How Puma Private Equity Uses Beauhurst to Save Time in Every Stage of Investment Decision Making
The real quality of the tool is that I’m able to log on and click through all of these tabs that are populated with data from different sources by Beauhurst.
Puma Private Equity (Puma) part of Puma Capital Group is a leading provider of growth capital to UK scale-up businesses. This generalist Venture Capital Trust fund (VCT) invests between £2-10m into Series A rounds. So far, the team has raised over £340 million in capital across 14 VCTs. We spoke to Henri Songeur, long-time Beauhurst user, to hear how Puma’s team of investment specialists utilises Beauhurst data.
- Industry
VCT Fund
- Location
London and Manchester
- Employees
The Challenge
The Solution
Conducting market research
Puma’s investment decisions are led by market intelligence; the plethora of data available on both the Beauhurst platform, and through our own research in the form of blogs and reports, help to inform Henri and his team’s market knowledge. As Henri states, before origination comes, “It starts with market intelligence, and Beauhurst is very much the tool we use for understanding the market.”
As a sector generalist, it is even more important to grasp the full workings of the UK’s high-growth ecosystem. The team at Puma uses Beauhurst for every step of this market research. Henri explains, “We start off by deciding what we should be targeting, and to do this, we carry out deep dives into different sectors. We look at a lot of different market dynamics such as key regulatory drivers, key technological drivers, and what the competitive horizon is.”
As well as using the subscription-based Beauhurst platform, the team also utilises the free resources we offer to keep an eye on reports and use them as a guideline on what’s exciting right now.
These initial sector deep dives mean that Puma can make data-driven investment decisions, cutting out the guesswork. To read our reports, click here. For our articles, click here.
Prospecting potential opportunities
“Once again, Beauhurst comes into play. On the platform, we are able to explore a range of data points such as valuations, cap tables, stages of evolution and much more.
The extensive transaction data allows us to understand the typical funding rounds and valuations of a company. As Beauhurst takes its data directly from SH01 fillings, it’s very comprehensive—even with unannounced fundraisings. All of this means that by using the Beauhurst platform, we're able to get the full picture.”
We structure the joints between various different data points and audit them for our customers, so teams such as Henri’s can access all the SH01 and financial fillings all on one central, easy-to-use platform. Henri goes on to describe Beauhurst as “an absolute timesaver” as he and his team are able to do a vast amount of daily tasks on a central platform.
Carrying out due diligence
As part of their process, Henri and his team often need to carry out due diligence which involves looking at deal comparables. The comprehensive nature of our database means the team can also utilise Beauhurst for this purpose.
Henri uses Beauhurst’s descriptive data in particular to help with this task:
“Part of our job is to try and figure out what the valuation might look like for our own investment round and this is a difficult exercise. But Beauhurst helps a lot here.Â
We use the descriptive data points on company profiles to find similar companies and compare deals of similar sizes. This allows us to benchmark really quickly and easily.”
Keeping up with the competition
On top of helping Henri and his team carry out their daily tasks, Beauhurst data also gives Puma a competitive edge. Our Collections feature allows the team to build pipelines of interesting companies, and receive an automated notification whenever there are any changes to these companies, such as a new funding round.
As well as making Collections of companies, users can also make Collections of funds, making their activity easy to track on the platform and Henri and his team make full use of this functionality. He outlines:
“One of the best proxies for us to understand the market is to analyse what our peers are doing. And Beauhurst Collections are a quick and easy solution to this. We make Collections of our competitors, and every week we can get a quick summary of any transactions they’ve participated in.”
The Collection feature provides the team at Puma with another utility too: lead tracking. This means the team is able to reach out at the right time and build on existing connections. Henri details:
“We have our own internal CRM where we track all the companies that we’ve spoken to over the last five or so years. We monitor their activity via a Collection on the Beauhurst platform so we can reach out at the right time, armed with up-to-date information. The Collections feature is really useful—it’s like Google Alerts but specific to what we do.”
The Results
Through using Beauhurst, the investment team at Puma saves valuable time on everyday tasks, from gathering market intelligence to keeping track of former clients. Access to our data platform has enabled Henri and his team to streamline processes, as he comments:
“The key benefit of Beauhurst is the standardised format in which the data is presented and the aggregation of different sources which allow me to put together a process for our team for how you analyse a company. It saves so much time—it means that we can bring on new people and really quickly teach them our standardised process of checking companies. It streamlines everything.”
Doing so saves so much time and it means that we’ve been Discover BeauhurstInvest: Our data platform is trusted by investor teams across the UK to:
- Gather market intelligence
- Conduct due diligence on companies
- Monitor your competition's activity
To find out why we’re the ultimate data source for investment teams, book a call with an expert today.