Bloomberg Terminal vs. PitchBook

Depending on which area of the finance sector you may work in, the Bloomberg Terminal will have plenty of helpful functionality for you. Two specific scenarios for myself in the Structured Finance area are tracking the pricing benchmark and following outstanding deals in the market. You can follow progress of the deals, how well they are advancing, and final pricing details

Incentivized

For our business being able to segregate and prioritise data is essential in keeping overall costs down. Rather than targeted thousands of accounts we need to be able to reduce this number or at least manage which are prioritised first. Whilst it is not the only data vendor we use it is an important one in filling gaps that others do not seem to have reliable information for. It is not the best tool for mapping in revenue or employee size, which is not essential for us as we have other data vendor contracts that have this information.

Incentivized

• Communicating with investors, banks, partners, etc
• Tracking key market metrics
• Monitoring existing and previous structured finance deals

Incentivized

• PitchBook provides a very comprehensive database of not just companies and investors but also M&A activity, financials, funds and LPs.
• Pitchbook is multi-dimensional it how it can be used. For example, it can help to accomplish various business objectives, including deal sourcing, due diligence, private market intelligence and fundraising.
• PitchBook has an easy-to-navigate user interface. It enables the user to quickly find the data and information that he or she needs.

Incentivized

• Visual user interface
• A lot of functionality, need tutorials and lessons to narrow down
• Expensive!
• Some information may be delayed

Incentivized

• more accurate information about valuation
• If you can get PPS that would be amazing for further analysis
• Send me alerts
• I have had to change my profile quite frequently as it is in accurate so I imagine that is the case for others

Incentivized

I personally love the organization structure of PitchBook. I think others like the UI of Crunchbase but I am not a fan of CB. It is too flashy. PitchBook gives you eveyrhign you need and makes it black and white. No need to flash up the data.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

While there are a lot of competitive services in the marketplace, each good in its own right, the Bloomberg Terminal is considered the top product. It has key fast information and can help individuals make fast decisions. It also has a top-tier support desk that can answer questions for you and teach you functionality to apply to your role

Incentivized

Certain regards, such as comprehensiveness and ability to store and export searches and data related to searches PitchBook performs better than the above and remains our go to tool. However we also use DealRoom to supplement some of that data to ensure comprehensiveness and accuracy. Crunchbase appears less sophisticated and hence less relevant for us

Incentivized

• Appropriate pricing of deals due to market comparisons
• Instant communication with key stakeholders
• Top and quick newsbreaks

Incentivized

• I'll pull ~25 company descriptions on occassion instead of writing them myself. Each time I grab one of those I'm saving myself 2-3 minutes. Easily save an hour+ on this simple / repetitive task related to a daily / weekly work product.
• If I want to understand other companies in the industry, PB's search function will save me from skimming the internet for hours. This can result in 4-7 hours of time savings across a more macro or industry-wide project.
• Quickly finding who invested in an asset can save sometimes 30-45 minutes of searching the internet. While I wish it provided more details on the specific fund that invested (i.e., Fund IV), it provides sufficient direction for me to begin searching internal databases.

Incentivized