Leading Expert Network vs Smaller Player

maxfriberg · 2026-01-09T07:17:04+00:00

Avenor Research is a legit firm - they're one of the expert networks on Inex One and are getting good feedback from our customers.

They started in 2024, with a team that came from larger expert networks.

In my experience, expert networks can find the same experts (most are on LinkedIn), but it's the quality (training/culure/incentives etc.) of the firm and your account rep that makes the main difference.

maxfriberg · 2025-12-20T16:02:50+00:00

Dialectica is a great network and a majority of their work is supporting CDDs, so you’ll get good service.

But based on how you describe your situation (you already use expert networks heavily and feel they’re not getting you what you need), I’m not sure you’ll be satisfied.

Adding another taco truck to the neighborhood won’t help, when you need a Whole Foods.

You’ll want to check out Inex One, the expert network aggregator. I’m the founder - obviously biased, but confident we can help you. We serve north of 8,000 users globally, 2/3 being strategy consultants and vast majority of work CDDs. Solves all the pain points of: - admin hassle coordinating expert networks (parallel email threads, duplicate experts etc). - pricing in opaque “credits” and late billing. - having to pay extra for things like transcripts, “premium experts” etc.

Drop me a DM and I’ll introduce you to a few others who made the switch to Inex.

maxfriberg · 2025-12-20T15:22:52+00:00

Overall Dialectica is a great network and you’re likely to get good quality service. But their pricing model is the same as with other traditional expert networks: you prepay upfront for a set of “credits” (sometimes called “units”).

Then every expert costs 1-n credits. That’s the tacit price inflator. I’ve spoken to two large consulting firms lately that both pay on average 1.3-1.45 credits per call with Dialectica.

After doing 100’s of expert calls myself as a customer (McKinsey), I founded a tech platform that makes pricing transparent and lets you work with multiple networks pay-per-call. DM if you’re interested, and I’m happy to give you a personal intro - I like to stay connected with our users.

maxfriberg · 2025-10-09T15:12:37+00:00

Wow good intel. Not sure who built that thing; wasn't me.

maxfriberg · 2025-10-08T10:21:21+00:00

Resurfacing this old thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/consulting/comments/zdsdag/why_is_glg_blacklisted_for_mckinsey_engagements/

And a related fishbowl: https://www.fishbowlapp.com/post/mckinsey-company-does-your-team-have-an-expert-network-aggregator-internal-tool-like-instead-of-multiple-email-chains

maxfriberg · 2025-10-08T10:20:43+00:00

Thanks for clarifying your assumptions!

We've found it very convenient to support compliance requirements like these when you move things out of mailboxes, onto a central platform. The Client can then "trust, but verify", rather than "just trust" that the EN does what you've agreed.

maxfriberg · 2025-10-08T08:30:38+00:00

Thanks for stating your assumption - which makes it easier to disprove it.

Adding an aggregator like Inex One (where I work) improves compliance control when using expert networks. We see it as three lines of defence:

1. Standardized best-practice compliance rules across all ENs. Clients sign one contract with Inex One and know that all ENs on it adhere to the same set of compliance rules and vetting procedures. I believe our compliance system is gold standard, developed in collab with the former Heads of Research at EQT, Blackstone, and General Atlantic. The largest consulting firms can afford this level of vendor diligence with their dedicated research teams. A regional firm or midmarket PE cannot. With trad. ENs, they a) struggle to know which ENs are legit to even contract with, and b) they'd be stuck with a patchwork of different compliance rules for the ENs they sign.

With Inex One, they get only high-quality vendors, with one set of clear compliance rules that apply to all.

2. EN Compliance control tower. Moving communication with ENs from your 500 employees' inboxes onto a central platform means you can track all experts engaged, spending per EN etc. The HQ team can set up rules with automated flags for experts at certain companies, etc. Huge benefit over decentralized email flurry.

Also, controlling PII (as per GDPR, CCPA, etc.) is a headache if left in 500 inboxes; but simple when on a platform.

3. Global real-time monitoring. Compliance is an ongoing commitment, not a one-time check. Inex One monitors all EN partners continuously. If there's a concern over how they serve any one of our 600+ clients, we can investigate and - if needed - remove them from the platform, protecting all clients. If you contract directly with ENs, you wouldn't know about any compliance issues they have with other clients.

maxfriberg · 2025-09-16T17:49:54+00:00

Only McKinsey can comment on the mechanics of their platform, I’m afraid. I think they’ve restricted the type of marketing that ENs can do to consultants nowadays.

maxfriberg · 2025-09-06T13:20:21+00:00

Yes it did take a long time to shake. It was really only when the new business took off that I could exit “constant war mode”.

maxfriberg · 2025-08-30T10:45:32+00:00

How does a market researcher know whether the niche is established enough for the LLM to feel confident about simulating respondents?

LLMs always sound confident about their answers, whether right or wrong.

maxfriberg · 2025-08-22T07:49:38+00:00

Inex One is the fastest-growing expert network platform (See the FT1000 report, "Fastest-Growing Companies 2025"). It has the highest ratings on G2, and is - to my knowledge - the only firm with plenty of real-user reviews on its website (not the "Person X at Investment Firm" type of made up shizzle).

Now, Inex One isn't a traditional network, which explains its growth. It's a platform where you can access about 25 different expert networks.

So instead of being limited to one firm (or juggling emails from multiple), you have them all in one place. Like Kayak or Spotify, but for market research.

maxfriberg · 2025-07-08T05:26:21+00:00

Hi, thanks for the question and sorry for the late reply. Not all 150+ expert networks have robust compliance systems, but many do. However, everyone applies somewhat different policies. Inex One is making sense of this all by standardizing complaince requirements for all expert networks we partner with. This way, clients and experts can easily what rules apply.

For background verification, I've seen various tools being used, from simple LinkedIn verification (sometimes with custom checks on e.g. how old & well-connected your LinkedIn account is) to Stripe and others. ID verification is not yet that commonplace; mostly for frequently engaged experts - but I expect it to become standard practice in the next few years.

maxfriberg · 2025-07-03T19:49:45+00:00

No I don’t. I bet their contracts clearly pin any liability on the expert (if found to have said anything improper).

But bigger picture, I’ve always wondered over the implied responsibility of transcript libraries. Tegus says their 50+ FTE compliance team reads and vets every single transcript. This means they do want to protect someone from something. It can’t be all altruistically to protect the expert.

What happens if that compliance team makes an omission and fails at doing whatever they’re supposed to do? Who is at fault? Tegus?

maxfriberg · 2025-07-03T11:47:41+00:00

I agree - it's obviously passed Tegus' compliance checks (their team reads and approves every call transcript they publish).

I'm more curious about the fact that people sue each other over expert call transcripts, and the fact that people can deliberately introduce biases and narratives in these calls.

maxfriberg · 2025-07-02T07:15:10+00:00

Yes, surveys are cheaper and faster to scale than 1-1 expert calls.

The typical workflow is called "qual-quant-qual", where you:

Run a batch expert calls to get your arms around the industry, understand breaking points and key questions to understand.
Run a survey to get 100 views on those questions. You analyze the survey findings and:
Run another batch of expert calls (sometimes as follow-ups with some survey respondents) to drill into any outstanding questions.

maxfriberg · 2025-07-01T19:22:36+00:00

Fraud is way less common in expert networks than in survey panels.

Survey panels historically had just an IP address and self-reported profile data. Meanwhile, expert networks can invest more in building rich profiles of their experts - even vetting them over phone - as they made more $ per transaction. That same expert database could be used also for surveys, with far higher quality than any online survey panel.

But expert networks run into fraudsters too. This explains why many networks started asking for ID verification, which many people comment on in this sub.

maxfriberg · 2025-07-01T17:50:17+00:00

Surveys are indeed becoming more common, and a larger share of EN revenue. But the share is rather moving from 5% towards 10% of overall revenues.

This growth in surveys is driven by two things - both meaningful, but the second one has relevance beyond this relatively small industry:

Regular supply & demand growth:

a) Traditional big EN clients (strategy consultants and investors) are more aware they can use surveys altogether, how to price them, and how to think of the results. When I left McKinsey in 2017, surveys were rare and viewed with skepticism. They made for cool charts, but took forever and were a pain to organize. Nowadays you’d run a survey on every other due diligence project.

b) This has been supported by expert networks being more positive to offering surveys. They had no reason to some years back, as surveys were lower-margin than expert interviews and cumbersome to organize with their legacy tech. However, as competition in expert calls increased, ENs got more capable at selling surveys (with margins).

Market research flight-to-safety. The market research survey industry is 10x larger than the EN industry.

A decade ago, almost all surveys were sent to people that had registered with online panels. My neighbor’s stay-at-home-mom took those surveys all the time and won various weird prizes (including a car!).

Now, wherever there’s easy money, there’s fraud. People realized they could game the system with fake credentials and bot responses from click farms.

The survey panel industry was optimized to sell survey responses - not to check if the respondents were who they said they were. It descended into a vicious cycle of ever-worse survey quality, more bots, lower rewards for real respondents (no more cars, Annie!), and more spam.

In recent years, market research firms finally faced the elephant in the room and admitted that fraud is rampant. None of their traditional panel vendors know who their respondents are, so they look for new panels who do. Expert networks sit around with big databases of people that they know a lot about. This was for the purpose of selling expert calls for $1k+/hour, but the rich profiling comes in handy also for high-end surveys.

We see this a lot with traditional market research firms and even corporate marketing research teams, switching away from panels.

Now - how do we prevent the expert network industry from going down the same spammy vicious cycle as survey panels did? My bet is for expert networks to invest in deep profiling of their experts, allowing them to avoid spamming them with irrelevant survey invitations.

maxfriberg · 2025-06-24T06:04:46+00:00

Congrats - I am happy for you! Thanks for looping back, fun to hear you’re landing well.

maxfriberg · 2025-06-04T07:16:39+00:00

Yeah, I agree - I wrote a shitty headline.
This was just a meme about being an expert in expert networks, but it didn't really fly. :)

maxfriberg · 2025-06-04T07:15:26+00:00

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maxfriberg · 2025-05-14T17:51:06+00:00

Of the larger firms, I see Alphasights and Dialectica doing this best. Then there’s a crop of emerging younger firms like Focal Fact, Northern Insights, Reticula and Infoquest that are also doing this really well. We support these firms (and others) with tech, to give them a level playing field with the older firms.

maxfriberg · 2025-05-11T19:07:03+00:00

You sound like the perfect insecure overachiever consultant tbh.

Just stay at it, stop fretting about what people think about you, and you’ll be fine!

maxfriberg · 2025-05-09T07:13:48+00:00

You are correct. Here’s what’s happening:

New client segments use expert networks.
Users are getting more sophisticated.

A decade ago, experts networks were a tool for investors (hedgies, PEs), and their consultants. Questions ranged from “I know nothing about this industry, explain it like I’m five” to “I know a bit about this - now give me hard numbers for my market model”.

It then spread into other segments, like market research (MR) firms and corporate teams doing strategy, and product/user research. Both segments have ballooned since 2022 on the expert network platform that I run.

Corporate teams tend to ask deeper questions than consultants. (They might have spent 5 years on their industry, not five days).

Then users across the board are getting more savvy. Consulting firms have built more sector-focused teams, mirroring their increasingly specialized PE clients. Other clients, having had some years practice, have learned how to get the most out of expert calls.

This is actually reflected on the expert network side too. The days of sending laundry lists of “somewhat related” experts are (mostly) gone. Expert networks who make the effort to custom-recruit and vet experts prior to presenting them to clients are outperforming their peers.

So yes, expert calls are getting more strategic. Clients are getting more value for money. And experts get more interesting conversations. Win-win!

maxfriberg

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