PE Stack’s thoughts on Pitchbook and eVestment’s Data Partnership

Two of the leading names in the private fund data world recently announced a partnership that sees Pitchbook’s fund performance and firm data available to users of eVestment’s Private Markets product. In addition, Pitchbook’s benchmarks will also be accessible to eVestment users.

What PE Stack says:

Since the NASDAQ acquisition, eVestment has been one of the most exciting vendors to watch, with this deal the latest in a series of acquisitions and partnerships that have enabled them to gather serious momentum in the private fund space.

I know first-hand that building and maintaining a high-quality source of performance data is tough, both in terms of assembling the data set in the first place, but perhaps more importantly in terms of building a good reputation. Pitchbook is one of a select group of trusted vendors with performance data and benchmarks which are high-quality and suitable for vital tasks such as due diligence.

I believe that by partnering with Pitchbook instead of building a competing dataset, eVestment put themselves in a strong position where their excellent tools and analytics can be accessed without having to convince users to switch to a new set of benchmarks and performance metrics. Don’t under-estimate how important consistency is for many GPs and especially LPs in the space.

It’s a smart strategy that will allow eVestment to attract new clients at a fast pace – especially on the GP and LP side. For Pitchbook, this move cements their position as a trusted provider for fundraising and due diligence data, and will increase their exposure to end-users on both the supply and buy side of the fundraising market.

I expect to see more deals which bring external data sets directly into eVestment’s growing ecosystem. Their mix of high-quality internal data products (Public Plan IQ), powerful tools (TopQ) and willingness to incorporate external data sources is unique in the market today. What makes the offering especially compelling to me is the effort that eVestment have put into integrating their portfolio of products into a powerful, inter-connected suite.

For more information on the specifics of the deal, please see the information page here:

https://www.evestment.com/privatemarkets/pitchbook-data-partnership/