Brian Smiga
Partner & Co-founder
Alpha Venture Partners
Alpha Venture Partners is a growth venture fund that got its start in NYC and works with over 300 early stage VC Firms across the country. Brian Smiga, partner and co-founder, explains their role as, “supplying follow-on capital for category-leading growth stage companies when their early stage VC backers run into capital or mandate constraints, typically in Series C or later.”
Beyond providing capital to growth stage companies with high potential, Alpha serves as an advisor to leading institutions and many of its limited partners, as an outsourced deal team. To expand their network and validate their investment strategy, Alpha turned to PitchBook.
“We’re working on developing even more rigorous analytical reports using PitchBook’s data so we can continue to surface companies and VCs of interest and make meaningful engagements.”
– Brian Smiga
Expanding their network with detailed VC search criteria and contact information
To broaden their reach, the Alpha team uses PitchBook to build targeted lists of VCs who match their desired parameters for firm size, sector and geography. From there, Alpha can dig into portfolio companies to get a better sense of compatibility—helping them focus on the most relevant, impactful VC firm partners. Brian explains, “By knowing which early stage, specialist VC firms to include, our team focuses on the most promising prospects and saves a ton of time.”
PitchBook is invaluable for this because it “reliably lists portfolio companies, round sizes, board members, and contact information for teams.” Armed with details on key stakeholders that would otherwise be time-consuming to collect, Brian and his team are able to quickly build relationships with the right VC professionals.
Accelerating due diligence and validating investment decisions
Alpha uses PitchBook’s detailed company profiles to conduct diligence calls and to confirm that the opportunities they are pursuing will fit their underwriting rubric. Alpha’s notable investments include companies with doubling annual revenues, like Wish, now the #1 e-commerce app ahead of Amazon; Lime, the micro-mobility company with the fastest tech adoption in history; Coupang, an e-commerce marketplace, and Getaround, the car-sharing network backed by Softbank and Toyota. As Alpha has grown its VC network to over 300 VCs nation-wide, and is starting to address other regions, their need for a database to efficiently source, review and vet VC firms and their companies grows more significant.
For Brian, that means using PitchBook to focus Alpha’s investments toward eight to ten category leading companies per year, doubling annual revenue at scale, with strong unit economics that provide a path to profits. These de facto leader companies quickly attract fresh growth capital and drive the returns of our VC fund partners and friends. PitchBook is an “invaluable data source” that helps Alpha identify and prioritize these companies and their VC backers.
“We can’t ingest an entire portfolio through our CRM, so using PitchBook helps us speed up our deal reviews.”
– Brian Smiga
When working with their VC partners in these follow-on growth rounds, Alpha also uses PitchBook’s granular portfolio company data to streamline deal reviews. “We can’t ingest an entire portfolio through our CRM, so using PitchBook helps us speed up our deal reviews,” Brian says.
So, what are Alpha’s next plans for using PitchBook? “We’re working on developing more rigorous analytical reports using PitchBook’s data so we can continue to surface companies and VCs of interest. We’re evolving toward seamless integration between PitchBook and Alpha’s unique, ready-to-scale network model for growth investments.”
Beyond creating more detailed reports, Alpha wants to leverage PitchBook to identify and predict deals they, their LPs or their advisees might otherwise miss.
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