The category, reimagined
Legacy expert networks were built for institutional research budgets. OpenIQ rebuilds the category for a faster, flatter, AI-augmented buyer.
GLG, AlphaSights, and Guidepoint defined the expert network category for institutional investors and strategy consultancies. They share three structural properties:
That model is excellent if you're a hedge fund running PI-grade diligence. It's poorly matched to a founder triaging a launch decision tonight, or an operator validating a vendor choice this week.
A legacy expert network is a firm — like GLG, AlphaSights, or Guidepoint — that maintains a roster of subject-matter experts and arranges paid consultations, typically billed per call with an annual minimum spend.
The legacy model assumes a research-team buyer with weeks of timeline and tens of thousands of dollars of annual budget. Founders, operators, and lean institutional teams increasingly need expert input on a 24-hour clock without procurement friction.
For most use cases — diligence questions, market validation, technical sanity checks, niche operator perspectives — yes. For deep, multi-week diligence projects with bespoke compliance constraints, the legacy networks still have an edge.
Practitioners opt in to topic alerts and respond asynchronously. AI handles routing, deduplication, and synthesis — so you receive a curated brief rather than three transcripts to compare yourself.