# Derek Pruitt, Director of Business Development at Vertex Supply Solutions — read of Manufacturing Procurement Contact Enricher, June 21 2026

> 14 years selling industrial components to OEM manufacturers. Currently managing a 6-person BD team and a ZoomInfo contract I can't justify at renewal. My oldest starts middle school in August and I coach 8-year-old baseball on Sunday mornings. I drive 38 minutes each way and listen to sales ops podcasts I mostly disagree with.

## How I got here

Googled "procurement contact database manufacturing" on a Tuesday after getting a bounce report back on a 400-name list we bought from a data broker in March. 31% hard bounces. I've been quietly shopping alternatives for two months. This came up on page two. I clicked because the name was literal and I'm tired of tools with names like "Nexus" or "Clearbit" that tell me nothing.

## What I clicked first

"Append verified procurement contacts to your prospect list in under 60 seconds." That's the hero. I clicked the "Try it" button immediately because I wanted to see what a live result actually looks like. I don't know what I got because I couldn't find a working demo that showed me real output. That line set an expectation the page didn't satisfy.

The phrase "LinkedIn + Directory Fusion" made me pause in a good way. "Supplier registries, SIC classifications, and facility-level intel" reads like someone who has actually tried to find a purchasing manager at a tier-two auto parts plant. That's specific enough to sound credible.

## Where I paused

The scoring section stopped me cold. "$-22,470 Year-1 take-home (Fermi)" and "1 in 8 meaningful-success odds." That's not product copy. That's investor deck risk disclosure. I sat there for a minute trying to figure out what I was actually looking at. This is not a tool I can subscribe to. This is a dossier about building that tool. I had to re-read the page twice to confirm that. The headline says "Start Enriching" but what they're actually selling me is a $99 playbook to go build an enriching product myself.

That's a significant bait-and-switch, even if it's technically disclosed.

## What I distrusted

"Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet. We shipped the strategy package; you ship the customer conversations."

I actually respect that they said it. I do not respect that it appears below three feature blocks ("Batch Enrichment API," "Real-Time Refresh") written in present tense as if the product exists and works. "Post a CSV of company names or Dunn numbers; get back 3-5 verified procurement contacts per facility." That reads as product documentation. It's not. It's a vision statement.

Also: "connection confidence scores" sounds made up. What does a 7/10 confidence score mean on a phone number? What's the methodology? Nothing here.

The stock art vibes are fine, actually. The thing that felt off was the scoring widget. "Buyer clarity: 10/10, distribution ease: 10/10" on an idea with a $-22k Year 1 estimate. Those two data points don't belong in the same paragraph. If distribution is a 10/10, why is the first-year take-home negative?

## What would convince me

I came here looking for a tool I can hand to my team next week. That's not what this is, so the persuasion problem is different than I expected.

If I were evaluating the $99 dossier as a potential side project: I'd want to see one real manufacturer's procurement org chart, anonymized, with a before/after showing what data you could actually surface versus what's in ZoomInfo today. Not a feature list. A side-by-side diff on a real facility. That would tell me whether the underlying data actually exists or whether this is a scraping project that's going to hit LinkedIn's legal team inside six months.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The page describes a "Batch Enrichment API" in present tense. Does that API exist, or is that the thing I'd be building if I bought the dossier? I genuinely cannot tell.

2. SIC classifications are from the 70s and NAICS replaced them for most federal sourcing purposes. Are you pulling from NAICS supplier registries, or is "SIC classifications" just a credibility signal word that sounds manufacturing-flavored?

3. You say "1 in 8 meaningful-success odds." What's meaningful success? Is that $10k ARR, $100k ARR, or "you got one paying customer"?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

If I'm a solo founder looking to build in the B2B data space, the honesty here is genuinely unusual and I might spend $5 to see the dossier. But the page is doing a bad job of knowing who it's talking to. I came here to buy a contact enrichment tool and found a pitch to build one. Those are different people with different questions, and right now the page is trying to serve both and landing on neither.

---
*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-21. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*