You have a call in ten minutes and only a vague sense of who is on the other side. You open three tabs, skim a press release, then try to remember who runs the group. It is enough to get by, not enough to ask a sharp question. This is the gap between "I recognize the name" and "I know how they think." The task closes it with a short, sourced brief you can trust without doing a full pre call sprint. Research ~5 min to run Research a Firm Vic prompt Use Vic to research a firm for a cited dossier on Blackstone Real Estate for a potential joint venture discussion on a 400,000 sf office asset. Purpose Delivers structured, cited firm intelligence in five minutes instead of the thirty minutes a manual search requires, so teams can prepare for calls or memos without starting from scratch. Inputs Firm Name Required Domain Optional Context Optional Outputs An in-chat dossier with a header (name, type, HQ, links), At-a-Glance summary, current focus areas, 3-4 fact-paired talking points, Background Snapshot, and numbered Sources list. Time saved Turns roughly thirty minutes of manual searching into about five minutes. How it works Give Vic a firm name and, if you have it, a domain and a bit of context. The context can be as simple as your outreach angle or the asset you want to discuss. Vic runs open web research and assembles a tight dossier with citations for every non obvious claim. Run it like this: "Use Vic to research a firm for a cited dossier on Blackstone Real Estate for a potential joint venture discussion on a 400,000 sf office asset." The output lands in chat as a clean brief you can scan in a minute. It opens with a header that includes the firm name, type, headquarters, and useful links. Then an At a Glance summary that answers what they do and how they make money. Next come current focus areas. This is where you see where they are active right now, not five years ago. Then three to four talking points, each paired with a fact and a numbered source. These are lines you can use to open a call or steer it when it stalls. If you have ever said "I saw you have been active in X" and hoped it was true, this fixes that. A Background Snapshot rounds it out with firmographic detail. Think mandate, scale, and how the platform is set up. Key people are named so you know who likely owns the decision. The final section is a numbered sources list so you can click through if something matters. Two points matter. First, the citations. Every non obvious claim ties to a source, which keeps the brief honest and lets you verify fast. Second, the structure. It is built to read top to bottom or to skim. You do not have to hunt for the one line you need before you dial. Use cases are simple. Prep for a first call with a capital partner. Sanity check a counterparty before sending a term sheet. Build a short background section for an internal memo without starting from zero. It also helps mid process when a new name appears and you need a fast read. There are limits. This is open web research, not a data room. If a detail is not public, it will not show up. It will not replace judgment. It will keep you from asking basic questions and help you ask better ones. The time math is simple. What used to take about thirty minutes of scattered searching comes back in about five. More important, it is organized the same way every time, which means less time figuring out where to look and more time deciding what to do.