VC Experts, a data aggregator of privately held companies, and Switchback Partners, a software development team based in Austin, Texas that specializes in stock market trading and analytic platforms, join to reduce inefficiencies in the private market analysis and transaction space.
The new entity, Lagniappe Labs, federates large volumes of private company information from many difficult to acquire sources. Their platform, "Genesis", provides tools that allow users to build their own analysis on technicals around the specific private financing deal terms, Valuations and Multiples, Cost of Capital, and many other models to satisfy research due diligence practices. Genesis also allows users to build their own indexes and themes on private companies and then compare those against similar public companies.
As primary and secondary investment interest in privately held companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Dropbox increase, tools and data that create greater transparency into those companies are more in demand.
"VC Experts biggest differentiator has always been data collection or original source documents from the Secretary of State offices," said Joe Bartlett, Chairman and Co-Founder of VC Experts "which gives us a huge advantage over media or wiki sources of data. However, you can have the best data in any market but if you don't offer your users an effective and useful way to interrogate that information, it does no good. We're bringing the best technology and the best data to our customers and we're confident Lagniappe Labs will trump any market data platform currently offered in this space."
According to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, private equity investments in the U.S. alone for Q1 2015 were $116B. That includes $65B in exits during the same quarter. While not the record breaking numbers of 2014 where the markets saw exits from buyouts exceed $450B, these numbers suggest interest in private companies will continue to be strong.
"Customers cannot trust start-up's that don't verify the data and are leaving more expensive platforms due to questions surrounding their data integrity. For that reason, Genesis is quickly gaining adoption along many fronts, including major investment banks, valuation firms, venture firms, and secondary investment firms," said Rod Taylor, Lagniappe Labs partner and Director of Business Development. "We are positioning the technology to power fiduciary-driven decision making and directional analysis using all the validated data we can get our hands on."
Private companies are staying private longer. With massive sums that companies are raising in private deals, demand for data and tools that create a more efficient market should only continue to grow.