The View from the Office.

I met up with Chris Freeberg, the founder of Altis, at 787 Coffee in Murray Hill for iced coffee.  

Chris spent almost a dozen years at BCG before starting Altis, a research firm covering early-stage startups.

Altis is a response to the reality that companies are staying private longer and raising larger amounts of capital.

As a result, there is a growing demand among a wider array of investors for information. 

The research Altis does is fundamentally different from most Wall Street firms because the companies haven’t released financial results.

That means that unlike public companies there isn’t any earnings data to load into models to analyze.

Instead, Altis analysts, many of them former consultants, focus on due diligence, commercial viability and business strategy.

Altis analysts do not talk to the management at the companies they cover; they interview their customers, competitors, and former employees to assess the competitive advantages. 

Altis raised over $2 million in pre-seed capital from Primary Venture Partners, a firm led by Ben Sun. It expects to announce its seed round soon.

Altis aims to cover the hottest early stage companies on venture capitalists’ radars. Chris estimated that last year that amounted to about 500 companies.

Their target market will initially be venture capital firms as well as other early stage investors.

You can connect with Chris via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.