Crayon headquartered in Boston offers the Crayon Intel Pro marketing intelligence suite, including competitive intel and analysis, market and product trends, and search tools (e.g. filters and views) for making data intelligible.
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PitchBook
Score8.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
PitchBook is a resource for data, research, and insights spanning the global capital markets. Founded in 2007 and acquired by Morningstar in 2016, PitchBook's data on the private and public markets helps business professionals discover and execute opportunities.
Elsewhere in my review, I've talked about Crayon's incredible capabilities to track competitors, make ingesting intelligence about those competitors automatic, and how easily it incorporates that intelligence into dynamically and automatically-updated battlecards. I've also talked about their expanding use of AI to improve user experience and to improve the final work of CI professionals. All of which is to say that Crayon is the best tool I've ever used for intelligence analysis- it's incredible. Another area of consideration is analytics, particularly around win/loss data - Crayon's integration with Salesforce creates insightful analytics for understanding which competitors you're winning against, which you're losing against, which sellers are having a hard time, which are succeeding, and which sellers are utilizing the battlecards during the sales cycle. Proving ROI is simple with Crayon's analytics, as well, with a tool to show how much revenue you (as an individual) or your team have influenced with your battlecards.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
PitchBook is excellent for building a rolodex of contacts, especially for firms which may be newer and lacking an established reputation within their given industry. I have used it as a tool to identify groups which may be interested in equity investments in one-off real estate deals, though the platform more prominently features groups which are more interested in programmatic/JV fund structures. PitchBook can also be useful as a tool for identifying industry trends, as it tends to capture creation of new funds and their investment appetites at any given time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crayon has been innovative in incorporating AI into the tool, both to enhance productivity and to enhance the outcomes of analysis. The fantastic thing is these features started rudimentary, have gotten better, and are set to get better still - I could recommend this to Crayon as an area for improvement (I suppose), but they're already working to take advantage of the latest AI features to make the user experience and our outputs even better.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It would be nice to have the best parts of the deal tab merged into the general information tab for a company.
If possible, gather more information on certain executives. There are use cases where our clients want us to research candidates who may not have much information on LinkedIn or RocketReach.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crayon is super easy to use - regardless of level in the organization. As a power user, it's easy to curate the most important information about competitors and then distribute it out to leadership and other teams so that they can stay informed on the most important competitor trends. It allows me to share out information via email or through Slack and our competitive intel channel
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I think its a great platform as is. Its usable and we get most of the information as and when we need. I don't like the landing page after login, so I don't like to go to PitchBook every day to review daily updates on the industry. It's way too cluttered and requires MFA every time
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The overall support for PitchBook is about average. It is not excellent for two primary reasons. First, PitchBook can run slow from time to time, and I cannot copy and paste from the Chrome extension. I have found neither of those issues to be a function of the computer I am using. However, the PitchBook support team has proved helpful on several occasions.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The core features of all of these are essentially the same. Crayon Impact (the win/loss side) is what won us over compared to the other tools that we demoed.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I also use SignalNFX, but it doesn't exist in the dropbox. Signal is a much more practical tool when it comes to a preliminary search, and when it comes to connecting with the right person. It scrapes your gmail history and linkedin to find who you're really connected to and figures out how to leverage that to get an intro. Sales NAVIGATOR is better for massive outbound, but not very relevant otherwise. PitchBook's real value is in the database. It won't help you reach out, but it sure will find you every single VC firm that could ever invest in your company.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Crayon has centralized what was previously a dispersed collection of competitive intelligence analysis, streamlined sharing of competitive insights, and allowed the CI Team unprecedented visibility into our impact on the business. This helps our business by: making sharing of analysis more efficient and creating a self-serve mechanism among our stakeholders, reducing the number of bespoke requests we receive; fostering competitive discussions among the wider workforce, which pulls in multiple perspective to ultimately shape and improve the quality of finished analysis; clarifying the impact of the CI Team's role on the business, which makes discussions around ROI with leadership much easier now that they're backed by hard numbers rather than a reliance on anecdotal evidence.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
