By: Ethan Rogers
Lionfish Tech Advisors is a research and advisory firm built by roughly thirty former Gartner analysts who left the industry’s most selective research house to sell the same kind of IT buying guidance without the traditional six-figure retainer. Its founder, Rob Smith, spent eight years as a Gartner analyst before deciding the model had a structural flaw he could not fix from within: the research was rigorous, but it was slow to reach the market, guarded by the firms that sold it, and priced beyond the reach of most buyers who needed it.
The team calls its analysts fish, a small in-house joke that became the name of its buyer-facing product, Periscope. The joke is not the point. The pedigree is, along with the reasoning that led senior analysts to leave a dominant brand and what they built, once they could answer a buyer’s question the way they always wanted to: directly.
Key Takeaways
- Lionfish is staffed by roughly thirty former Gartner analysts and sells IT buying guidance without the traditional six-figure retainer.
- Smith’s critique targets the model, not the research: annual cadence, guarded distribution, and cost put rigorous advice out of reach.
- The Aquarium refreshes at least daily, several times a day in fast categories like agentic AI, versus a once-a-year chart.
- Periscope returns a roughly ten-page, timestamped recommendation in about thirty seconds, and the first report each month is free.
- Proof point: Veracode completed a full Magic Quadrant survey in one day using Aquarium data, versus the usual two to three weeks.
Why Would A Team Of Gartner-Trained Analysts Leave Gartner?
The constraints that made the research cautious were built into the model, not the people. Getting hired as a Gartner analyst is, in Smith’s telling, “the second hardest company in the world to get hired at, only second behind Google,” with an interview he compares to defending a doctoral thesis. New analysts were not allowed to take client calls for months, and spent that time building a documented research base deep enough to justify picking up the phone. The talent was never the question.
The model was. Analysts were trained never to give a direct recommendation, and the vendors feeding them information had every incentive to shade the truth. “In that setup, a vendor has every reason to shade what it tells you, and honestly, in their shoes I might do the same,” Smith says. A critical review can move a vendor’s placement, and a departing analyst might resurface at a competitor, so full candor carries risk on both sides. Caught in the middle, analysts learned to hedge. Smith wanted to stop hedging.
From A One-Person Contract Idea To A Thirty-Analyst Firm
Smith’s original plan in 2021 was narrow. He would be a contract analyst working for one client at a time, so that the client could speak freely without worrying the insight would reach a rival. He expected a side project. Instead, he was booked solid before his first official day, and a chance meeting with another former Gartner analyst living part-time in Amsterdam produced the second hire. Five years later, the team covers IT security, IT management, AI, file storage, and workplace software, roughly thirty former analysts deep.
That roster is why the “human-verified” claim carries more weight than the usual vendor language. When Lionfish says a data point was checked by a human, the human is the same class of analyst who used to require a Gartner badge to reach.
What The Team Built Once They Were On Their Own
The first product was the Aquarium, a competitive-intelligence platform for the vendor community, launched at the RSA Conference. Where a traditional Magic Quadrant publishes on a yearly cycle, the Aquarium updates at least once a day, and several times a day in fast-moving categories like agentic AI. It was a direct answer to the weakness the team saw up close: by the time an annual report clears review and ships, the facts have often moved.
Periscope, the buyer-facing product, arrived almost by accident. A finance product manager, Smith, met through Olympic volunteer work, asked for a tool that would simply tell him what to buy, rather than hand him competitive data to interpret. Smith realized he had been answering that exact question on the phone for years. Periscope packages it: a roughly ten-page, timestamped report in about thirty seconds, with the first report each month free and a live thirty-minute analyst call priced at $400.
The Proof Is In What The Data Can Already Do
The clearest evidence is a client result. Security firm Veracode used a survey-automation feature inside the Aquarium, built on the same human-verified data, to finish a full Gartner Magic Quadrant vendor survey in a single day, a process that usually takes two to three weeks. It is a narrow example, built for vendors rather than buyers, but it is a real one.
The client’s history is the part worth remembering when the sales language gets glossy elsewhere. Brad LaPorte, who worked with roughly fifty of the top cybersecurity vendors over five years before joining, says Lionfish has worked with large enterprises and major cybersecurity and technology companies, including Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Fortinet, and Okta. That access used to require an enterprise-sized budget. Lionfish’s pitch is that it kept the expertise and changed who gets to reach it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Lionfish Tech Advisors?
Lionfish Tech Advisors is a research and advisory firm founded in 2021 and staffed by roughly thirty former Gartner analysts. It delivers competitive intelligence and vendor buying guidance through its Aquarium platform and its buyer-facing product, Periscope, on data that is AI-sourced and then human-verified.
How Is Lionfish Different From A Traditional Analyst Firm?
It keeps the analyst’s expertise and changes the delivery. Instead of an annual report and a multi-week wait behind a five- or six-figure contract, Lionfish refreshes its data at least daily and can return a buyer recommendation in about thirty seconds, with a free monthly report tier.
What Is Periscope?
Periscope is Lionfish’s self-service tool that produces a roughly ten-page, timestamped vendor recommendation in about thirty seconds. The first report each month is free; additional reports are paid, and a thirty-minute analyst call costs $400.
The Bottom Line
Lionfish is not claiming to have invented a new kind of expertise. It kept the expertise and changed how a buyer reaches it. Whether the experiment holds depends on the same thing it always has for Smith and his colleagues: whether the answer on the other side of the login is accurate, current, and honest enough that a CIO can act on it without a second call to check.
