How Vistara Growth uses PitchBook to source growth capital deals and conduct company due diligence

Founded in 2015, Vistara Growth provides flexible growth capital solutions to mid-later stage technology companies. Vistara is unique in its ability to create tailored investment structures comprised of term debt, convertible debt, preferred equity, or any combinations thereof. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, and with an office in Toronto, Ontario, the firm solves for a variety of use cases that include organic growth, M&A financing, and shareholder liquidity, with checks typically ranging from $10 to $50 million. Vistara can lead, participate, or be complementary to other investors’ structures, providing their portfolio companies with significant optionality in accessing the right form and amounts of capital at the right time.

Vistara Growth’s debt and equity solutions are tailored to support long-term growth for both bootstrapped and sponsor-backed mid-to-later stage technology companies across the United States, Canada, and select international markets. Vistara focuses on enterprise software, tech-enabled services, payments, and hardware as a service business models and invests across verticals while having domain expertise in areas such as cyber, fintech, healthcare IT, AI, cloud infrastructure, and more. In the last decade, they have completed over 40 deals and deployed $500 million. The team is currently investing out of its fifth fund.

Since 2020, Vistara Growth has utilized PitchBook to source the right deals using a data-driven approach, make a compelling case for its investment strategies, and position itself as a leader in the growth capital space by staying on top of industry news with PitchBook reports and platform tools.

Discovering timely, relevant private company data and researching deals—from anywhere

Across role and tenure, the team at Vistara Growth leverages PitchBook to identify the right companies at the right time and is one of their main sources of actionable information. While the volume of data—spanning 9.7 million private companies—available on the PitchBook Platform is immense, it’s the precision of PitchBook’s intel that makes the biggest difference. “For companies in our sweet spot, PitchBook has the most precise screening capabilities that we’ve seen,” says Vistara Growth’s Vice President Chris Angelatos. “And their company profiles are much richer than competitive platforms.”

The investment team spends a significant portion of its time in the platform, working to discover and connect with new companies that fit Vistara Growth’s profile. Sourcing deals through direct outreach is time and energy-intensive, but with PitchBook, the team can refine their screeners to dial in on the right targets. “When I need a quick read on a prospective deal or before meeting a new company, I can quickly log into PitchBook to see who their competitors and peers are, the management team, and who their investors are. PitchBook synthesizes all that information,” said Vistara Growth’s Associate Partner Kevin Barber.

Meanwhile, the firm’s executives count on access to PitchBook’s company insights on the go, whether they’re on the road for in-person meetings or to attend industry conferences. For example, Angelatos recently traveled from Toronto to Nashville for a health tech conference. He used platform screeners to target Nashville-based health tech companies, investment bankers, and equity funds. “There’s a great health tech community in Nashville,” he said. “I was able to schedule many meetings while I was in town outside of the conference, which made the trip much more productive.”

Using data to validate strategies to investors

With compelling, relevant data in hand, the team can better prepare for investor presentations, creating tailored pitches that speak directly to the whys that support their strategies. “PitchBook’s data is featured in our investor presentations, both in terms of benchmarking our performance against peers and showing the inventory of potential companies for us to invest in,” Angelatos said.

The firm utilizes PitchBook to illustrate its own investing acumen to potential investors, as well— across vintages the Vistara Growth “Fund Family” was recently ranked fifth in the PitchBook Global Private Debt League Tables. Fund II, Fund III, and Fund IV all ranked in the Top 10 Global Private Debt Funds by net IRR.

Leveraging reports and platform tools to stay on top of industry developments

In addition to actionable platform data on private market companies and investors, Vistara Growth uses a variety of PitchBook offerings and features to stay informed on recent developments and to market themselves as the leading provider of flexible growth capital.

To stay ahead of capital market shifts and its competitors, the firm looks to PitchBook’s research. Published by a team consisting of dozens of experts, PitchBook’s reports explore investment strategies, fund performance, established and emerging industries. They’re all housed within PitchBook’s Research Center. For Angelatos and his colleagues, vertical coverage provides a necessary edge.

The Vistara Growth team also looks forward to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, the preeminent quarterly publication on venture trends defining the US landscape.

Among other tools, including collaborative workspaces and in-depth market maps, the team also leverages PitchBook’s custom alerts to keep tabs on noteworthy developments within the segments and companies they most care about. Angelatos said that within his target verticals, he’ll run a dynamic screener and have those set up to hit his inbox every week.

“I can see all the press releases, funding announcements, and C-suite changes. When I get relevant alerts about companies in our target universe, I can follow up with specific context, which focuses our efforts,” said Angelatos.

Whether it’s for research on its verticals or to set up meetings with the right contacts, PitchBook is an integral part of Vistara Growth’s day-to-day processes, helping the team stay up to date as it raises its next fund and continues to successfully invest across the growth capital landscape.