The State of Startups and Industry Analysts (SSIA) is an ongoing research programme that is designed to examine the interplay of emerging vendors in the b2b tech segment with industry analysts. The goal is to gather a holistic understanding of this rarely revealed part of the b2b playing field, the needs and practices of its actors, and to identify success patterns and trends.

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Data-driven insights for the startup ecosystem

We define “emerging” vendors as companies that have been operating for no longer than 10 years. We don’t set regional limits to the research in order to possibly spot geographic differences and derive policy recommendations for governments and startup NGOs.

The research combines scientific surveys with the analysis of publicly available data and expert interviews with practitioners.

A unique quality of the SSIA research programme is that it brings together the different perspectives from emerging vendors, investors and industry analysts, generating a 360o understanding of the matter.

It is also important that the SSIA research gathers views from both, people who have, and have no previous hands-on experience with the analyst relations function. This allows to understand the matter more holistically and identify misconceptions, perceived hurdles, etc.

SSIA 2024-2025

The current addition to the SSIA research programme examines three main questions:

  1. Which use cases do startups underpin with analysts’ insights and market impact?
  2. When along the maturity cycle should startups consider which types of analyst interactions?
  3. Which analyst firms do startups use most?

Surveys

The research is independent from industry analyst firms. All data and contact information remains confidential and is only used for the purposes of this research programme. Participants receive a copy of the research report and an invitation to a webinar that explains our findings before its broader publication.

SSIA 2022

The first SSIA study brought together 500 participants across mostly North America and Europe (equal parts) as well as a small portion from Near East, Asia and South America.

Key findings include:

  • Expectation Gap: While only 27% of startups think of buyer exposure as a key benefit from working with analysts, 79% of analysts say they work with startups specifically to recommend innovative emerging vendors to buyers.
  • 4-year Advantage: 59% of participating startups had been mentioned in analyst publications with the mean age being 7 years in business. But 19% of startups achieved analyst mentions within their first 3 years in business by engaging early and systematically.
  • Outreach Delay: While two-thirds of startups believe broad availability of their products is necessary to get access to industry analysts (often citing “series A investment”), the majority of analysts want to hear from startups at or before beta stage.
  • Bad Briefings: Industry analysts are frustrated with the quality of startups’ briefings. 69% want less marketing speak and 53% demand better proof points and data while only 25% recommend more frequent interactions. It’s quality over quantity.
  • Strategic Focus: Analysts hope to get more strategic content in startup briefings. Positioning (77%), Vision and Mission (61%) or Business Strategy (45%) rank significantly higher than e.g. Competition View (29%) or Financial Information (22%).
  • Investment: 50% of startups do not invest in analyst services but 29% still report “zero-budget” analyst relations, 19% report selective investment (below 30k) and 31% report strategic investment (more than 30k).
  • Momentum: 57% of participating startups and 63% of ecosystem participants (i.e. investors, accelerators) plan to intensify their activities with industry analysts going forward. Even 38% of analysts are keen to have more interactions with innovative startups despite much of their capacity being occupied by established vendors.
  • Other topics in the report include startups’ view of analysts’ knowledge, independence and trustworthiness, the hurdles that startups see in working with analysts, and analyst feedback on interaction effectiveness in relation to AR being led by different business functions in startups.

Resources

Support

SSIA 2022 was kindly supported, yet in no ways influenced, by

  • ARinsights, providers of the AR productivity software ARchitect
  • Spotlight AR, makers of the AR intelligence platform Spotlight Oz

Research team

The SSIA research was initiated by analyst relations experts Chris Holscher (Germany) and Robin Schaffer (USA) and is conducted with Analyst Observatory co-director Professor Neil Pollock, Head of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group at the University of Edinburgh Business School.