Tegus vs User Intuition: Expert Opinions or Actual Customer Evidence for Deal Decisions?

Tegus has built a genuinely innovative model in the expert network space. By creating a searchable platform of 100,000+ expert interview transcripts, Tegus eliminated much of the friction in traditional expert networks like GLG and Guidepoint. Instead of waiting days for a custom expert call, PE analysts can immediately search existing transcripts for insights on a company, sector, or competitive dynamic. The self-service model is faster, often cheaper, and more scalable than legacy expert network approaches.

For market context and industry perspective, this is valuable. A PE firm evaluating a software company can search Tegus for transcripts from former executives, industry analysts, and domain experts who have discussed the company's competitive position, market dynamics, and growth potential. These expert perspectives help frame the investment thesis and identify areas for deeper diligence.

User Intuition serves a different layer of the diligence process — the customer layer. Rather than asking experts what they think about a company's customer retention, User Intuition interviews 50-200 of the company's actual customers in 48-72 hours. Each interview uses AI-moderated 5-7 level laddering to surface not just whether customers are satisfied, but why they buy, what would make them leave, how they perceive alternatives, and what drives their loyalty or frustration.

The distinction matters because expert opinions and customer evidence often tell different stories. A Tegus expert might report that a company has 'strong product-market fit based on their market position.' Meanwhile, 150 actual customer interviews on User Intuition might reveal that 30% are actively evaluating alternatives because a specific competitor launched a feature that solves a pain point the target company hasn't addressed. That customer-level evidence directly impacts deal valuation in ways that expert opinion cannot.

For commercial due diligence, the most thorough approach uses both layers: Tegus for expert market context and User Intuition for customer-level validation. But when deal teams must choose where to invest their diligence budget, the question is whether expert opinions or customer evidence better de-risks the investment.

Tegus deserves credit for pioneering the platform-first model in expert networks. Traditional expert networks like GLG and Guidepoint operate on a call-by-call basis — you request an expert, wait for a match, conduct the call, and the intelligence lives in your notes. Tegus recognized that every expert call generates a transcript, and those transcripts become more valuable when they're searchable, indexed, and accessible to the entire firm. The result is a compounding knowledge base where each new expert call adds to the institutional library.

User Intuition's Intelligence Hub follows a similar philosophy applied to customer intelligence. Every AI-moderated customer interview is automatically transcribed, analyzed, and indexed in a searchable hub. As a PE firm conducts customer diligence across multiple deals, the Intelligence Hub accumulates customer evidence that can be searched, compared, and cross-referenced. A firm evaluating its fifth SaaS investment can search across all previous customer interviews to identify patterns in churn drivers, competitive dynamics, and customer satisfaction across their portfolio.

The platform models share important principles: both value institutional knowledge over one-off research, both make historical intelligence searchable and accessible, and both grow more valuable with use. Where they diverge is in what the searchable library actually contains.

Tegus transcripts contain expert opinions. When you search for 'customer retention' in Tegus, you find industry experts and former executives sharing their perspectives on a company's retention dynamics. These perspectives are informed and often insightful, but they are secondhand — the expert is interpreting customer behavior based on their professional experience, not reporting their own experience as a customer.

User Intuition's Intelligence Hub contains direct customer evidence. When you search for 'customer retention,' you find actual customers describing their own renewal decisions, satisfaction levels, competitive alternatives they've considered, and the specific factors that keep them paying — or drive them away. This is primary evidence, traceable to individual customers, with the depth that 5-7 level laddering produces.

For a PE firm building institutional knowledge about customer dynamics across their portfolio, the question is whose voice you want compounding in your knowledge base: industry experts opining on customers, or the customers themselves.

Reliability in due diligence depends on the question being asked. For questions about market structure, regulatory dynamics, or industry trends, expert opinions are well-suited — these are topics where professional experience and pattern recognition provide genuine insight. A former VP of Sales at a competitor can offer perspective on competitive dynamics that no customer interview would capture.

For questions about customer behavior — retention, satisfaction, willingness to pay, competitive switching, growth potential — direct customer evidence is structurally more reliable than expert opinion for a straightforward reason: customers know their own behavior and intentions better than anyone observing from the outside.

Consider a specific example: a PE firm wants to understand whether a target company's enterprise customers are likely to expand their contracts. A Tegus expert — perhaps a former executive at the target or a competitor — might say: 'Based on my experience, their enterprise customers are sticky because switching costs are high.' This is an informed opinion, but it's based on the expert's mental model, which may be outdated or influenced by their own professional context.

User Intuition interviews 100 actual enterprise customers of the target company. The results reveal that 65% plan to expand, 20% plan to maintain current spend, and 15% are actively evaluating alternatives. Among those evaluating alternatives, the top driver isn't price or features — it's frustration with the target's customer support response times. This is quantifiable, specific, and directly actionable for both deal valuation and post-acquisition planning.

The reliability advantage of direct customer evidence is particularly important for the metrics PE firms care most about: customer retention and churn risk, net revenue retention and expansion potential, competitive positioning and switching dynamics, NPS and customer satisfaction trends, and growth thesis validation. These are all questions about customer behavior, and the most reliable source for customer behavior data is the customers themselves.

That said, Tegus experts provide context that customer interviews cannot. An industry expert can explain why a market is consolidating, what regulatory changes are coming, or how a technology shift will reshape competitive dynamics. This context helps interpret customer evidence and frame the broader investment thesis. The most reliable diligence combines both: expert context from Tegus and customer evidence from User Intuition.

Tegus's pricing model was a deliberate departure from traditional expert networks. Where GLG and Guidepoint charge $500-$1,500+ per expert call, Tegus offers subscription-based platform access that includes the searchable transcript library and expert calls at meaningfully lower per-call costs. For PE firms that conduct high volumes of expert calls, this subscription model offers better economics and more predictable spend.

The subscription model also means firms can access existing transcripts without incremental cost — a major advantage for preliminary research and thesis development. An analyst can search hundreds of transcripts across a sector before deciding which topics merit custom expert calls. This 'search first, call second' approach is more efficient than the traditional model of booking expert calls for every question.

User Intuition uses a per-study pricing model. Each customer interview costs $20, and full studies typically range from $2K to $15K depending on the number of interviews (50-200), recruitment complexity, and analysis requirements. There is no subscription fee, no per-user licensing, and no minimum commitment. A PE firm can run one customer diligence study on a single deal without any ongoing cost obligation.

The pricing comparison reveals different economic structures:

• Tegus: Fixed subscription cost provides access to the full transcript library and lower per-call rates. Economics improve with volume — the more you use the platform, the lower your effective cost per insight. Best suited for firms with high ongoing research volume.
• User Intuition: Variable per-study cost with no fixed commitment. A 100-interview customer diligence study at $20/interview costs $2,000 for the interviews, plus analysis and recruitment. Best suited for firms that want customer evidence on specific deals without ongoing subscription costs.

For a PE firm evaluating a potential acquisition, the practical cost comparison might look like: accessing relevant Tegus expert transcripts is included in their existing subscription, while a custom expert call program costs incrementally. A User Intuition commercial due diligence study with 150 customer interviews would typically cost $3K-$10K depending on recruitment complexity and deliverable requirements.

Both pricing models are more accessible than traditional alternatives. Tegus is cheaper than GLG/Guidepoint for expert calls. User Intuition is dramatically cheaper than commissioning a management consulting firm or traditional research agency to conduct customer interviews, which typically costs $50K-$200K+ and takes 4-8 weeks.

Speed is critical in PE due diligence, and both platforms have optimized for it in different ways.

Tegus's speed advantage lies in the existing transcript library. For any company or sector with prior coverage, an analyst can immediately search and read expert perspectives without waiting for custom research. This is Tegus's most compelling speed differentiator over traditional expert networks — instead of waiting days or weeks for a custom expert call, you can access relevant transcripts in minutes.

However, this speed advantage only applies to topics already covered in the transcript library. For a new target company or a specific diligence question not addressed in existing transcripts, Tegus requires commissioning custom expert calls. This process — identifying experts, scheduling calls, conducting interviews — typically takes 1-2 weeks, similar to traditional expert networks. For hot deals with compressed timelines, this lag can be challenging.

User Intuition is designed specifically for deal-speed primary research. The platform's recruitment engine draws from a 4M+ global panel to independently identify and recruit actual customers of a target company. AI-moderated interviews run asynchronously — customers complete them on their own schedule — which means 50-200 interviews can be conducted simultaneously rather than sequentially. The typical timeline is 48-72 hours from study launch to complete results.

This speed comes with depth. Each customer interview runs 30+ minutes with 5-7 levels of laddering, producing rich qualitative evidence — not surface-level survey responses. Results stream in real-time as interviews complete, so deal teams can begin reviewing customer evidence within hours of launch rather than waiting for a final report.

For the most common diligence scenario — a PE firm has 2-4 weeks to evaluate a target — the practical comparison is:

• Tegus: Immediate access to any existing expert transcripts on the target. Custom expert calls available in 1-2 weeks for proprietary questions. Total expert program might produce 10-20 expert conversations over the diligence period.
• User Intuition: 150 customer interviews completed within 48-72 hours of launch. Full analysis with IC-memo-ready deliverables available within the first week. Remaining diligence time available for follow-up studies or deeper analysis of specific customer segments.

The speed difference is most pronounced for customer-specific evidence. If a deal team needs to understand customer retention risk before an IC meeting next week, User Intuition can deliver 150 customer perspectives in time. A custom Tegus expert program on the same timeline would likely produce a handful of expert opinions rather than direct customer evidence.

Customer retention and churn risk are among the most deal-critical variables in PE due diligence, particularly for recurring revenue businesses. The quality of retention evidence directly impacts valuation, deal structure, and post-acquisition strategy. This is where the difference between expert opinion and customer evidence is most consequential.

A Tegus expert — perhaps a former executive at the target company or a competitor — might offer perspectives like: 'Their retention is strong because they have high switching costs' or 'I've seen some churn in the mid-market segment because their pricing has gotten aggressive.' These are informed opinions based on professional experience, and they provide useful directional signal. But they are secondhand interpretations of customer behavior, not direct evidence.

User Intuition interviews the actual customers whose retention is being evaluated. A typical commercial due diligence study for retention assessment might interview 150 current customers across segments. The AI-moderated conversations with 5-7 level laddering produce evidence including:

• Retention likelihood: What percentage of customers plan to renew, expand, maintain, or leave — based on their own stated intentions
• Churn drivers: The specific factors that put customers at risk — not expert speculation, but customers describing their own frustrations, alternatives they're evaluating, and what would trigger a switch
• Switching barriers: Whether retention is driven by genuine satisfaction or simply by high switching costs — a critical distinction for long-term value
• Competitive threats: Which competitors customers are actually considering and why, with specific feature and value comparisons from the customer's perspective
• Expansion potential: Whether customers plan to increase spend, what would drive expansion, and what's preventing them from buying more today
• NPS and satisfaction: Not just a score, but the qualitative reasoning behind it — why promoters promote and why detractors detract

This evidence is quantifiable, segmentable, and directly actionable. A deal team can present to their investment committee: '68% of customers report high likelihood to renew. Among the 15% at risk, the primary driver is dissatisfaction with customer support — a fixable post-acquisition issue. The 17% considering alternatives cite Competitor X's new analytics feature, which represents a $2M development investment to match.' That level of specificity comes from talking to customers, not from expert opinion.

Tegus experts add valuable context — they can explain market-level trends, competitive dynamics, and structural factors that affect retention across a sector. But for the specific, deal-critical question of 'Will this company's customers stay?' the customers themselves are the most authoritative source.

Growth assumptions are central to PE deal models, and they're also where the gap between expert opinion and customer evidence can be most expensive. Overestimating growth based on expert optimism or underestimating it by missing customer expansion signals can materially impact returns.

Tegus experts provide valuable growth-related perspectives at the market level. An industry expert can assess total addressable market size, competitive intensity, regulatory tailwinds or headwinds, and technology trends that might accelerate or constrain growth. A former executive at the target company can speak to their go-to-market strategy, sales efficiency, and market positioning. These perspectives help frame the growth opportunity and identify structural factors that affect achievability.

User Intuition provides growth evidence at the customer level — the layer where growth assumptions ultimately prove out or fail. A customer diligence study focused on growth validation might explore:

• Expansion intent: What percentage of current customers plan to increase spend, and by how much — based on their own budgeting and planning, not expert projection
• Upsell receptivity: How customers respond to the target's premium offerings, new products, or expanded use cases — specific willingness-to-pay evidence
• Cross-sell opportunity: Which adjacent needs customers have that the target could serve, and whether they'd trust the target to expand into those areas
• Referral potential: Whether satisfied customers actively recommend the product, and to whom — organic growth signal from the customer base
• Competitive headroom: How much of their spend in the category goes to the target versus competitors, and what would shift that allocation
• Growth constraints: What's preventing customers from buying more today — implementation friction, budget limitations, feature gaps, or competitive alternatives

The combination is powerful. Tegus might reveal that a market expert estimates 15% annual growth potential for the category. User Intuition interviews with 150 customers reveal that 40% plan to expand their contracts, with average planned increases of 25% — but 20% of those expansions are contingent on a specific product improvement the target hasn't yet delivered. That customer-level specificity transforms a market-level growth assumption into an evidence-based projection with identified risks and action items.

For commercial due diligence focused on growth validation, customer evidence from User Intuition provides the ground truth that expert market analysis from Tegus helps contextualize. Together, they give deal teams confidence in their growth models. Separately, expert opinion provides directional guidance while customer evidence provides the specific, quantifiable data that IC committees increasingly expect.

Tegus and User Intuition are naturally complementary because they address different layers of the due diligence process with different types of evidence.

A practical combined workflow for PE commercial due diligence might look like:

• Week 1 — Thesis framing with Tegus: Search the Tegus transcript library for existing expert perspectives on the target company, its market, and competitive dynamics. Identify key themes, risks, and opportunities that experts have highlighted. Commission custom expert calls on specific topics where the transcript library lacks coverage.
• Week 1 — Customer evidence with User Intuition: Simultaneously launch a customer diligence study on User Intuition. Interview 150 actual customers of the target company across key segments. Within 48-72 hours, have direct customer evidence on retention risk, satisfaction, competitive positioning, growth potential, and pricing perception.
• Week 2 — Synthesis: Compare expert perspectives from Tegus with customer evidence from User Intuition. Where do experts and customers agree? Where do they diverge? Divergences are often the most valuable findings — they reveal where the market narrative doesn't match customer reality.
• Week 2-3 — Deep dives: Use Tegus for follow-up expert calls on specific themes that emerged from customer interviews. Use User Intuition for targeted follow-up studies on customer segments or issues that need deeper exploration.
• IC preparation: Present both layers in the investment memo: expert market context from Tegus and customer-level evidence from User Intuition. IC committees increasingly expect both — the market story and the customer proof.

The combination is particularly powerful when expert opinion and customer evidence tell different stories. For example:

• Tegus experts might describe the target's market position as 'dominant with limited competitive threat.' User Intuition customers might reveal that a new competitor has gained significant mindshare in the mid-market segment — a risk not yet visible to industry observers.
• Tegus experts might flag customer concentration risk based on the target's revenue mix. User Intuition interviews with those large customers might reveal they're deeply embedded and expanding — reducing the actual risk below what expert analysis suggests.

Both platforms' searchable knowledge bases also compound in different ways for the firm. Tegus builds a library of expert perspectives across sectors and companies. User Intuition's Intelligence Hub builds a library of customer evidence across portfolio companies and deal targets. Over time, the firm develops institutional knowledge at both the expert and customer layers.

PE firms, hedge funds, and asset managers operate under strict compliance requirements, and both Tegus and User Intuition have built their platforms with institutional security expectations in mind.

Tegus's compliance framework is specifically designed for investment firm workflows. The platform includes compliance screening for expert calls to help firms manage material non-public information (MNPI) risk — a critical concern for investment professionals. Tegus has invested in compliance controls that allow firms' compliance teams to monitor and approve expert interactions, track information sources, and maintain audit trails.

User Intuition's security and compliance framework includes:

• ISO 27001 certification: International standard for information security management systems
• GDPR compliance: Full compliance with European data protection regulations, critical for cross-border deal diligence
• HIPAA compliance: Healthcare data protection compliance for PE firms evaluating healthcare targets
• SOC 2 Type II: Currently in progress — the gold standard for SaaS security and data handling
• Participant anonymization: Customer identities can be protected while still providing rich qualitative evidence
• Data governance: Controls for data retention, access management, and study-level permissions
• Independent recruitment: Customer participants are recruited independently from the 4M+ panel, which avoids the need to request customer lists from the target company — important for confidential diligence processes

The MNPI considerations differ between the two platforms. Tegus manages MNPI risk in the context of expert calls — ensuring experts don't share material non-public information about public companies. User Intuition manages data sensitivity in the context of customer interviews — ensuring customer feedback is collected, stored, and analyzed with appropriate protections, and that customer identities are handled according to firm requirements.

For PE firms conducting commercial due diligence, User Intuition's independent recruitment capability is a notable security advantage. The platform can recruit customers of a target company from its 4M+ panel without the target or its customers knowing that a diligence process is underway. This preserves deal confidentiality while still producing rich customer evidence.