Pure Chain Advisory is an independent research and diligence firm working with founders and operators of life-science, supplement, and wellness brands. Every engagement is fixed-fee, scoped to a specific question, and ends with a written deliverable under NDA.
Founders building in regulated consumer health categories — supplements, functional wellness, longevity, recovery, and adjacent categories — face a recurring problem: every supplier, every label claim, and every market entry decision sits on a stack of unverified inputs. We are the firm operators retain to verify those inputs in writing before a decision is made.
We organize our practice around the three questions founders most often retain outside counsel to answer. Every project resolves to a fixed-fee scope and a written report you can put in front of a board, an investor, or a partner.
Independent review of supplier credentials, quality systems, certificates of analysis, batch traceability, and historical regulatory posture. Output: a red-flag matrix, scored remediation list, and recommendation memo.
A walk-through of applicable federal and state frameworks for your category and your sales channels. Label-claim audit, marketing-language review, and a pre-launch checklist tailored to your structure.
Research-roadmap counsel for founders deciding what to investigate next. Competitive landscape assessment, protocol-design review, and a prioritized agenda of what is worth your time and what is not.
We have refined a five-step process that keeps engagements predictable for founders and rigorous on our side. You see scope before you see an invoice. You see findings before you see a final report. Nothing surprises you.
A 30-to-45 minute call, on the record, to understand the question you need answered, the decision it informs, and the timeline you are working against. We come prepared with a one-page brief on what we already know about your category.
A two-to-three page proposal: defined scope, named deliverables, fixed fee, and timeline. NDA executed before any work product changes hands. If the scope shifts mid-engagement, we issue a written amendment — never a surprise invoice.
We review documentation, conduct supplier interviews where authorized, consult our reference network of formulators and former regulators, and pressure-test claims against primary sources. You receive weekly status updates.
Before the final report, we share a draft of preliminary findings on a 30-minute call. This is the moment to flag scope gaps, raise objections, or redirect. Most clients use this call to commission a follow-on workstream.
A final written report, formatted for board distribution, delivered with a walkthrough call. Thirty days of follow-up support are included on every engagement — clarifying questions, supplemental memos, and revisions are absorbed into the original fee.
Excerpts from anonymized written notes prepared for clients over the past quarter. Names and identifying details have been removed; the analytical posture has not. These are illustrative of the kind of writing every engagement produces.
"The supplier presented a clean current-quarter certificate package. Three quarters earlier, however, the same facility had filed an amendment to a prior batch attribution that no representative referenced in our intake call. The omission is the finding, not the amendment itself…"
[Replace with real published note]"Two of the three claims are defensible under current substantiation but become reputational liabilities under the heightened scrutiny that a priced round invites. The third claim is not defensible and should have been retired the moment the marketing team adopted it…"
[Replace with real published note]"Founders default to asking what to investigate next. The more useful question, almost always, is what to stop investigating — which active workstream is consuming senior bandwidth without a clear path to an investor-grade answer? In this case, two of four lines were candidates for sunset…"
[Replace with real published note]The most expensive mistake a founder makes in our category is paying a vendor before they have read what an independent reviewer would have written about that vendor. Our practice exists to compress that gap.
Engagements are scoped per question and priced to the work, with a clear ladder from single-item desk reviews up through standing retainer relationships. Below are the typical bands a question lands in. The exact figure is set in writing during the proposal step and does not move once agreed. Smaller items below the engagement-letter threshold are billed per-item against a published rate card; larger items are billed fixed-fee against a written engagement letter.
| Engagement type | Typical band | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Desk item · single document or question | $40 – $250 | Per-item rate card for narrow tactical work that does not warrant a full engagement letter. Common items: single-document review at $40, fifteen-minute founder consult at $80, one-question written response at $120, two-question briefing at $180, three-page short brief at $250. Booked from the rate card; no NDA required for single-document or public-source items. |
| Briefing call & written summary | $250 – $750 | A 60-minute conversation followed by a one-to-three page written summary. Used by founders preparing for an investor meeting, a board update, or a partner conversation. NDA executed before the call. |
| Research note | $750 – $1,500 | A short-form written note (5–15 pages) on a defined question. Often a regulatory framework summary, a competitive landscape brief, or a label-claim audit. Delivered in one to two weeks. |
| Diligence engagement | $1,500 – $15,000 | A full diligence cycle on a vendor, a regulatory question, or a strategic decision. Includes scoping, documentation review, reference interviews, draft preview, final written report, and 30 days of follow-up support. |
| Retainer advisory | $3,000 – $25,000 / quarter | Ongoing relationship for founders who want a standing line to senior counsel. Includes a 24–48 hour response window on inbound questions, a monthly review, and a quarterly written briefing on category developments. |
Desk items invoice from the published rate card. Engagements invoice fixed-fee against a written engagement letter. No hourly creep. Retainer clients receive 24–48hr response on inbound questions. A $40 desk item and a $14,000 diligence run through the same accounting line; the figure on the invoice is exactly the figure on the rate card or in the proposal.
Boutique advisory firms tell you what they do. The more useful disclosure is what they do not. Here is ours, in writing, before you spend the time on a scoping call.
The scoping conversation is complimentary. The proposal is fixed-fee. The deliverable is in writing.
Founders and operators of US-based life-science, supplement, and wellness brands — usually post-revenue, usually pre-Series-B, often weighing a vendor decision, a category expansion, or an investor conversation. We also advise acquirers performing pre-purchase vendor review on target companies in the same category.
Hourly billing rewards the slowest answer. Our work product is a written deliverable on a defined question; the right structure prices the question, not the time. Founders also tell us hourly bills are unforecastable for a small operating budget. Fixed-fee fixes the forecast on day one.
The bands above represent typical pricing across our practice. Most briefing and research-note engagements settle between $250 and $1,500. Most diligence engagements settle between $1,500 and $15,000 depending on supplier count and documentation depth. Retainer relationships are custom-priced quarterly, with an entry band of $3,000 per quarter.
The exact figure is fixed in writing during the proposal step and does not move during the engagement.
Briefing calls and short-form notes deliver in three to ten business days. Standard diligence engagements run two to four weeks from signed proposal to written report. Larger multi-vendor reviews or regulatory engagements can run six weeks; we will tell you the timeline before you sign anything, and we hold to it.
No. Ever. The firm's revenue comes exclusively from the founders and operators that retain us. We do not take referral fees, broker commissions, percentage-of-deal arrangements, equity-in-lieu-of-fees, or affiliate compensation from any party we review. This is the structural feature that makes our findings worth what you pay for them.
The work product is yours. You may distribute the report internally, share it with your board, with investors, or with counsel. We retain a copy under NDA for our own records and for the 30-day follow-up window. We never share, resell, or syndicate client work product.
Yes. An NDA is executed before any sensitive material changes hands — typically alongside the written proposal in step two of our methodology. We work with the client's preferred form. If the client does not have a preferred form, we provide a mutual NDA that has been negotiated through prior engagements.
Routinely. Many engagements are commissioned alongside, or routed through, the client's law firm or finance team. We are comfortable operating under privilege when counsel directs the engagement, and we will execute any required tripartite confidentiality arrangement.
Briefing calls and short-form notes are invoiced in full on engagement. Larger engagements are invoiced 50 percent on signed proposal and 50 percent on delivery of the written report. Retainer relationships are invoiced quarterly in advance. Payment is by card or ACH; we do not accept cash, wire transfers from third parties, or crypto.
No. Every note is prepared for a single client and remains confidential. The "Recent Notes" section above is a small sample of writing from anonymized engagements, published with explicit client consent and with all identifying material removed.
The firm is US-based and our regulatory practice focuses on US federal and state frameworks. We will accept engagements from non-US clients selling into the US market. We do not currently advise on EU, UK, Canadian, or APAC frameworks; for those questions we refer to firms in-region.
Send a brief note through the form below, or email us directly. One paragraph describing the situation is sufficient — we will respond within one business day to schedule the complimentary scoping conversation. From scoping call to signed proposal is typically 48 to 72 hours.
One paragraph is enough. We respond within one business day to schedule the complimentary scoping conversation.
Practice references reflect categories of independent counsel commonly engaged. Illustrative only.
