Reliable results from PitchBook’s Data Hygiene team

The Data Hygiene team at PitchBook, comprising 25-30 dedicated researchers, specializes in enhancing data quality through ongoing, comprehensive initiatives. They address known issues by correcting errors, scrubbing existing data, and filling in missing information. This team’s approach ensures data accuracy and completeness to achieve PitchBook’s overarching data integrity mission.

Regular data enhancements

With our commitment to consistent data refinement, we proactively identify and address potential errors to maintain data precision and reliability so that you always receive the most accurate information. Your data remains reliable, even as markets evolve.

Real-time data vigilance

Our team monitors weekly the largest numerical data points, including revenues, net incomes, EBITDAs, deal amounts, valuations, total new debts, employee counts, AUMs, and fund sizes. This vigilant approach helps us catch any data anomalies. By staying ahead of changes, we pledge to deliver the most current and precise data.

“What I love about PitchBook is that it has the cleanest, most robust data. Every detail is there.”

—Claudia Rowe, Growth Investor, Balderton Capital

Detecting significant shifts

We scrutinize monthly companies that experience significant shifts in employee counts, revenue, net income, EBITDA, and fund sizes. We consider both increases and decreases, with specific criteria tailored to each data point. For instance, we flag employee count changes exceeding 100% within a two-year timeframe or revenue fluctuations surpassing 1000%. We’re diligently improving our detection thresholds, guaranteeing we capture even more data points accurately.

“Because of the quality of data PitchBook provides, we’re able to move quickly and invest early and achieve long-term, high-yield wins. PitchBook is a key to creating a competitive advantage for our firm.”

—Christian Schmid, Head of Investments, Stableton

Continuous improvement

We regularly update previously completed Inflow projects each year, making adjustments so that our data remains accurate and reliable. This process, rooted in our dedication to details, underscores our promise to provide you with the most reliable data in the industry.

“Ideally, we have days to prepare for a meeting, but sometimes it’s only minutes or hours. With the data from PitchBook, we can get a pretty deep understanding of the company, what it does, the market it’s in, and any potential issues so that we ask the right questions and make strategic use of our time with founders.”

—Christian Schmid, Head of Investments, Stableton

We’re tackling 10,000 tasks every month

Data cleanup and audit requests

Stakeholders, both internal and external, submit data cleanup and audit requests (“Inflow requests”), covering a range of issues like financial data discrepancies, missing or blank data searches, duplicate profile investigations, and valuation deal multiple audits. Since the Data Hygiene team was put in place in 2021, it has successfully executed over 400 inflow hygiene projects.

“As a firm, we’ve always believed that data leads to better decisions. Twelve years ago, when we started looking for a solution to support our research, we were immediately drawn to the robustness of PitchBook’s platform. It exceeded our expectations and continuously gets better.”

—Aakar Vachhani, Partner, Fairview Capital

Ongoing quality audits

Our rigorous quality assurance process involves scrutinizing a minimum of 15% of our analysts’ work with the volume increasing for complex scenarios and during training to ensure consistently high standards. We regularly conduct internal audits, encompassing 5% of all QA assessments.