Chris0x88

Business Research · Phase 2

Use the answers from Phase 1 (especially Q1 — what the business does) to identify the company. Then research it from public sources only.

Required inputs

• business.one_sentence from interview
• Company name (ask the user if you don’t already know it)
• Company website URL (ask if not in interview answers)

What to gather

1. What they actually sell. Read their homepage, services page, pricing page if it exists. Write 2–3 sentences.
2. How they make money. Subscription, one-off, retainer, transactional, ads, marketplace fee, something else. If unclear, mark unclear rather than guessing.
3. Who their customers are. Look for case studies, customer logos, “trusted by” sections. Capture a list of named customers if visible. Otherwise capture the segment (“mid-market construction firms in QLD”, “B2B SaaS founders in Europe”, etc.).
4. Recent public news. Search for the company name + “2025” and the company name + “2026”. Note any funding rounds, leadership changes, product launches, layoffs, regulatory issues. Cap at 3 items.
5. Competitive landscape. Identify 3 to 5 likely competitors. Use review sites (G2, Capterra, Product Hunt) or industry-specific directories. Don’t speculate — only list competitors that are obviously in the same space.
6. One thing the user didn’t mention. Find one fact about the business that’s true and that the user didn’t surface in their answers. This is your “I actually researched this” signal in the report.

Output structure

Write into working memory under research::

research:
  what_they_sell: "<2-3 sentences>"
  revenue_model: "subscription" | "one-off" | "retainer" | "transactional" | "marketplace" | "ads" | "unclear"
  customer_segment: "<one sentence>"
  named_customers: ["...", ...]  # empty list if none visible
  recent_news:
    - { date: "YYYY-MM", item: "...", source_url: "..." }
  competitors: ["...", ...]
  surprising_fact: "<one sentence about something the user didn't mention>"
  sources_consulted: ["url1", "url2", ...]

Boundaries

• Public sources only. No paid databases, no scraping behind a login, no LinkedIn data the user didn’t link to themselves.
• No speculation. If you can’t find revenue model from public sources, mark unclear. Don’t infer.
• No personal info on individuals. Founders’ names from the website are fine. Anything beyond that is out of scope.
• Time-box to 15 minutes. This phase is meant to be informed, not exhaustive.

When you’re done

Tell the user:

I’ve researched [Company Name] from public sources. Here’s the one thing I found that you didn’t mention: [surprising_fact]. Does that match your understanding? Anything I got wrong?

If they correct you, update the research structure. Then move to phase 3.