Next Steps Research provides due diligence services to a range of clients including venture capital firms, private equity, angel networks and hedge funds. Next Steps is currently offering two proven and proprietary tools to help investors assess intellectual property such as patents and innovations, as well as the entrepreneurs and management teams tasked with bringing products to market and executing business plans.

The first tool is a sophisticated language vector algorithm, based on latent semantic indexing or LSI, which provides unprecedented insight into the value, opportunities and vulnerabilities of a specific patent, innovation or family of patents. This same high-tech search technique has been used by several U.S. Government agencies (including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the United States Senate), major corporations such as GE and IBM, numerous law firms (for litigation discovery), and such IP firms as Acacia Research.

The second tool is a statistically proven and predictive software-driven management assessment tool that measures "entrepreneurial propensity" through seven key attributes, while accurately pinpointing where an individual will best perform in the life-cycle of an enterprise. Aggregated individual assessments provide an inside look into complex management team dynamics while highlighting potential conflicts and critical gaps. Developed from extensive academic and international consortium studies from institutions such as MIT’s Sloan school, Kauffman Foundation, Babson College and Harvard Business School, it has been refined over the last five years. After undergoing convergent validity testing against mathematical models as well as assessments used on over 2 million people, this tool provides a validated cognitive framework on enterprise leaders.

The combination of these tools provides additional insight and rigor to due diligence as well as portfolio management.

Next Steps is equally committed to 1) improving the efficiency and effectiveness of global philanthropic capital disbursement by providing the tools to foundations, individuals, and nonprofit organizations; and 2) providing support to the current groundswell of “social entrepreneurship,” micro-finance and the humanitarian licensing of innovation for public health and poverty alleviation. Our tools in this arena could be a major advance in the more effective deployment of capital to create sustainable enterprises.

Next Steps’ founders include an experienced private equity investor and two professors at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, who originally developed and perfected the services to help entrepreneurs avoid all the classic mistakes committed by the majority of start-ups.

Please contact us for more information.