PitchBook, founded in 2007, is an award-winning private equity, venture capital, and mergers and acquisitions database with over 70,000 individual users throughout its customer base. It is well recognized for its private market database and reporting and data visualization services used largely by finance, investing, and sales professionals. The platform provides deep insights into over 3.5 million private and public companies throughout the globe, including access to financial histories, valuations, CEOs, and investors.
PitchBook also keeps an ever-expanding collection of data and records from over 1.9 million business transactions throughout the globe, including over 450,000 investors and 110,000 funds.
If you’re seeking business intelligence, venture capital, deal sourcing, private market intelligence, or completing due diligence on startups and other businesses, PitchBook is a beneficial platform. It is also an excellent platform for networking, fundraising, analyzing rivals, and allocating various asset classes throughout your investment portfolio.
PitchBook, like any market intelligence tool, offers advantages and disadvantages. Let’s have a look at them now:
PitchBook Strengths
- Access to a broad range of information, including corporate patents, financial analysis, and information on previous and present firm investors, among other things
- Advanced search filters provide investors with access to detailed information on companies.
- Emerging markets for investors seeking to profit from new and alternative marketplaces
- You may set up personalized notifications and monitor your dashboard for breaking news.
- Third-party software integration is supported.
PitchBook Weaknesses
- Does not have access to an expert call library.
- There is limited access to earnings transcripts and no SEC or worldwide filings.
- There is no access to sophisticated AI search capabilities or sentiment analysis.
- Users are not permitted to submit internal content to the platform.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis, enabled by natural language processing (NLP), is a platform feature that detects changes in a text’s tone and subjective meaning. It then employs color coding to assist readers in distinguishing the document’s positive, neutral, and negative thoughts.
This system offers a numerical sentiment change score to each search phrase, allowing users to monitor any tiny shift in market sentiment over time. Users can use this feature to detect subtle shifts in language that move markets and provide early indicators of shifting corporate performance.
Smart Synonyms™
Smart SynonymsTM technology is a unique feature powered by proprietary AI technology that analyzes the terms and intent underlying your search engine searches.
It employs powerful algorithms to remove noise from your search (i.e., content with matching keywords that is ultimately unrelated to your target). It capitalizes on language variants (for example, “impact investing” vs. “ESG investing”) to locate the specific information you want.
The AI search feature helps you quickly identify the documents and snippets most relevant to your search, freeing you time and energy for higher-level activities like analysis.
Smart Summaries
It takes a different approach than existing generative AI (genAI) tools that are targeted at consumer users and trained on publicly accessible content throughout the web. As a platform designed to power the world’s most important business and financial choices, our newest Smart SummariesTM feature relies on our 10+ years of AI tech development and a curated library of high-quality business content.
With Smart SummariesTM, you can rapidly gather corporate perspectives and develop an expert-approved SWOT analysis directly from previous rivals, partners, and workers, minimizing time spent on research during earnings season.
Integrations and APIs
Many market intelligence solutions now offer integration of internal content encompassing structured and unstructured data, but this content must be indexed and quickly accessible. A market intelligence platform should also allow you to add new external content sources (such as RSS or web content) to extract important insights from the platform’s analysis tools.
It integrates with widely used tools such as OneNote, SharePoint, and Evernote, allowing for faster communication with individuals throughout your business and increased team productivity. It also enables you to search across all internal and external corporate content for crucial insights, and the exclusive AI engine detects what other platforms overlook in a safe and automated manner.
Pricing
It provides its tools at different prices depending on your company’s needs. Sign up for a free two-week trial to experience the power of real-time search and market intelligence, or contact the It Team for pricing information.
Bloomberg Terminal
Bloomberg Terminal is a great alternative to PitchBook for qualitative research. It was one of the earliest software solutions created before computers and the internet was prevalent in business, making it a pioneer in the financial market data arena.
Bloomberg Terminal is a dependable global source for investment banks, traders, asset managers, and hedge fund managers.
- Bloomberg Terminal is a dependable global source for investment banks, traders, assetmanagers, and hedge fund managers.
- From internal and external sources, proprietary research and analytics
Opportunities for collaboration with over 325,000 professionals and decision-makers. - Tools for order management and market execution.
- Pre- and post-trade evaluations
- Gaining access to finance markets
- Charts, monitors, and alarms for market information may be customized.
Bloomberg Terminal, like PitchBook, is an expensive solution that costs about $2,000 per month or $24,000 per year, much above the budget of most small and medium-sized businesses. Furthermore, it features a high learning curve and a more complicated and cumbersome user interface for financial service users.
- From internal and external sources, proprietary research and analytics
Factset
Factset has operated since the 1970s, making it one of the most established financial research tools today. As a result, it has a large buy-side and sell-side user base, with over 7000 businesses and 180,000 individual users. It is a trustworthy platform for investors, asset managers, traders, and investment bankers all around the globe.
As a PitchBook rival, one of its most notable features is a vast data library with over 30 distinct datasets. Twenty-four of these are proprietary. It’s an excellent platform for:
- Investment research
- Portfolio analysis
- Data solution
- Professional services
- Quantitative research
- ESG investing
Despite having some of the world’s best customer assistance and experience, Factset needs to catch up, particularly in qualitative analysis. Furthermore, it excludes other types of research, such as broker analysis and expert calls.
S&P Capital IQ
S&P Capital IQ is one of the world’s major suppliers of financial information services. It is a comprehensive research platform for enterprises of all sizes, governments, private equity firms, and academic institutions. Users get in-depth analyses of: as part of its service.
- Public company financial data
- Private company and private market data access
- ESG scores, reports news and analytics
- Supply chain intelligence
- Breaking news
- Real-time market prices
This tool is accessible across platforms and may be used to set up real-time alerts, watchlists, notifications, and industry analysis. It may also be integrated with Microsoft tools, such as Excel, to make it a platform that fits easily into your workflow.
S&P Capital IQ, like Bloomberg Terminal, is very pricey, costing almost $13,000 per seat yearly with a minimum of three users. It also has a high learning curve, making it difficult for new users to benefit.
Crunchbase
It is a sales intelligence platform with over 75 million free and paid users. Crunchbase is a popular alternative: Crunchbase has data derived from their investor network, contributor community, and business self-submissions.
- Identifying critical relationships inside companies, especially in the startup environment
- Looking for new business possibilities, especially for individuals or small businesses
- Deal sourcing and outreach
- While users like how quickly the platform connects with major sales tools such as CRMs and outreach platforms, the extent and depth of market intelligence are significantly more restricted than with other rivals.
Crunchbase also lacks sophisticated search features such as synonym recognition, and its data sets do not contain expert calls, earnings transcripts, or brokerage reports. Duplicate entries and obsolete information have also been persistent concerns, even for Crunchbase’s well-known business overviews and organizational charts.
Crunchbase works well for individual consumers or small businesses—salespeople, entrepreneurs, investors, and market researchers use it to prospect for new business opportunities—but it falls short for enterprise users and individual users looking to conduct more in-depth research on markets and companies.
How to Choose an Alternative to PitchBook
PitchBook is a one-stop shop for most market intelligence needs. While it may satisfy certain expectations, it has flaws. Consider the following qualities while searching for an alternative:
Pricing: PitchBook is costly for many businesses, so choose an alternative based on your budget. Choose a platform that provides flexible subscriptions or a pricing plan that fits your budget.
PitchBook provides a straightforward user interface and user experience compared to many rivals. Opt for a platform that is easy to use and has a user-friendly interface for filtering and customizing data.
Data coverage: PitchBook provides a wealth of data points on various markets, including private equity, venture capital, and mergers and acquisitions. Check that your preferred alternative offers access to the markets you’re interested in and substantial data coverage in those locations.
Find a platform that has accurate, up-to-date, and dependable data. Here, user reviews and ratings can assist you make smarter judgments.
Additional features: Opt for a platform with unique features like analytics, news, research reports, and smart search capability to make a difference. These value-added services help you make better investment choices.
