The 5-step market intelligence check crypto BD teams run on Compass

What is market intelligence for crypto BD?

Market intelligence for crypto BD is the context you confirm before writing to a founder, investor, or ecosystem lead. It is a 5-step check, not a research report: account, person, catalyst, path, brief. Run it well and it costs about 15 minutes per account.

The check answers 5 questions. Which account deserves attention this week? Which person can actually reply? What changed, and when? How warm is the path in? And what will the first line say? Answer all 5 and the note writes itself. Answer 2 or fewer and the message reads like a blast, because it is one.

A company record is the start, not the finish. Crypto BD moves through people: the Head of BD who owns partnerships, the co-founder who owns the roadmap, the investor who can make the intro. The whole job is getting from a name in Companies to one named person in People with one dated reason to write.

The 6 lines a crypto BD team confirms before outreach

Before any outreach, confirm 6 short lines. Together they are the brief you save at the end, so confirming them is not extra work. It is the work.

If 1 line is missing, go find it. That is usually a 2-minute fix on the right page: the date lives in Catalysts, the backup contact on the company's team list. If 3 or more are missing, the account is not ready, and the honest move is to park it for the week.

Teams that hold this bar send fewer messages and better ones. No trick behind it. Every note has one specific reason to exist, and the reader feels that in the first sentence.

• Account: one named company, picked for a reason you can say out loud.
• Person: one owner with a live handle, plus one backup.
• Event: one dated change from the last 30 days.
• Path: the warmest route in, plus the fallback.
• Angle: one sentence linking the event to what you offer.
• Ask: the specific next step you want from the reply.

What workflow should a crypto BD team follow?

The workflow is the 5-step check run in order: account, person, catalyst, path, brief. Budget about 15 minutes for a new account, closer to 5 for one you already track. Here is a real run inside Compass.

Say your team runs security audits, and AI infrastructure is this quarter's focus. Open Companies, filter to AI, and pick Sentient. One page shows the team, the backers, and recent catalysts together. That is a 60-second read, and step 1 is done.

Next, the person. Sentient's team lists Yura as Head of BD, with contact channels available on his profile. For a partnership angle, the BD lead is the right first door. If your angle were research or product, go to a co-founder instead: Sandeep Nailwal, who also co-founded Polygon, or Himanshu Tyagi and Pramod Viswanath.

Then the route. Sentient's backers include Hack VC, Delphi Ventures, and Foresight Ventures. If anyone at your firm has history with one of those funds, a warm intro beats a cold message. Now the 6-line brief writes itself: account, person, event, path, angle, ask. The whole run took about 5 minutes, because every answer sits 1 click from the last.

Which crypto catalysts change outreach timing?

Timing is the difference between a note that lands and the same note ignored. 6 event types reliably change it.

A raise is the clearest example. The week a round lands, the team has new budget and a public reason to talk. The Sentient page, for example, lists its backers, and a shared name there is often the fastest door in.

Weak timing looks like: a token price move, a viral post with no follow-through, or an event from 2 quarters ago. Those explain why you noticed the account. They give the person no reason to reply this week. When that is all you have, check Catalysts for the next dated event and set a reminder.

• Funding round: new budget, new pressure to ship, new names on the cap table.
• Mainnet or major upgrade: the team suddenly needs partners, audits, and integrations.
• Exchange listing: growth targets jump and distribution turns urgent.
• Key hire: a new Head of BD or growth lead now owns partnerships.
• Grant or ecosystem program: budgets open on a schedule you can see coming.
• Conference appearance: a natural follow-up window of about 2 weeks.

How do you know the timing is real? Run 3 checks

A catalyst is real when it passes 3 checks. Each takes under a minute, so the full test costs you 3.

Check 1 is the date. Can you point at when the event happened? 'Raised in the last 30 days' passes. 'Momentum lately' fails.

Check 2 is the first line. Does the event change the opening sentence of your note? If the message reads the same without it, the event was decoration, not timing.

Check 3 is the owner. Does the person you picked own the follow-up? A mainnet upgrade is real timing for a Head of BD like Yura. The same event is background noise for a community manager.

Score it: 3 passes means send this week. 2 means fix the gap, usually 10 more minutes on the right page. 1 or 0 means park the account and set a reminder for the next event.

What goes in the outreach brief? The same 6 lines

The brief is the output of the whole check: 6 lines that let anyone on the team send with confidence. About 3 minutes to write, under 1 minute to read.

Keep the honesty in. If a source is thin, say so in the brief. If the person changed roles last month, flag it. A brief that oversells does more damage than no brief, because 3 other people will act on it.

And keep it to 6 lines on purpose. A brief that takes 10 minutes to write stops getting written by the 3rd account of the day.

• Account: name plus a 1-line description.
• Person: name, role, and the backup contact.
• Event: what changed, with the date.
• Path: the warmest route in, and the fallback.
• Angle: 1 sentence linking the event to your offer.
• Ask: the next step you want, stated plainly.

How to run the market intelligence check in Compass

Compass keeps the 5 pages of the check 1 click apart: Companies for the account, People for the owner, Catalysts for the date, Investors for the path, and Briefs for the weekly context.

The worked example above is live: open Sentient, then Yura, then Hack VC. The same 15-minute check runs on any account on the platform.

Start with 3 to 5 accounts, not 50. The check exists to make each message specific. Volume comes later, from repeating a small loop that works.