The Gravity System · Methodology

How Gravity reads a market.

Gravity is a decision system for CPG concepts. It structures fragmented market evidence drawn from nine public evidence streams, cross-references each signal against independent sources, weights what survives, and converts recurring patterns into a scored diagnosis and one clear next move. As of August 2026 it holds 21,170 classified signals across 18 CPG categories.

Nine evidence streams 21,170 classified signals 18 categories U.S. market only

What Gravity reads

Nine independent evidence streams. One source is a signal; repetition across sources that do not depend on each other is a pattern. Every stream below lists what it reveals, what is actually read, and what the repetition tells you.

01Consumer Behavior

What people repeatedly want, question, reject, complain about, and integrate into their routines.

Sources read
  • Reddit
  • TikTok
  • Instagram
  • Amazon reviews
  • Search behavior
  • YouTube creator content & video analysis
Helps distinguish isolated conversation from repeated consumer needs, language, usage patterns, friction, and adoption behavior.

02Market Momentum

Where attention, demand, and category activity appear to be accumulating.

Sources read
  • Public trade press
  • Category news
  • Food Navigator
  • Nutrition Business Journal
  • BevNET
  • NOSH
  • Public market summaries
  • Keyword activity
  • Search trends
  • Product-launch activity
Helps identify whether interest is isolated, accelerating, broadening across channels, or beginning to form a category movement.

03Public Industry Research

Publicly available market evidence from research firms, consultancies, institutions, and industry organizations.

Sources read
  • Public reports
  • Published articles
  • Research summaries
  • Charts
  • Press releases
  • Public excerpts
  • Institutional publications
  • Public content from Euromonitor, SPINS, NielsenIQ, Mintel, Circana, McKinsey & similar
Provides established benchmarks, market context, and validation against broader industry evidence.
Gravity does not claim licensed access to proprietary paid databases or subscription-only research unless explicitly stated.

04Product & Market Activity

How products are positioned, priced, formulated, packaged, and presented.

Sources read
  • Amazon product pages
  • Public brand websites
  • Product claims
  • Positioning language
  • Pricing
  • Packaging
  • Formulation benchmarks
  • Open product databases
  • OpenFoodFacts
Helps reveal recurring product conventions, claim saturation, format concentration, pricing patterns, and emerging product logic.

05Retail & Channel Signals

What the market looks like where products are actually sold.

Sources read
  • Public retailer assortments
  • Brand count by category
  • Average price
  • Average rating
  • Format mix
  • Public distributor frameworks
  • Channel structures
  • Operator-informed velocity logic
Helps connect market interest with shelf reality, channel fit, assortment density, price expectations, and likely execution pressure.

06Podcast & Expert Intelligence

What founders, operators, investors, buyers, and category experts are discussing before it becomes formal market consensus.

Sources read
  • Taste Radio
  • CPG Guys
  • BevNET
  • Category Visionaries
  • Public podcast episodes
  • Show notes
  • Interviews
  • Expert commentary
Helps identify early operator concerns, emerging category language, new strategic priorities, and signals that have not yet entered formal reports.

07Industry Events Signals

What is being repeatedly discussed, questioned, or prioritized across industry events.

Sources read
  • Public conference agendas
  • Speaker sessions
  • Panels
  • Presentation summaries
  • Published interviews
  • Event reports
  • Public conference content
Helps detect recurring themes, shared concerns, emerging terminology, and shifts in industry attention.

08Brand Case Studies

Patterns learned from how real CPG brands launch, grow, reposition, scale, stall, or fail.

Sources read
  • Structured CPG brand library
  • Public launch histories
  • Growth paths
  • Channel expansion
  • Repositioning
  • Portfolio changes
  • Pricing changes
  • Capital events
  • Stagnation
  • Failure cases
Powers the analogical reasoning layer by comparing a current concept or question with relevant precedents and known failure modes.

09Ingredient & Formulation Evidence

What ingredients may credibly support, where interest is growing, and where formulation or claims risk begins.

Sources read
  • Ingredient libraries
  • PubMed
  • NutraIngredients
  • Public scientific publications
  • Claim substantiation
  • Safety context
  • Formulation signals
  • Ingredient adoption patterns
Helps assess ingredient credibility, emerging interest, claim support, formulation fit, and potential scientific or regulatory risk.

How much of it there is

A point-in-time snapshot of the classified corpus, August 2026. Streams refresh on different cadences, so these counts move.

StreamWhat it holdsSignals
Live Intel FeedCompetitive moves, funding rounds, retail expansions and category launches, tracked twice weekly.5,898
Research FindingsStructured findings extracted from category reports, market studies and industry research.4,667
PDF Library SignalsSignals classified out of 85 full-text research documents held in the library.4,013
Ingredient SignalsSocial velocity, formulation trends, clinical signals and adoption patterns, by ingredient.2,694
Market TrendsDirectional category movement — where attention and demand are accumulating.1,599
Consumer IntelReview mining, consumer language, friction points and stated unmet needs.1,464
Brand IntelDeep profiles across tracked competitors — GTM, velocity, repeat, and live competitive signal.835
TotalAcross 18 CPG categories, including 85 full-text research documents21,170

How evidence becomes a decision

Seven steps. The evidence enters as scattered public artefacts and leaves as one recommendation with its reasoning visible.

01

Structure

Scattered inputs comparable structure

Evidence arrives in incompatible shapes — a review, a podcast transcript, a retailer assortment, a research chart. Step one makes them comparable.

02

Cross-reference

Isolated signals connected evidence

A signal is checked against the other streams. One source saying something is an anecdote; several independent sources saying it is evidence.

03

Weight

Raw signals weighted evidence

Not all evidence carries equal weight. Source independence, recency, specificity and corroboration determine how much a signal counts.

04

Recognize Patterns

Weighted evidence emerging pattern

Repetition across independent streams is what separates a pattern from noise. This is the step that reads a market before it becomes a trend.

05

Compare

Pattern precedent

The pattern is compared against brand case precedent — what happened to products that met similar conditions.

06

Diagnose

Evidence clear diagnosis

Market, product and business model are read together, surfacing what holds, what conflicts, and what is still unproven.

07

Recommend

Diagnosis one clear next move

The diagnosis converts into a recommendation a founder can act on, with the reasoning visible.

The system produces three outputs

Ask Gravity helps you understand the market. Gravity Scan evaluates the concept. Aterra helps make the decision.

01 · Understand the market

Ask Gravity

Focused market questions, supporting evidence, and one clear next move.

Ask Gravity →
02 · Evaluate the concept

Gravity Scan

Complete concept diagnosis through the Gravity decision framework, returned as a Gravity Intelligence Brief.

Run a Gravity Scan →
03 · Decide

Aterra Studio

Senior interpretation, prioritization, and strategic guidance from an operator.

Work with Aterra →

What Gravity does not claim

A methodology is only as credible as the boundaries it states. These are the limits, stated plainly.

Gravity does not license proprietary paid databases.

Where public excerpts from firms such as Euromonitor, SPINS, NielsenIQ, Mintel or Circana are read, they are public excerpts. Gravity does not claim subscription-level access to those datasets, and does not resell them.

Gravity is not a consumer panel.

It does not run surveys, recruit respondents, or simulate synthetic consumers. It reads behaviour that already happened in public — reviews, search, assortment, launches, conversation.

Gravity reads the U.S. market.

The corpus is built for U.S. category conditions. A read on another market would be inference, not evidence, and is out of scope.

A Gravity read is a decision input, not a guarantee.

It reports what the available evidence supports and where it is thin. Markets move, and evidence can be absent rather than negative — the brief says which.

Streams refresh on different cadences.

The live intel feed is tracked twice weekly; research and library signals update as documents are added; some slower-moving streams refresh on a longer cycle. Counts on this page are a point-in-time snapshot.

Questions about the method

What data does Gravity actually use?

Gravity reads nine public evidence streams: consumer behaviour, market momentum, public industry research, product and market activity, retail and channel signals, podcast and expert intelligence, industry event signals, brand case studies, and ingredient and formulation evidence. As of August 2026 that amounts to 21,170 classified signals across 18 CPG categories.

Is Gravity based on licensed market research data?

No. Gravity reads publicly available evidence, including public excerpts and summaries from major research firms. It does not hold subscription-level access to proprietary databases and does not resell licensed data. Where a benchmark comes from a public excerpt, that is what it is.

How is this different from a consumer panel or a focus group?

A panel asks people what they would do. Gravity reads what people already did — what they bought, reviewed, searched for, complained about and repurchased — alongside what the shelf, the trade press and operators are doing. It is evidence of revealed behaviour rather than stated intent, and it runs in minutes rather than weeks.

What makes something a pattern rather than a signal?

One source is a signal. Repetition across independent sources becomes a pattern. Gravity weights evidence by source independence, recency, specificity and corroboration, and only treats something as a pattern when it recurs across streams that do not depend on each other.

Does Gravity use synthetic consumers or AI-generated respondents?

No. Every signal traces to a real, public artefact — a review, a listing, a transcript, a document, an assortment. AI is used to classify and cross-reference that evidence, not to invent respondents.

How current is the data?

The live intel feed is tracked twice weekly. Research and library signals update as documents are added. Counts published here are a snapshot taken in August 2026; slower-moving streams refresh on a longer cycle, so individual stream ages vary.

Can I see what a finished Gravity read looks like?

Yes — a complete worked example is published as a sample Gravity Intelligence Brief, showing the scoring, the evidence cited, and the recommendation.

Who built this?

Gustavo Nader, founder of Aterra Studio and co-founder of AMAZ, a functional beverage brand distributed through Whole Foods, Erewhon and Sprouts. The interpretation layer is built from operating the exact decisions Gravity reads.

Written and maintained by Gustavo Nader, founder of Aterra Studio and co-founder of AMAZ — a functional beverage brand distributed through Whole Foods, Erewhon and Sprouts, and an Expo West Top 5 pick. Gravity's interpretation layer is built from operating the exact decisions it reads.

Published 2026-08-05 · Last reviewed 2026-08-05 · Corpus snapshot August 2026 · See a worked example →