The Defensibility Study

Investors routinely make judgements about whether a company's position will hold — at seed, at Series A, and beyond. This study examines how experienced investors actually form that judgement in real decisions.

It is a two-part research programme. Part 1 examines how the field understands and communicates this kind of judgement, drawing on the published literature and a coded corpus of fund communications. Part 2 tests what can and cannot be known about a company's position early, against historical cases and live company reads. The practitioner interviews — the part you are invited to join — are the centrepiece of Part 1.

• One confidential interview, 45–60 minutes, at a time that suits you, remote.
• You'll be asked to walk through investment decisions you have personally been close to — how you assessed them, what you weighed, what you'd want to know. There is no preparation, no test, and no right answer; the study is interested in how experienced practitioners actually reason, not in any particular framework.
• Everything is anonymised. You and your firm are never named in any output. Findings are reported in aggregate and as anonymised patterns; quotes are used only with consent and only in unattributable form.
• Where possible, we interview more than one person from the same firm, separately — this gives the study a range of perspectives within firms as well as across them. If a colleague may be willing to take part, we'd welcome the introduction.

Participants receive an exclusive early readout of the aggregate findings before anything is published — a view of how investors across UK and US funds, from regional and EIS funds to the largest global firms, approach the same judgement, and how your peers reason about the questions you face. No participating fund gets visibility into any other identifiable fund; the readout is aggregate and anonymised, and participants see it first.

This is a formally designed qualitative study, not journalism or content marketing:

• A structured, non-leading interview protocol, applied consistently across all participants.
• A purposive sampling design across investment stages, reported transparently, with segment saturation rather than headline numbers as the stopping rule.
• Desk-research components independently replicated in separate blind passes, with second-coder reliability checks on coded material before publication.
• The design includes deliberate disconfirmation: the study reports findings that complicate its expectations, not just those that confirm them.
• Standard research ethics throughout: informed consent, the right to withdraw, secure handling of recordings and transcripts, and anonymisation at source.

Limits are stated as plainly as findings. The interview sample evidences patterns, not prevalence — no claims will be made about what percentage of investors think anything.

The study is designed and conducted by Iain Acton, a researcher with 17+ years leading evidence-based research in complex, regulated environments — including major UK government transformation programmes — and over a decade of strategy and innovation research with companies including Pfizer, Jaguar Land Rover, and Just Eat. He has taught research methods and innovation at postgraduate level for more than ten years, including at the University of Warwick, and is a co-author of a Sage-published book on entrepreneurship. The interview practice follows the standards of that background: non-leading by design, consent-first, and anonymised at source.

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Investors who personally form the judgement of whether an early-stage company will last — analysts, principals, and partners at VC and EIS funds, across stages from pre-seed to Series B and beyond. We are particularly keen to hear from senior decision-makers, from investors who assess companies at more than one stage, and from pairs of colleagues at the same firm willing to be interviewed separately.

We are not currently interviewing founders for this part of the study.

Findings will be published as a working paper, in anonymised and aggregate form only. Participants see the findings first, and nothing attributable to any individual or firm is published, ever.