Last reviewed: · By the pcithbook.com editorial team
Venture work rewards consistency. The analysts who find good companies early are rarely the ones with secret sources; they are the ones who run the same disciplined process every week. This guide describes such a process using the kinds of tools PitchBook publicly offers — search, saved screens, alerts, profiles and add-ins. Menu names and features change, so treat it as a workflow template rather than a click-by-click manual.
Step 1: Turn a thesis into filters
Start with one paragraph in plain English: "Seed and Series A software companies helping mid-sized manufacturers manage energy use, in North America and Western Europe." Then translate every phrase into a filter — industry or keyword, deal stage, geography, last financing date. Keep keyword lists short and test them: a filter that returns two thousand companies is a market study, not a sourcing list.
Habit: save the search with a name that includes the thesis and the date you wrote it. Six months later you will want to know why a company was on the list.
Step 2: Triage the screen
Export the results to Excel with the add-in and add three columns of your own: fit, timing and next action. Fit asks whether the company truly matches the thesis. Timing asks whether a round is plausible soon — time since the last financing is a useful signal. Next action is a single verb: research, intro, pass or watch.
Step 3: Track instead of re-searching
Set alerts on companies marked "watch" and on the saved search itself, so new matches arrive automatically. Review alerts on a fixed day each week. Typical triggers worth acting on include a new financing round, an executive hire, a new investor appearing on the cap table, or a competitor raising money.
Step 4: Map co-investors and competitors
For each promising company, look at who invested before and alongside. Two questions matter. First, who could lead or join the next round with you? Second, which firms compete for the same deals? Investor profiles showing recent activity by stage and sector help answer both, and they are equally useful when you are building a syndicate.
Step 5: Prepare a one-page brief
Before a first call, assemble a one-pager: company description in your own words, financing history, investors, headcount trend if available, closest competitors and two or three recent comparable rounds. The PowerPoint add-in can speed up the table work, but write the "why now" section yourself — that is the part partners read.
Step 6: Use research for context, not conclusions
Quarterly publications such as the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor describe the overall market: deal counts, median valuations by stage, exit activity and fundraising. Use them to frame a memo ("valuations at this stage have moved in this direction") rather than to price a specific deal.
A sample weekly rhythm
| Day | Task | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Review alerts and new screen matches | Updated watch list |
| Tuesday | Deep-dive two or three companies | One-page briefs |
| Wednesday | Map co-investors for active pipeline | Syndicate shortlist |
| Thursday | Read latest research and news | Two-line market notes for the team |
| Friday | Clean CRM records and refresh exports | Tidy pipeline for Monday meeting |
For founders: how investors may research you
If you are raising, assume investors will look you up. Check whether your public information is accurate — company description, founding date, prior rounds and investors. If something is wrong, look for the vendor's own process for requesting profile corrections rather than relying on third parties. Then flip the workflow: filter investors by stage, sector and recent activity to build a focused list instead of mass emailing.
- Target investors who led rounds at your stage recently, not just those who once did.
- Note partners who joined boards in adjacent sectors.
- Check portfolio conflicts before reaching out.
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Frequently asked questions
Usage varies by firm. Teams that rely on it often use it for screening, alerts and investor mapping, while others use it mainly for one-off research before meetings.
Full access is a paid subscription. Some accelerators, universities and employers provide access; founders can also read public research summaries and request a trial from the vendor.
Combine a narrow keyword set with stage, geography and last-financing-date filters, and save the search so you can review only new matches each week.