Structural Intelligencefour kinds of intelligence; one is ours
Four kinds of intelligence describe a company. Three of them tell you about its surroundings. One tells you about its structure.
Business intelligencewhat your numbers say
What the company reports about itself: revenue, headcount, programs, filings. Necessary, and written by the company.
Competitive intelligencewhat others in your field are doing
Who else does what it does, where they overlap, where they are moving. Useful for positioning; silent on whether the company itself holds together.
Market intelligencewhere the sector is going
Demand, funding, regulation, the direction of the field. Tells you the weather, not the condition of the house.
Structural intelligencehow your company is actually built
How your company is actually built, read from the public record the way a buyer or lender will read it. This is what the other three cannot tell you, and it is what we do.
Growing, bringing in investment, selling, or handing it on: each one turns on how the company is actually built. We read from the outside in: the company as the record shows it, and the landscape around it, from competitors and demand to new regulation.
What We Doreads that take you to the decision, not across it
Every Hard6 read looks for the patterns that most often stall a transition:
- Owner dependence · what still runs through one person.
- Customer concentration · how much revenue leans on a few accounts.
- Management depth · whether the team behind the owner is as strong as it looks.
- Facilities and real estate · who controls the ground the business stands on.
- Margin pressure · costs rising against prices that have not moved.
- Systems and digital footprint · what the business visibly runs on, from its website to the inventory and accounting tools it names, and whether that would carry over to a new owner.
Each is read against the landscape around the company, from competitors and demand to new regulation. Every finding is scored and sourced, and where the record runs out, Hard6 names what only the owner can answer.
The scorean answer, and how far to trust it
An AI chat gives you an answer. A Hard6 read gives you an answer and how far to trust it. Every finding carries a score between 0 and 1 that reflects the evidence behind it: how many independent sources agree, how close they are to the original record, and how recent they are. No finding ever scores a perfect 1, because the public record is never complete. The score is about the evidence.
Built around your practicea template from a consultation
Hard6 starts with a consultation. You tell us what matters most to your clients and your engagements, and we build a template around it: the subject matter, and the landscape areas that bear on it.
Run with an analystevery read handled by a person
Every read is handled directly by a Hard6 analyst, who works through it with you.
Coming soon: your own sign-inrun reads from your template; coming
Once your template is built, you could sign in and run reads from it, with Hard6 analysts reviewing each one before release.
For ownersbegin directly; introductions, no referral fees
Owners are welcome to begin with a consultation directly. Hard6's role is the evidence. For guidance and further counsel on the findings provided, Hard6 can introduce the owner to a qualified advisor, drawn from advisors we have worked with or matched to the decision at hand on the advisor's own public record. Hard6 does not accept referral fees.
Used for growth and investment, a sale or a purchase, or a handoff. The decision stays with the owner and their advisor.
Who We Area structural intelligence firm in Erie, Pennsylvania
Hard6 started in Erie as a veteran-owned firm and a 2026 Ben Franklin TechCelerator graduate. We put the method in front of local owners and advisors early, and we have built on what they told us. Every read holds to six principles:
Evidence, not advice.We show what the record says and how firmly it holds.
Scored, not asserted.Every finding carries a confidence score and its source.
Organizations, not people.We read the business, not anyone's private life.
The gap is part of the finding.Where the record runs out, we say so.
Checked by a person.Our AI engine assists; a Hard6 analyst reviews every finding before it reaches you.
Your data stays yours.Kept and stored on our own servers in Erie. Never sold, and used for your engagement alone.
The Peoplethe founders
Jessica M. Watts, MPH, BSN
Jessica runs Hard6: strategy, partnerships, finance and operations, and she signs off on every read before it reaches a client. Her public health training shapes how Hard6 sees its market. The wave of owners nearing retirement is a population-level problem: predictable, years in the making, and far easier to address early than late. Nineteen years in healthcare, most of them in chronic disease, taught her the same lesson up close. Hard6 reads each company the way public health reads a population, for the early signs, while there is still time to act.
Ivan F. Watts
Ivan built the Hard6 engine and the hardware it runs on, in Erie. He came to it from the military: a nuclear weapons specialist in the Air Force, then Army infantry, with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, work where precision and a clear chain of evidence were never optional. That discipline is what puts a score and a source on every Hard6 finding, and why the whole system, from the analysis to the servers it runs on, is built and kept in-house.
Start a Conversationevery engagement begins with a consultation
You tell us what the decision is, and Hard6 scopes the read around it.
Consultations are $400. Members of the Center for Family Business at Penn State Behrend receive member pricing.
Further work, from a single pressing question to a full structural engagement, is scoped and priced after the consultation. Advisor subscriptions are in development.
jessica.watts@hard6solutions.com
2617 Peach St., Suite 204, Erie, PA 16508