Item: PitchBook
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with PitchBook

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Below are the most frequent use cases for Pitchbook at my organization:
* Private markets screening landscape. Understand what companies exist in the sector of interest, who owns them, what their latest financing looks like, and the latest metrics available.
* Review private and public comparables. Will utilize Pitchbook's suggested comparables that often provide a good starting point.
* Utilize broad market research provided by Pitchbook on a monthly / quarterly basis.
* Understand what portfolio companies exist within a fund.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Historical deal dynamics detailing pricing and financing as well as which parties worked on the transaction
Initial screenign on public and private comparables
Breadth of private companie details including descriptions, financials, etc.
Ability to filter / sort and eventually export details on private companies

Cons

Public information severely lacks competitors like CapIQ. It's UX is inferior and hallucinates information more frequently
Excel based tool is not nearly as robust as competitors from my experience. There is also a limit in many cases on the amount of data that you can pull into excel. This can be frustrating at times
While the alert functionality is interesting, setting it up is unintuitive and often takes more time than it should.
Fund performance data is dificult to get and is innacurate relative to competitors.

Return on Investment

Would have to do my own web scrape or pay another party to execute that request which would be thousands of dollars and not as extensive as PB's offering.
If building an M&A target landscape, PB is an excellent resource in understanding who industry participants are and who may or may not be interested in selling.
Saved 30-60 minutes countless times from the brevity of information provided on a single company. Ability to understand historical cap table and latest available financials makes a dramatic difference.

Customer Service

I appreciate PB's chat feature and the ability to connect directly with a customer support representative regarding my current workflow. The part I don't enjoy as much is how difficult it is to speak with someone live. I can get on the phone with someone 24/7 and have them walk through my specific challenge in detail. It takes a sizable amount of time to get on the phone with an expert at PB.

Comprehensive Data Quality

Company utilizes PB's market mapping features to understand who industry participants are and what their relative size is (whether by financials, sponsor size, # of active markets, fundraising rounds, etc.). It's easy to put together and save a specific search then export that data for further analysis. Appreciate that the search is saved and I can re-run that same analysis in 6-12 months to see how things have evolved.

Usability

Overall, Pitchbook is quite intuitive to use; however, I do find that it took some time to get up to speed on certain features. While the search and filtering functionality is helpful from the get go, the advanced features took some practice to master and ensure I was maximizing that experience. As a member of a larger organization, I with that PB took more initiative to explain in detail the use cases for common features that other colleagues have found helpful. Competitors do a better job at this in my opinion.

Alternatives Considered

S&P Capital IQ and AlphaSense

Products mentioned have similar but different use cases. First off, PB has better private company data than both of these (for now). I use CapIQ for public company data which PB lacks in many regards. I could see Alpha Sense taking priority over PB as the data offered on that platform is lacking at this time, but could overtake PB in short order. Alpha Sense's AI offering is extensive and is leaps ahead of PB at this time. It could eventually replace our PB subscription all together.

Key Insights

Do you think PitchBook delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with PitchBook's feature set?

Yes

Did PitchBook live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of PitchBook go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy PitchBook again?

Yes

Other Software Used

AlphaSense, S&P Capital IQ, Preqin

Likelihood to Recommend

Scenarios where PB stands out:
* If you're doing a market mapping exercise to understand the landscape and key participants, PB is excellent at filtering across various regions, industries, sizes, ownership types, etc. It's extensive and extremely helpful when understanding industry participants.
* When interested in a specific company and wanting to knkow more about historical ownership, PB is an excellent resource. I appreciate how quickly I can understand who all of the participants are as well as the advisors on each of the deals.

PitchBook Feature Ratings

Comments

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Pitchbook Use in Private Equity