DFX / INSIGHTS

Field notes.

How we think about public-data intelligence, donor capacity, opposition research, and deal diligence. Written for operators who need to act on what they read.

FEATURED / FIELD REPORT
OUTLIER 01
“ai replace my job”
RATIO
74×
0255075100200420082012201620202024PEAK · 100
PEAK
Mar 2026
BASELINE
0.0
RECENT 6MO
74 / 100
FIELD REPORT · NO. 042026.04.1112 MIN READ

The founder wave has a sound. We heard it.

A Google Trends probe of 40 economy, employment, and finance queries. Four of them broke twenty years of baseline by 20x to 74x. None are classic recession queries. This is the data behind why DFX exists in the form it does.

74×
AI REPLACE
56×
AUTOMATE
20×
WIND DOWN
>2008
MORTGAGE
Read the field report
ALL / FIELD NOTES
01
METHODOLOGY2026.04.087 MIN READ

How we read FEC Q2 filings in 90 minutes.

A walk-through of the DFX pipeline for ingesting, resolving, and ranking the quarterly wave of federal campaign finance disclosures the day they land.

02
DATA QUALITY2026.03.296 MIN READ

The 200K donor bug: why most capacity scoring is wrong.

A quiet entity-resolution failure inside the industry's standard donor databases inflates capacity estimates on roughly a quarter of major-gift prospects. Here is how it happens and what it costs.

03
DILIGENCE2026.03.155 MIN READ

Five deal-killing risks that never show up in a pitch deck.

A working-list of the signals DFX Property X-Ray flags in the first hour of an engagement. None of them live inside the OM. Four of the five have killed deals we have looked at this cycle.