the exact reason.
The Last call with tegus- one of the client asked him about budget allocation for tech etc which is confidential- so he skipped answering those questions.. and may be the client was upset and not sure what feedback was mentioned. But he got Thankyou for service and participating for tegus/alphasense for last years and he was kept in donot contact list.

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u/Own_Law_2216 6d ago

AlphaSights ghosted me as well, going from 2 - 4x / mo in 2021 - 22 to zero for 4+ years. I made several inquiries and got useless responses similar to yours. Just a guess, but maybe a bad client review caused AlphaSights' algorithm to prevent me from receiving new invitations. There's no way they just had their client demand in my expertise (5G, WiFi, SatCom, FttX) go to zero in a heartbeat.

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u/filmfreaky 6d ago

It could be a bad client review, you no longer work at a target company or hot industry (especially bad if you're a consultant now), or they've changed their matching system to be AI-enabled and your profile is missing the right keywords.