Questions we get asked, answered straight
Can't I get this from ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity?
You can get a draft from any of them in thirty seconds, and we use the same models as part of our infrastructure. What you cannot get from a prompt is the system around it: a method that decides what to gather, a dated capture behind every claim, every number checked against a primary source, eighty-six checks that exist to stop overclaiming, review rounds, freshness rules, and a person who signs off and takes your call. That system took two years to build and costs days of machine time and hours of judgment per engagement. The draft is free. The finished intelligence, with the proof behind every line, is what we make. Why a prompt can't do this.
How is this different from just using a chatbot?
A chatbot generates plausible text. It doesn't know what's true, it doesn't check sources, and it can't tell you what a competitive signal means for your specific situation. What we deliver is governed intelligence. Every claim is checked against a primary source and links to a dated capture you can open yourself. Every statement is either an observation with evidence behind it or a reading marked as ours. And a person who knows your market stands behind every deliverable. A chatbot can write a paragraph about your competitor. We can tell you what your competitor is about to do, what the evidence for that is, and what you should do about it.
Do you use AI?
Yes, extensively, and we're not apologetic about it. AI is our infrastructure, the way imaging is a surgeon's. It is how we gather at a scale no team of analysts could match, how every claim gets checked against a primary source instead of a confident face, and how the work arrives in days instead of months. The method, the review, and the judgment about what the evidence means are human. We would rather tell you how the work is made than have you wonder.
What is the Evidence Locker?
Every claim in a Rathvane deliverable links to a dated capture: the answer or page as it appeared, the prompt or query that produced it, the date it was taken, the source it leaned on, and a content hash so you can confirm nothing has been altered since. Click any sentence and you land on the pixels. A board member, an investor's analyst, or a diligence team can verify the whole trail without calling us.
What is Ask Rathvane?
A consultant trained on your engagement, shipped with every deliverable. What you read on the page is the part above the surface. Beneath it sits 60 to 70 percent more research, and Ask Rathvane answers from all of it, with the citation. Ask it where to start. Ask it why we ranked a competitor where we did. Ask it what we'd do first. It knows your engagement and nobody else's.
How does pricing work?
It's published. Three entry prices, set by the depth of the work: from $4,500 for Public Perception and Industry Outlook, from $7,500 for the standard strategy products, and from $12,500 for Competitive Intelligence, Growth Strategy and Capital Strategy. Competitive Intelligence has three tiers, Core, Extended and Full, from $12,500 to $29,500. Add-ons are published too: $1,250 for a competitor, segment or channel, $1,750 for a market, $2,750 for a product line, brand or business unit. Companies over $500 million in revenue are scoped by conversation. A three-question estimator on the pricing page gives you your number before you talk to anyone. The free snapshot stays free.
What is the founding client rate?
Thirty percent off every published price on this site, products, tiers, add-ons and packages, for engagements started by December 31, 2026. Founding clients keep the rate on their first re-capture or next product in 2027. After that the published prices apply as written. The published price is the price of the work; the founding rate is what it costs to be early.
Is there a guarantee?
Yes. If we do not provide you value, you do not pay us a dime. Value is defined in writing so you can hold us to it: every claim carries a dated capture, every number traces to a primary source, every uncertain finding is labelled. Tell us within fourteen days of delivery what fell short, we re-work it within five business days, and if it still falls short we refund in full. The deliverable stays yours. The full terms are one page.
Can you really match the quality of a big strategy firm?
Their quality comes from their methodology and their analysts. Ours comes from ours. The difference isn't in the rigor. It's in the model. They staff a team for months and charge accordingly. We built a method and the infrastructure to run it in days. And we offer something they don't sell at any price: every claim clicks through to a dated capture of its source. We're not asking you to accept less. We're offering a different path to the same destination, with the proof attached.
We've never heard of you. Why should we trust the work?
Judge the work, not the logo. The free snapshot is a real page of intelligence about your own company, every answer captured with its prompt and date, and it costs nothing. Read it. Click the captures. If the evidence holds up, the rest of the work is built the same way. We'd rather earn trust from the output than ask for it in advance.
We already use a monitoring platform. Do we need this?
Monitoring platforms are useful. They'll tell you when a competitor changes a pricing page or issues a press release. We do something different. We tell you what those signals mean in your situation, what pattern is forming, and what to consider doing about it, with the evidence attached. Some clients use both: the platform for day-to-day tracking, Rathvane for the decisions that matter.
How much do we have to tell you?
As much or as little as you want. A single brief from one person. A short intake routed to several people on your team, where the gaps between their answers are often the first finding. Or nothing at all, in which case we build from public and subscribed sources and show you exactly what we leaned on. All three produce finished intelligence. Calibration deepens with what you share.
How fast is it, really?
Working days, from the day the intake closes. Industry Outlook in 3 to 5. Public Perception in 5 to 6. Most single products in 6 to 10. Competitive Intelligence in 7 to 20 depending on tier. Packages in 14 to 22. The free snapshot within the week. If your window is shorter, say so in the first conversation.
What about confidentiality and our data?
Your intelligence stays yours. We do not share client information across engagements, we do not use client data to train models, and we do not disclose that you are a client or what you asked. Ask Rathvane knows your engagement and no one else's. Where a deliverable captures a third party's public page, the capture carries a non-affiliation line, and we never publish a client's pixels.
What will you not do?
We cannot see inside any model or promise that a change will produce a particular answer. We don't claim a capture can be reproduced, because answers vary by session and day. We don't promise to rank you in an answer engine on a timetable, because nobody can. We don't produce a single score where the underlying answers vary. And where we don't know something, the deliverable says so instead of writing around it. The limits are published because an evidence trail is only honest if it shows them.
Where does the name come from?
Two old words. Rath is Old Irish for a ringfort, the fortified stronghold of a chief. Vane is Old English for a banner, the standard carried ahead of a company, and later the weather vane that shows which way the wind blows. A stronghold that reads the wind: the structure around the intelligence, and the direction it points you in. The longer version is on the About page.
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