Tegus Expert Network
Tegus is an expert network based in Chicago, where it relocated from San Francisco in 2018. It was started in 2016 by two brothers with backgrounds in finance and at Alphasights, an expert network.
Looking to use an expert network like Tegus? Try these resources:
The history of Tegus
In addition to a standard expert network service, it offers a database of call transcripts reminiscent of Third Bridge‘s Forum product, Stream by Alphasense, and services offered by GLG and Guidepoint. These calls are to large part generated by Tegus customers, who get discounted rates in exchange for allowing their calls to be recorded, transcribed, and resold to Tegus subscribers.
Conversely, firms that use Inex One accumulate their internal content libraries. All calls done on Inex One are recorded and transcribed (for free), and stored on your proprietary transcript library. While this is not shared with anyone outside of your firm, you may choose to make it available to your colleagues. This way you avoid doing the same call twice, and can quickly share learnings across the firm.
Tegus has a strong followership on "fintwit", where independent investors laud the company's accessibility and service level. Really nice vibes, and a testament to Tegus truly making expert insights accessible, notably in the hedge fund and growth equity segments where lots of funds look at the same assets.
Tegus pricing
The Tegus CFO described the business model in a couple tweets early January 2021, shown below. Tegus prices subscriptions based on fund AuM, starting at $20-25,000 per user and year. If both the client and the expert agree to have your calls published to all Tegus customers, you pay $500/call (on top of the $25,000 "starter fee").
Tegus CFO tweets on revenue model early 2021. In 2022, the average call cost was $525/h.
Tegus CFO tweeted early Jan 2021 on pricing. Most users we speak to nowadays pay $400-500 per call, with a large variance in per-seat fees.
Tegus traction
Tegus shares traction data on Twitter and in press releases. Put together, the announcements tell a nice growth story. The database has grown to include 40,000+ transcripts as of October 2022, with 1,500-2,000 new transcripts added every month.
Transcripts on the Tegus database and growth rate, data from Tegus ads, interviews and Twitter
Tegus revenue estimate
We believe that Tegus does $66m of revenues in 2022. Are we sure? Not really - the big unknown is how many users are paying for platform access, and how much they pay.
When estimating Tegus' revenues, the unknown "X-factor" is #seats/customer followed by $/seat. Pink cells are estimates.
Sensitivity check (what would change the numbers?)
Number of seats per fund: Most Tegus customers are family offices, (smaller) hedge funds and growth equity funds, which is why we estimate 2 seats/customer. This might be too high, or too conservative, and has big impact on total rev estimates.
Fee per seat: $11,000/seat, as we've modelled, is comparable with the fees for Factset, with other terminals being more expensive. We know from user interviews that Tegus offers attractive deals to grow the user base, which is why we assume their effective per-seat fee is about half of the list price.
Highlights and notes
Tegus was founded in 2016, based in San Francisco.
The company raised $1.5m in 2017 from Investment Group Santa Barbara, at a $4.5m post-money valuation.
In 2018, Tegus moved its HQ to Chicago.
March 2019 it made an announcement it was planning to hire 100 additional employees by 2020.
In October 2021, Tegus acquired BamSEC, a research tool for indexing and browsing SEC filings. The deal has many similarities to the Alphasense-Stream acquisition, combining expert transcript content with a tool to index and browse them.
In November 2021, Tegus raised $90m in series B from Oberndorf Enterprises and Willoughby Capital. At a supposed valuation of $3 Bn+, this means the investors got a ~3% stake. The funds were said to be used for further growth and to broaden the data offering and product suite.
Late 2021, Tegus announced in job postings that revenues had tripled and that they were on track for a near-term IPO.
In August 2022, Tegus acquired Canalyst, a platform for ready-made financial models and company data.
In September 2022, Tegus raised a $20m topup round from Positive Sum, the VC firm of investor Patrick O'Shaughnessy. The investment might have been made earlier, as Patrick has played ads for Tegus on his podcast (recommended!) for a couple years.
In the same month, Tegus' CTO and Chief Product Officer left the firm.
We identified Tegus as a regional challenger in our review of the 2019-2023 expert network market size. Regional challengers are separated from other smaller expert networks by merit of their growth and/or business model.
