Excelsior Business Advisors is a business valuation advisory firm based in Excelsior, Minnesota. Founded in 2023, the firm services a range of private and public clients in the middle market, supporting clients through financial reporting, tax reporting and planning, transaction and business decision-making considerations, as well as dispute resolution needs.
2023
Year founded
David Kaye
Principal
Business owners know that early decisions can affect the entire trajectory of their company. By investing in PitchBook within the first six months of establishing Excelsior, Principal David Kaye successfully utilized our automation capabilities and research offerings to grow operations. As he looks to expand, PitchBook will play a key role in the future of his business.
Excelsior provides expert valuation advisory and accounting services to closely-held mid-sized to larger companies, smaller PE-backed companies, and mid-cap public companies.
“We offer our clients high-quality, independently prepared, and deeply supported valuations for financial reporting, including acquisition accounting and stock-based compensation, tax reporting, such as gift and estate tax valuation work, and various other situations where a valuation is needed, but there’s no publicly available benchmark,” explained Kaye.
Using PitchBook to build a business
Before Kaye locked in a service provider, gaining access to essential data was extremely difficult. While he initially considered a range of providers, PitchBook came out on top.
“When I was weighing PitchBook against some of the lower-cost data providers, I saw the potential it had. I appreciated the focus on private equity and venture capital-backed companies, the transaction coverage, the range of reports, and the support team,” he said.
For Kaye, who had gone out on his own and was paying his expenses to build Excelsior, the decision to subscribe to PitchBook was a significant one—and, as it would turn out, a crucial one. He quickly discovered that the platform’s data automation capabilities meant he no longer needed to manually pull in or scrub comp data, speeding up his workflows considerably.
“With the time I got back, I was able to focus on building the business, which was essential in that first six months of operations.”—David Kaye, Principal |
But as a new business in a new location, Excelsior Business Advisors required more than just extra time. “I’ve been in the Twin Cities for a little over three years. The first half of that, I was still with my previous company, supporting their New York operations,” Kaye reflects. As he prepared to build a meaningful presence in a new market, he sought a deeper understanding of the local landscape.
“PitchBook’s comprehensive data on deals and firms helped me identify the target user of my services within the greater Twin Cities.”—David Kaye, Principal |
“I was doing more business development locally, but that really exploded with PitchBook, which allowed me to better understand the Twin Cities market and identify the firms doing deals here,” Kaye added.
Taking market intelligence into every meeting
Driven by PitchBook data and expert analysts, PitchBook Research is a top resource for insights, trends, and forecasts across the private and public markets. It features extensive research across industries and asset classes and helps firms like Excelsior prepare for meetings with new clients.
“I regularly use the PitchBook Platform to pull reports, including Morningstar reports, ahead of important meetings and presentations. I find it especially beneficial to stay informed about the state of North American private equity, and the quarterly reports are always helpful for preparing and identifying key tidbits,” says Kaye.
To engage with auditors, attorneys, and other advisors who support private equity firms, Kaye can uncover relevant and timely information within specific industries or verticals, along with major publicly traded companies. In tandem with meticulous research, he leverages our targeted email alerts to keep abreast of significant transactions and top players in the private equity landscape.
Preparing for expansion with PitchBook
Using PitchBook’s formula builder within the Excel Plug-in, Kaye has developed valuation models and templates that streamline the extraction and analysis of financial data. Our formula builder allows users to integrate PitchBook’s extensive database directly into Excel by customizing data pulls related to companies, transactions, financial data, and much more. In addition, our Excel plug-in enables users to extract and flexibly analyze data within their internal technology systems, allowing for custom data modeling.
Excelsior is at a turning point as Kaye prepares to hire more employees. The quality and functionality of valuation templates will be a deciding factor and selling point for potential hires, influencing their decision to join the team.
“PitchBook is a critical component of my Excel models. I want to ensure that my tools are best-in-class, automated where they need to be, and easy for others to understand.”—David Kaye, Principal |
Over the next six months, Kaye aims to collaborate with PitchBook’s customer and technical support teams to further automate and refine models in a way that makes sense to a broader group of users. Given that the formula builder was pivotal in launching his firm, he’s excited to continue working with PitchBook’s data as Excelsior grows.
Frequently utilized PitchBook resources:
These are a few of Excelsior’s most frequently used PitchBook features.
- Excel Plug-in:
Harness the depth of PitchBook’s global public and private market data to streamline workflows while creating and updating financial models. - Formula Builder:
Integrate our extensive database into Excel. Customize queries related to companies, deals, financials, and more. - Research Center:
Read timely, independent private and public market research containing unmatched expertise and analysis. - Email alerts:
These arrive directly in your inbox daily or weekly. We’ll automatically notify you when new companies, deals, or people meet your criteria.