Issue 01 · Research
Coverage Before Process
The part of a market that is in process is the part everyone else is already working. It is also the part with the least left to decide.
The observation
In every market we cover, the population that is formally in process at any given moment is small. Searches that are advertised, briefs that are out to bid, businesses that have appointed a bank — taken together these are a thin slice of the addressable set, and they are the slice with the most competitors and the fewest open terms.
Everything that matters about an engagement is usually settled before it appears in that slice. Who is spoken to first. What the shape of the requirement is. Whether price, allocation, or alignment is the term that moves. By the time a process opens, those questions have answers, and the answers were not written by anyone who arrived with the process.
The mechanism
The rest of the market is not inert. It is eighteen to thirty-six months from a decision, and the trigger for that decision sits outside the thing you can screen for. A departure, a funding event, a capacity ceiling, a family timetable. These are invisible from a public roster or a board scan and obvious in a conversation held before they materialize.
Which means the position worth holding is a standing one: a named universe, built against a defined thesis, worked continuously rather than sampled when something shows up in market. The value is not in knowing who is available. It is in being the party already in conversation when availability changes.
What it costs
The cost is quarters of coverage with nothing to transact. That is the entire reason this does not survive being run in-house: an internal team is measured against a deployment clock, a campaign deadline, or a hiring plan, and coverage is the first line cut when a quarter is quiet. The position is abandoned precisely during the period that creates it.
Held externally, on an exclusive mandate, the quiet quarters are the product. We are not paid for volume in those quarters. We are paid to still be there when the trigger arrives.
The market in process is a queue. The market before process is a position.