Research in Practice​

 

Anderson Williams: So, let's bring that down to a real practical.

 

I know that you've been working recently. with an investment team here on some industry research without using any specific names or anything like that. Can you just walk us through what that partnership looks like? What was the goal? What are the process? How do you work with them? Just to take us through a real-world example of where your support can come in early when we're evaluating an industry, for example.

 

Caitlin Zager: So, the investment team was looking at an industry that they were very excited about. This was within healthcare. And they wanted to understand what are the referral pathways within that industry and how do people find themselves within this practice type. And so, they wanted to understand who is doing the referring into this practice type.

 

And is there a risk that maybe like the referring doctors would say, you know, I can handle this. I don't need to refer you. I can do it myself, which is always a real risk, I think. So, they had those kind of clear questions across the board. And so, what we did was we created a quantitative survey of 100 physicians, 50 who were referring and 50 who were doing it themselves.

 

And we asked them questions about their attitude, their awareness of their practices of medicine, and then how they felt about this referral pathway, whether they were referring or not. And what it really was helpful with was it helped us understand this provider set wasn't actually the risk. The ones who are referring are referring happily to a different provider set and they're only looking at a small subset of the population.

 

So, the rest of the population of patients, they're not being treated by those physicians, and they're not being treated by the referral pathway. So that group is really safe for where we wanted to help. So, it was nice to kind of help make sure that we knew who the right competition was, but then it also opened our eyes to understanding there's a whole nother group over here that we need to be aware of.

 

Anderson Williams: I think what's interesting about that, you're asking something really specific about referral patterns to understand what is kind of an emerging industry where there's not a lot of broad swath historical industry trends to be spoken to. So, sort of starting from the ground up by just saying, you know, brass tacks, basic, where does the business get generated kind of research seems like an important distinction as well.

 

Like in an emerging market, there's not a lot of market research,

 

Caitlin Zager: Yes!

 

Anderson Williams: Right? And you can't learn about that market as it's emerging, unless you're talking to and with the people in the market.

 

Caitlin Zager: Exactly.

 

Anderson Williams: Whether they even recognize they're developing the market or not, you are asking about their perceptions, their reactions, their feelings about different things. That is defining the market at that stage.

 

Caitlin Zager: Exactly, and the other piece of it, I think, that is really interesting is if you didn't want to do the primary research in this set, you could do secondary research by looking at guidelines, by looking at kind of published practices. And that's where the team started.

 

And unfortunately, there wasn't anything there. And so, the secondary research is always a great place to start that it helps inform the primary research. You don't want to start with the primary without having any information in the background.

 

Anderson Williams: So that's on the early end of identifying a market that we're interested in investing in.

 

And so, then we go through the process of identifying we like that market, we partner with some businesses, what we call planting, growing, and harvesting stages of the business while they're a part of Shore.

 

Can you talk about how research evolves or can have different meaning along the different eras of a business?

 

Caitlin Zager: Yeah, if you think about it in those three different kind of distinct life phases, if you look at planting, some of the pieces that are really helpful are understanding the market. So, understanding, you know, what's your competitive set? What are your ideal geographies? What are your customers doing? What are they thinking? Where are they going?

 

And that is where you can get some great secondary research if the market's already developed or you can get some great primary research by talking to customers, by talking to people who decided not to be your customers and working together in that. capacity. We're really helping answer the question of what does that world look like?

 

And that also I think then can help inform what are the other companies that need to join that platform? Where are the gaps that you have in what you've got already in the platform and where do you need to go find someone else who's already doing those things well to plug in to create a better offering for your customers?

 

Anderson Williams: So, like, that idea of ancillary supports or economies of scale or what those gaps are for that end customer that will give us a better position early in that life cycle.

 

Caitlin Zager: Exactly.

 

Anderson Williams: So, what about when you're growing? How do you think about contributing or offering research that's insightful and meaningful during the growth process?

 

Caitlin Zager: Well, I think you can't do everything all at once. So, a really helpful piece of research for growing is benchmarking. And so how can you see what the right kind of places are to kind of hold up the company and see where you're maybe falling short and where you're excelling. So, you can help understand where to spend your time.

 

I think the other piece of it is industry trends and making sure that you're still on the right track. So many of these industries change so quickly. And so how can you make sure that the trends that you've discovered for the planting phase are still valid or still right for the growing phase.

 

And then I think finally just making sure that you understand how you're meeting the needs of your customers and has that changed as you've gotten bigger? And are there any other spots where maybe you are not meeting the needs of those customers? And I think keeping the customer in mind is really the best way to think about how you want to use research.

 

Anderson Williams: And what about on that tail end of the process where a company is built? It's starting to really scale and optimize and systematize and then and our model begins to start thinking about how we exit that company, that harvesting stage. What does it look like to think about research at that stage?

 

Caitlin Zager: I love this stage the most.

 

I think it's really exciting because you really can understand you've got a full set of customers. You can see kind of from their insights, what's going well, what's going poorly, where they're going in the market. So, you can see some, again, benchmarking there, but then really looking at. What is your value proposition within that overall market?

 

And how can you make sure that you're separating this company out to be attractive for the next group and to make sure that they see the value of what you've put together? And so, so much of that is looking at the competitive set. So much of that is looking at where the industry is going and how you're best positioned.

 

And so, it's a really nice way to kind of think about organic growth.

 

Anderson Williams: And I got to believe that there's an opportunity there in some cases to even have insights to the market and your differentiation to help educate the potential buyer on the other side. They're going to have their set of research undoubtedly, but because you have a customer base, you could be talking to, and you have patterns of your business and referral patterns and things like that, that they might not have secondary access to.

 

You may have primary research that actually helps you tell your story better than they could otherwise understand, I would imagine.

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Caitlin Zager: And I think nothing is more attractive than a company that knows their customers. And so, if you know your customers well and you know exactly how you're serving their needs, that's a great story to tell.

 

I think it goes back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier about the nice thing about doing research in this space is that it's a process. It's iterative along the way. It's not a discrete product. So, there's not a place where it makes sense to just plug in the research because I think it should be part of the ongoing discussions and the ongoing thinkings of all these companies that we're working with.

 

As kind of a best case, you would come into the research with an open mind and kind of asking questions to understand and like seeking to understand what's going on with your customers, what's going on with the market, what's going on with the right decision there. Sometimes I think people come into it, instead they've got a decision that they think is right and they're kind of seeking the confirmatory research, it kind of feeds into that confirmation bias and then that's tough because then you might get research back that doesn't align with what you've started, and it puts you in a really difficult position. So, the best research is research that's done early and done often.