Until 2022, private markets benefited from favorable macroeconomic trends ranging from low-interest rates to high credit availability, and increasing valuations. But when job markets tightened and inflation skyrocketed in June of last year, interest rates rose and the market declined.
As the economic landscape quickly devolved, it became imperative for investors to perform due diligence so as to ensure portfolio diversification and investment activity. But how does one conduct private market research when the companies and their data are, in fact, private?
The answer: innovative market intelligence tools that go beyond Google’s search capabilities to help you uncover insights.
Below, learn the top challenges that come with performing private market research and how AlphaSense can help you overcome them with critical content sets and AI-search capabilities.
Top Challenges
Today, professionals face three challenges when conducting research without a market intelligence tool:
- Limited data availability
- Searching across disparate sources
- Time-consuming research processes
For most, data availability proves to be the biggest hurdle in conducting thorough due diligence since private information is less readily available than public company information. Private companies aren’t regulated like public companies, which means they are not required to follow the reporting laws that public companies must adhere to.
So without a market intelligence platform that can provide you access to these insights, you’ll likely start your research process on Google, jumping from website to website in order to find the information you need. Even if you do find a credible source, you will likely run into paywalls or poor user experiences.
Consequently, your research process is more time-intensive when relying on consumer-grade tools. It takes longer to find relevant insights; especially if you have to weed out keywords within a document. Using CTRL+F for one specific word in a document that could be hundreds of pages will take hours.
Ultimately, to spend less time finding the information you need and more time on analyses and strategizing, you need an AI search engine to quickly sort out the insights from the noise.
Critical Content
In the AlphaSense platform, users have access to aggregated content sets, including company documents, broker research, news, trade journals, regulatory groups, expert transcripts, and more from over 10,000 trusted resources.
For private market research, AlphaSense has multiple content sets that help you comprehensively research private companies, including:
- Companies House Filings
- Broker Research
- Expert Transcripts
- Company Tear Sheets
And for those doing business in the UK, it’s easy to find private company information with our “Companies House” section—a UK registrar of all “limited liability companies” conducting business within the UK, aka, all private companies and subsidiaries of public companies.
AlphaSense has filings from more than 5M+ limited companies registered in the UK and adds 500K+ new companies each year. These documents are often lengthy, which is why it’s crucial to have AlphaSense’s streamlined AI search capabilities to quickly find insights on financial performance, annual returns, leadership changes, and more.
With access to information that stems directly from the company, you can be confident in your research, make better investment decisions, and benchmark against competitors.
Broker research reveals the financial performance of private companies, strategic outlooks, M&A activity, and more as it consists of insights developed by sell-side firms.
AlphaSense aggregates non-public reports from over 1,500 firms, including top Wall Street names such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Cowen, and Bank of America. Leveraging these reports in your research will help your company stay ahead of new competitors and market shifts.
Expert transcripts provide a unique perspective that you won’t find in the public domain. You can learn the perspectives of former employees, competitors, customers, or partners in these documented interviews in the AlphaSense platform. Gaininstant access to 30,000+ proprietary expert insights covering thousands of public and private companies.
And if there’s any subject matter missing from our existing library, you can still get the information you need by setting up your own interview through our Call Services feature. The bottom line: expert calls mitigate any blind spots or gaps to round out your private market research.
Company tear sheets within AlphaSense can also provide valuable insights on your private company of interest. The screenshot below provides a high-level overview with metrics on total funding, valuation, revenue, and employee count.
Importance of AI Search Technology
However, access to all of the content sources mentioned above is not enough. You need not just a way to aggregate all of this information but a powerful search engine that can quickly find the insights hidden within it. Using both the company and keyword search, AlphaSense uses AI technology that instantly surfaces all mentions of your keyword and its synonyms that appear in conjunction with your search term. Without this functionality, it could take someone hours to read or CTRL+F through documents that can span hundreds of pages.
See how you can save time and simplify your private market research with a free trial of AlphaSense.
Emily is a Product Marketing Manager who works to promote growth for the Energy and Industrials segment at AlphaSense. Previously, she worked at Emerson, a global manufacturing conglomerate.
Read all posts written by Emily Vilardi
