How 7wData makes money

Brands pay for attention. Sponsorship of our newsletters, enhanced or featured placement in our directories, presence at our surfaces. This is a visibility and awareness business. It buys reach to an audience. Details and pricing are on our sponsor page.

Decision-makers pay for judgment. A Decision Brief, a Deep Dive, a Portfolio Watch, a Deck Screen. This is a research business. It buys an answer with its evidence attached, and the answer is whatever the record supports.

What sponsorship buys

A labelled placement in front of our audience.
Enhanced or featured presentation of a company already listed in our directories.
Presence at surfaces we operate.

That is the complete list.

What sponsorship cannot buy

A grade. Every claim in our research carries an evidence grade, and the grade follows the source, not the relationship.
A verdict, a rating, a recommendation, or a favourable read.
A place in our intelligence work, or removal from it.
Directory validation. Paying changes how a listing is presented. It never changes whether the company passed the checks, which are the same for every company and reviewed by a person before anything publishes.
Advance sight of research about them, or the right to review, edit, approve or delay it.
Silence. Becoming a sponsor does not take a company out of our coverage. If it did, sponsorship would be a way to buy invisibility, which would be worse than buying praise.

The asymmetry that makes this hold

The strongest thing we can tell you is not a promise. It is a structure.

The person paying for judgment is never the person being judged. A Decision Brief is bought by an investor, a strategist or an acquirer who is deciding about a company. It is not bought by that company. So the money for our research comes from the party who needs the read to be accurate, not from the party who would prefer it to be flattering.

That is why the firewall is not resting on our good character. Our research customer is the one person in the transaction with a direct interest in us being right.

When the two sides touch

Sometimes a company we are examining is also a current sponsor. We do not avoid those companies, and we do not soften what we find. We disclose it.

If a company covered in a Brief, Deep Dive, Portfolio Watch or Deck Screen is a current sponsor, that is stated on page one of the document. Not in a footnote. On page one, where the reader cannot miss it before reading our conclusions.

We keep the right to write about any company as a neutral observer, sponsor or not. That right is the product. Without it there is nothing to sell.

What we do not take

We do not hold equity, options, advisory shares, referral fees or success fees in any company we examine. Our research is paid for in cash, by the party making the decision, once. If we ever have a financial interest in a company appearing in our work, that is stated on page one alongside any sponsorship disclosure.

How to hold us to this

Sponsored material is always labelled. Every time, on both sites and in both newsletters.
Our research carries a correction record. When we get something wrong, the correction is published with the document, not quietly edited.
If you think a judgment of ours was influenced by a commercial relationship, write to us and say so. We will answer, and if we were wrong we will publish the correction.

Brands can buy visibility with us. Nobody can buy a grade.

How 7wData makes money, and what is never for sale