00Ping & Pong

Human Intelligence, on demand.

Find someone who was actually in the room.

I need an expert → I need an expert — go to the request form I am an expert → I am an expert — go to the interview form

Ping is your AI agent — whether you arrive with a question or with the kind of person you need. Pong is the expert’s own. An introduction happens only where the two agree. And if nobody in the network fits yet — name the person you need and we come back with what it takes and by when.

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An expert network for anyone who has to decide something about a private company — a fund underwriting it, or an enterprise about to sign with it. Built on recorded interviews rather than a résumé database. We go deep in AI, healthcare and robotics.First-hand onlyThe Bay Area · Seattle · New York · London · Paris · Milan · Rome

01A rally, start to finish

One question, worked all the way through

Ping · your AI agent
Pong · the expert's AI agent

Worked examples. Expert codes are illustrative — real profiles stay anonymous to the buyer until an engagement is signed.

Why now

Everything a model can answer is now free. We deal in the rest.

A model has read everything that was ever written down. It has not sat in the room where the number was decided, watched the deployment fail in month nine, or been in the renewal negotiation. The better the models get, the shorter the list of questions worth paying a human for — and the more each one is worth.

02Two agents

One on each side of the table

A single matching engine always serves whoever pays it. So there are two, and each one works for its own side.

Ping · the AI agent working for you

Turns a question — or a name you're hunting — into a research brief

  • Asks why you're asking — the decision behind the question, and what answer would change it
  • Breaks it into 5–12 numbered, answerable questions, then ranks them so you know which single call is worth the most
  • Translates those into who you actually need: the function, the business line, the years they'd have had to be there
  • Carries your firm's compliance constraints into every match

You get the brief before anything is priced. If nobody can cover it, that's the answer, and it's free.

Pong · the AI agent working for the expert

Represents them, rather than filing them

  • Builds their knowledge map from a 30-minute recorded interview — what they signed, hired, decided, and when that visibility stopped
  • Helps them say what they're worth being asked about, in language a buyer understands
  • Suggests a rate from what comparable engagements actually clear, and protects their calendar and load
  • Holds their boundaries — employer, non-compete, restricted topics — and declines on their behalf

The expert sets their rate, their availability and their restricted topics. They don't get to edit what they're assessed as able to answer.

The match

It's a handshake, not a third party

No central engine decides who you meet. Ping holds your brief, Pong holds the expert's profile, and an introduction exists only where the two overlap — which is also why we can tell you where they don't. The gaps on your shortlist aren't a disclosure we chose to make; they're what the handshake failed to close.

03Why us

Three things a network paid by the hour won't do

A résumé database

Profiles built from voice

A title tells you where someone sat. A recorded interview tells you what they signed, who they hired, which call they made — and when they stopped being in the room. That last part is the only thing worth matching on.

Industry and seniority tags

Matched question by question

Not "fintech, VP+, 10 years." We match your Q3 against the people who personally handled that line item, and show the reasoning behind every name we put in front of you.

An inventory you search

Name the person. We come back with a price and a date.

Every other network is bounded by who is already inside it. We treat this as procurement, not inventory — a named profile is a sourcing job with a cost and a deadline, not a search that returns nothing. Six conferences a year is why the first introduction is usually a warm one, and you pay only if we land them.

04What happens after you email

Three steps, and the first two cost nothing

Day 0 · 30 minutes

We push back on the question

A short call or a thread. What decision sits behind this, what answer would change it, and what your firm can't be asked about. No account to create.

Day 2 · free

You get the brief

The numbered question list, the matched experts with the reasoning for each, their first-hand windows and disclosure boundaries, and every gap we couldn't close. This is where most vendors would have quoted you first.

Day 3–7 · quoted

You pick what to run

A signed written answer, a scoped conversation, or a full study across several experts. Priced per engagement once we both know what it takes. You can also stop here and keep the brief.

05Engagements

Scoped by the expert's time, not yours

One knowledge profile, five depths. Every engagement is quoted after the brief, when we both know what it actually takes to answer your question.

Start with the brief

No charge · 48-hour turnaround

Send the question. Ping breaks it into what has to be answered; Pong tells us who can genuinely cover it. You get the question list, the matched experts, the reasoning for each name and every gap we found — before anything is priced. If we can't cover it, that's the answer, and it cost you nothing.

0 minutes of expert time · no account, no procurement, no commitment to book
Request an expert
AgentSubscription Standing access to the knowledge graph. Answers cite the profile they came from and flag their own confidence. For tracking a sector, not cracking one company.0 minutes of expert time
Live Most bookedPer engagement Not an hour of someone's time — a scoped conversation with a person whose first-hand window we verified. Your question list goes to them in advance, boundaries are confirmed in writing, the call is recorded, and you get structured notes plus the follow-ups worth asking within 24 hours. The expert's tier is on your shortlist before you agree to anything.60 minutes of expert time · priced by tier
WorkshopScoped and convened Some questions don't survive being asked one person at a time. We put the experts and your team in the same room — online or in person, one voice or a dozen — so the disagreement happens live, where you can interrogate it instead of reading about it a week later. Your whole deal team hears the same answer at the same time. We handle the shortlist, the approach, the boundaries and the room itself; running six conferences a year is why we can convene people on three weeks' notice.Multiple experts · half a day to two days · online or in personConvene a workshop
ProjectScoped to the question Built around what you actually have to decide — four experts or twenty, one target or a whole sub-sector, a single verdict or a running read across a quarter. We scope it with you and price it once. Whatever shape it takes, the write-up includes where the experts disagree and what we could not verify — because on a real decision, the disagreement is usually the finding.Multiple experts · 2–4 weeksScope a project

Funds running continuous coverage on a sector are scoped annually rather than per engagement.

06The other side of the table

Thirty minutes, once.

Most networks file your résumé and cold-call you when a keyword hits. We record one structured conversation about what you actually handled — then only bring you questions you're genuinely positioned to answer.

01

Fewer, better requests

Because Pong knows your first-hand window and your boundaries, you stop being asked about things you left three years ago — and stop having to decline them. Expect a handful of requests a year, not a handful a week; pause or withdraw whenever you like.

02

Your own knowledge map

After the interview you get a structured map of your own expertise back — what you're the sharpest person in the network on. Yours to keep and use.

03

A band, not a negotiation

You pick your band once. No haggling per engagement, no wondering what the person before you was paid — the schedule is the same for everyone in a band, and you see all of it before the interview starts.

04

A seat in the room

Profiled experts are invited to our closed-door sessions alongside the operators and investors working the same questions. Those carry an honorarium too.

You'll see the whole schedule before you decide anything.

Every band is published and identical for everyone in it, so nobody is paid more for negotiating harder. You get the figures with the interview questions, before you commit to anything. You are never asked to take an engagement, and declining one costs you nothing.

The interview

Thirty minutes, and you'll know the questions

Recorded, conversational, and sent to you in advance. What you personally owned and when, which decisions went through you, where your visibility ended, and what you're certain about versus what you're only inferring. We're more interested in the last one than most people expect.

The recording

Where it goes, and where it doesn't

The interview is recorded so your profile rests on what you actually said rather than on our notes. The recording itself is never sent to a buyer — it builds the profile, and the profile is what a buyer sees, only after you have agreed to an engagement. Ask us to withdraw and the profile comes down.

Your employer

The part that usually stops people

Your current employer, non-compete and any earn-out are captured before anything else, and the topics you rule out are enforced by us — not left to you to defend live on a call. If a request would cross a line, it never reaches you. We decline it on your behalf and you don't hear about it.

You control your rate, your availability and the topics you won't discuss. What we say you can answer comes from the interview record rather than from either of us — which is also what stops you being sold into a call you'd have to bluff through. Nobody's reputation survives that, and yours is the one on the line. Nothing reaches a buyer before you agree to the engagement, and your name stays off every shortlist until you do.

Not your title. What you signed, hired, decided or shipped, and roughly when your first-hand view of it ended. A few lines is plenty — the interview is for the rest.

This is the one thing we can't infer from a profile — a few lines is enough.

Your employer, and your boundaries

Captured before anything else. The topics you rule out are enforced by us — if a request would cross one, it never reaches you and you don't hear about it.

Where you sit on the schedule

Pick the band that fits and we'll send you the figures with the interview questions. We don't negotiate engagement by engagement — the schedule is the same for everyone in a band.

Where do we send the questions?

We need an address to send the interview questions to.

Thirty minutes, recorded, questions in advance
Nothing reaches a buyer before you agree to an engagement, and your name stays off every shortlist until you do.

Booked, more or less.

07Who's behind this

The network is the room we already run

Ping & Pong is built by Sophie Ren, who runs roughly six AI conferences a year — including the AGI Summit and GenAI Summit SF — across Silicon Valley, Paris and Milan.

That matters more than it sounds. Every other expert network starts cold: buy a list, cold-call strangers, hope someone picks up. Ours starts with people who have already stood on a stage, sponsored a room, or sat through two days of it. They know who we are before we ask, and we know what they actually work on before we call.

It also means we can answer a question no incumbent can. When nobody in the network covers your question, we don't just say no — we can tell you where that person is likely to be, and how long it takes to reach them. That is a function of running the rooms, not of having a bigger database.

The research practice is already operating: investors, private and pre-IPO targets, delivered engagements every month. Ping & Pong is that practice, rebuilt so it runs at ten times the volume without losing the part that makes it worth paying for.

Conferences a year
~6, including AGI Summit and GenAI Summit SF
Conferences run in
Silicon Valley · Paris · Milan
Where we go deep
AI · healthcare · robotics
Where the people are
The Bay Area, Seattle, New York, London, Paris, Milan, Rome
Who buys
Funds underwriting a company · enterprises about to sign with one
Expert profiles
Built one recorded interview at a time
08Compliance

Two different fears, two specific answers

A fund and a corporate buyer are both worried about this going wrong — in opposite directions. One is afraid of what comes in. The other is afraid of what gets out. A single sentence about "taking confidentiality seriously" answers neither, so here are both, itemized enough to be checked.

If you're a fund

"Will you stop an expert from telling us something we're not allowed to know?"

  • A written MNPI policy, in your compliance team's hands before the first engagement — not after they ask
  • Every expert completes training before their first call, and re-confirms it annually
  • Restricted topics agreed in writing with the expert ahead of each engagement, and enforced by us on the call
  • A full record of every call, retained and available to your compliance team
  • Experts currently employed at a public company are flagged on every shortlist they appear on, before you book

If you're diligencing a vendor, partner or target

"Will anyone find out that we're the ones asking?"

  • We approach experts without naming you, and without describing you closely enough to be guessed
  • We never approach the subject company — not for a reference, not for an introduction, not at all
  • Your question list goes to the matched expert and nowhere else
  • Former employees of the subject company are labeled as such, so you know whose loyalties are where
  • If answering would require an expert to work out who's asking, we tell you that before you book — and usually we just don't run it

Both lists are commitments, not aspirations. If we can't meet one on a given engagement, we say so and the engagement doesn't happen.

09Start

Tell us the question — or tell us who you're looking for.

Either one starts it. Bring a research question and Ping breaks it into what actually has to be answered, then finds who can. Bring a profile you already have in mind — "someone who ran capacity planning at a top-five neocloud in 2024" — and Pong tells you who's already in the network, who we'd have to go find, and how long that takes.

Either way you get an answer within 48 hours, including the answer you won't like: that we can't cover it. Finding out costs nothing.

What are you arriving with?

Ping works from either one. Give it a question and it derives who has to have been there; give it a person and it derives what they can actually answer.

A name if you have one. If not, tags are enough — function, business line, and the years they'd have had to be there. We'll come back with what it takes and by when.

Tell us what you're after — one line is enough.

How far should Ping go?

A speed-and-precision trade-off, nothing else. Most requests run Strict.

Which side of the table are you on?

It decides how we approach experts — and which promises we owe you.

Anything that shapes the quote?

Both optional. Nothing is priced until you've seen the brief — this just stops us coming back with something you can't use.

Where do we send the brief?

We need a working email to send the brief to.

Brief back within 48 hours · no charge · no account
We never contact the subject company, and your question goes to nobody but the matched expert.

That's with Ping.

Join as an expert instead

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