Coleman Research
Coleman Research is a medium-sized expert network founded in 2003. It operates a standard expert network model and focuses on buy-side firms. In June 2020, the company had 200+ employees working across 7 offices in New York, Raleigh, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong.
Coleman Research has a network of 250 000+ expert advisors, more than half of which are C-level executives and Managing Directors.
Coleman Research milestones
The founder of Coleman Research has a background at Multex, a financial information service launched in the dot-com wave of 1999. He shares this background with the founder at Ridgetop Research.
In 2017, some Coleman employees left to set up the ProSapient expert network.
In August 2021, VisasQ acquired Coleman Research for $102m. At the time, Coleman had more than twice the revenues of VisasQ. The combined entity has a strong presence in Japan and the US.
Main services offered:
1-on-1 consultations (phone interviews, meetings, conferences and placements)
35+ weekly Hosted Events (webinars and roundtables featuring senior experts hosted by Coleman analysts)
Expert surveys
Expert Relationship Management (see below)
Expert Relationship Management system
The company offers a technical platform for other firms to lease. The offering has evolved over time.
In November 2018, Coleman Research announced that they would launch a platform for aggregating analyst access and expert network services.
In June 2019, the company published a post on privacy legislation (e.g. GDPR). The post acknowledges the challenges around privacy legislation that Inex One had pointed out in a series of posts.
In July 2019, Coleman’s long-standing CTO left the firm. A new Chairman joined to drive tech strategy.
In October 2019, the company rebranded its Expert Management System as an Expert Relationship Management (ERM) platform. The platform is aimed at companies operating their own expert network.
Coleman faced a strategic dilemma between investing in its profitable expert network services, and developing an EMS that risks cannibalizing its core expert network business. The pivot towards serving expert networks seems cleaner for handling conflicts of interest. Whichever the outcome, we are excited about their move towards aggregation.
Expert Management Systems create transparency and efficiency in the industry. Therefore, they are a logical next step in the history of expert networks. In addition, they’re valuable to the users – here’s how a bank saved >40% on expert network costs by using the Inex One EMS.
Coleman Research featured in our expert network benchmarking from June-July 2018. We identified Coleman as a regional champion in our review of the 2019 expert network market size.
In January 2023, Coleman dropped its longtime red logo for a new visual identity, co-branding with its parent company VisasQ.
