Market mapping fails when nobody owns the thesis. An associate scrapes PitchBook, an analyst pulls a CB Insights category, someone drops a Notion doc into Slack, and the partner asks who decided this comp set. Dock fixes the attribution gap. The agent assembles the category map and comp set, drafts the memo, and routes it to the named thesis owner. Every row carries a pointer back to the source record, the agent that wrote it, the partner who approved it, and the timestamp.
PitchBook, CB Insights, and Notion stay the system of record for the raw data. Dock is the system of record for what the AGENT INTERPRETS. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record, agent identity, decision, reviewer, and timestamp. The agent re-fetches platform data via fresh API reads when it needs current state.
The Market Map surface
| Company | Category | Source | Comp rationale (agent) | Thesis owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glean | Vertical search / enterprise RAG | PitchBook ID 521884 | Closest peer to thesis on agentic search; $260M Series E 2024 | Priya | Approved |
| Hebbia | Vertical search / enterprise RAG | CB Insights 9F22A | Adjacent: research-agent positioning, finance ICP overlap | Priya | Approved |
| Writer | Enterprise LLM platform | PitchBook ID 471209 | Out of scope: platform rather than agent layer | Priya | Rejected |
Three rows, three decisions, one named owner. The PitchBook and CB Insights columns are live pointers. When Priya opens the Glean row two weeks later, the agent re-fetches valuation and headcount and shows the delta beside the original memo.
The workflow
A junior agent named Atlas runs the map. Govind gives Atlas a Notion brief: agentic search for regulated industries. Atlas queries PitchBook for enterprise-search companies funded since 2023, pulls the CB Insights "AI agents" category, and proposes a 22-company longlist. Each row writes to the Market Map surface with a draft rationale and pending status. Priya, the thesis owner, approves, rejects, or edits. Approved rows flow into a Notion memo template that Atlas drafts using rationale text already attributed to Priya. Every claim links back to a Dock row, which links back to the platform record. See agent audit and compliance and how agent identity keeps Atlas's writes distinguishable from Priya's edits.
Why it matters
Quarterly venture funding hit a record $286B in Q1 2026 according to CB Insights, and Bessemer's State of the Cloud reports vertical AI companies growing roughly 400 percent year over year at scale. Velocity that fast turns last quarter's comp set into noise. Firms that map markets in shared docs lose attribution within a week. Firms that map markets in Dock keep the thesis owner attached to the row, so when the partner asks why Hebbia is in and Writer is out, the answer is one click and one name. The same pattern shows up across the Dock for investors cluster, parallels the deal-room work in Dock for founders, and shares its read-then-write skeleton with Dock for research.
Start mapping with an owner
Pick one thesis you are tracking this quarter. Give the agent the brief, a PitchBook category, and a CB Insights tag, then name the thesis owner. The first map takes an afternoon. The deep-research counterpart lives in Dock for research.
FAQ
Who owns the comp set? The thesis owner named on each row. The agent drafts, the partner approves. Rejected rows stay in the surface with the rationale visible, so the same company is not relitigated next quarter.
What happens when valuations move? The agent re-fetches PitchBook and CB Insights on a schedule and writes deltas into a new column. Old memo text is preserved. New data sits beside it.
Can two analysts run maps in parallel? Yes. Each map is a separate surface with its own thesis owner. Companies can appear in multiple maps with different rationales attributed to different partners.
Does Dock replace our Notion memos? No. Notion remains the memo home. Dock holds the structured rows the memo cites, so every claim in the doc resolves to an attributed row.
