Strategic brief

A brief written for the reader's chair (president, owner, operating partner) about a company that a review-driven small-business report can't serve.

When to use

• Large, enterprise or multi-state; a subsidiary of a PE or public parent.
• B2B (contractor, utility, infrastructure, industrial, software) with few or non-consumer reviews.
• No credible sector benchmark exists, and inventing one would read as fluff to a buyer who underwrites for a living.
• The point is to show what reasoning over public data can do, then open a conversation.

The framing (read before writing a word)

• Public data + reasoning only. No internal figures. Say so on the cover. That constraint is the credibility; one machine-guessed number destroys trust.
• Altitude = the reader's chair. For a $200M subsidiary: capital allocation, the parent's strategy, the demand cycle, labour, competitive position. Not small-shop operating tips.
• Lead with the single sharpest insight, the central tension, as the headline.
• Close with a brainstorm, never a pitch. End on "Where do you want to take this next?" plus a few real questions you'd dig into together. No product names, no prices.
• Quantify only where the public math is honest. Range and label estimates ("~$160M-$215M, outside-in estimate"); keep observed facts (counts, ratings, filings) exact.

Pipeline

1. Resolve the real entity. Directory lookups often return a renamed or acquired company. Confirm the true entity, its parent, scale, history and actual owner before researching (grounded search: "<name> <city> history founders parent revenue employees").
2. Gather the public corpus. Several grounded searches: the company; the parent's stated strategy (10-K, investor deck, earnings calls); the sector demand cycle (funding programs, backlog, pricing); named public competitors as proxies; the labour market. If reviews exist, decode them: strip employee and internal noise, keep the repeating public themes.
3. Find the strategic spine. One tension the public record reveals that the reader feels but hasn't framed. Example shape: the parent is rotating capital toward recurring revenue while this subsidiary is a one-off project business riding a temporary, grant-funded demand bulge. Everything hangs off that. Reason; don't pad.
4. Draft in plain language: a hook lead, 3-5 moves or sections, a one-frame summary table, 1-2 deep-dive findings with a concrete action each, and the brainstorm close. If someone is reviewing, show the draft before branding; branding is the slow step.
5. Brand by hand. Author the HTML yourself (cover, hook block, finding cards, summary table, recommendation cards, closing Q&A). Do not push the draft through a generic "report brander" prompt: brander passes have been seen reformatting the hook away and inventing numbers.
6. Render to PDF (WeasyPrint or headless Chrome) and check every page.

Done when

• The PDF renders untruncated.
• Zero fabricated numbers: every figure public and sourced, estimates ranged and labelled.
• The hook leads; the brainstorm close is there; no product or price language.
• It reads at the buyer's altitude.