Southern Pulse differs from larger competitors in the industry for five principal reasons:

1. We are a network first, a business second – When Southern Pulse began operating as a private investigations firm in late 2004, its founders – an investigative journalist and two federal police investigators – had already spent, collectively, over three decades of developing relationships across Latin America and beyond. They decided to bootstrap the business by leveraging this considerable network.

As a result, we are not a room full of analysts researching on Google en Español. We’re a living, breathing network of professionals across the region. Southern Pulse leverages a networked effect created by a critical mass of sources to collect information for our clients.

2. Decentralized – Southern Pulse has never had a central base of operations. As our network has grown, we’ve developed hubs of business development in Annapolis, Houston, Miami, New York, and Zurich, and of operations in Mexico City, San Salvador, Bogotá, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago. We communicate in the cloud and operate on the ground. The compounded effect is a low overhead and the competitive prices we pass along to our clients.

3. Offline focused – Our clients receive reports written from information sourced exclusively offline. When Southern Pulse refers to a media report, it’s footnoted because all Southern Pulse reports are prepared based on ground truth sourcing, not search engines or sophisticated web searches.

4. Regionally Focused – Southern Pulse is exclusively focused on Latin America, and has been since its inception as a business in 2004, and well before, dating back to the early 1980s of relationship-building with sources, operators, and others across the Western Hemisphere. Our mission is to be a top-of-class consulting firm for companies, governments, and individuals with exposure or investment interests in Latin America.

We recognize, however, that clients often have collection and reporting needs for countries outside the region, so we have endeavored to build complementary relationships with partners that are strong in several areas of the world and the security industry.

5. We can say “no” – Our clients know that we are an organization that can say no. We know where our network is strong and where it is weak. When clients ask for collection in areas where we have less experience, we are transparent and honest. We would rather say "slow" or "we need more time," or even “no,” and retain the relationship than say yes and deliver sub-quality work. We see ourselves as long term advisors rather than a single contract provider.