It’s not a consumer review site in the traditional sense, but rather a platform that provides market intelligence.

It aggregates and analyzes vast amounts of data to deliver actionable intelligence, helping users make more informed strategic decisions.

The platform’s core value proposition lies in its ability to cut through the noise and deliver highly specific, relevant information on private company financings, M&A activities, emerging industry trends, and disruptive technologies. This isn’t just about raw data.

It’s about the sophisticated analytical frameworks applied to that data, presenting it in a digestible and actionable format.

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IMPORTANT: We have not personally tested this company’s services. This review is based solely on information provided by the company on their website. For independent, verified user experiences, please refer to trusted sources such as Trustpilot, Reddit, and BBB.org.

Table of Contents

The Genesis and Mission of CB Insights

CB Insights began with a clear mission: to bring transparency and data-driven rigor to the opaque world of private markets and emerging technology.

In an era where information asymmetry often dictates success, their platform aims to level the playing field by providing a comprehensive, real-time view of what’s happening across various sectors.

Early Days and Evolution

Founded in 2007 by Anand Sanwal, CB Insights started as a blog sharing insights on venture capital trends. This initial focus on data and analysis quickly resonated with an audience hungry for objective information. The company evolved from a blog into a sophisticated data platform, continually expanding its data collection methodologies and analytical capabilities. This organic growth, fueled by user demand for deeper insights, shaped its trajectory. It wasn’t just about listing deals. it was about understanding the why behind them, the implications, and the broader market shifts they represented.

Core Mission and Target Audience

The core mission remains rooted in empowering decision-makers with superior intelligence.

Essentially, anyone whose business relies on understanding market dynamics, identifying future growth areas, or mitigating risks associated with nascent technologies finds value in their offerings.

They aim to reduce reliance on anecdotal evidence and replace it with verifiable, data-backed insights.

Unpacking the Data Sources and Methodology

A critical aspect of any data insights platform is the integrity and breadth of its data sources, combined with the robustness of its methodology.

CB Insights prides itself on a comprehensive approach to data collection and analysis, which underpins the reliability of its reports and tools.

Proprietary Data Collection Techniques

CB Insights employs a multi-faceted approach to gather data. This includes:

Public Filings and News: They meticulously scour public filings, press releases, news articles, and company announcements from thousands of sources globally. This provides a baseline of verifiable information.
Direct Submissions: Companies often submit their funding rounds or other significant events directly to CB Insights, recognizing the platform’s reach and influence within the investment community.
Machine Learning and AI: A significant portion of their data processing leverages advanced machine learning algorithms. These algorithms can identify patterns, extract relevant entities, and categorize information at a scale human analysts simply cannot match. For instance, AI can detect emerging trends in patent filings or academic research that might signal a future technological breakthrough.
Expert Analysts: While AI handles the heavy lifting, a team of expert analysts provides crucial human oversight. They validate data, refine categories, and often conducts into specific sectors or companies that automated systems might miss or misinterpret. This human-in-the-loop approach ensures accuracy and contextual understanding.

Analytical Frameworks and Tools

Beyond data collection, CB Insights distinguishes itself through its analytical frameworks and the tools it provides to users. Timestripe.com Reviews

M&A and Investment Data: Their platform provides granular data on mergers, acquisitions, and private investment rounds, including deal sizes, investor participation, and valuation trends. This is crucial for benchmarking and identifying investment opportunities.
Sentiment Analysis Limited: While not their primary focus, they do incorporate elements of sentiment analysis from news and social media to gauge public perception around certain technologies or companies, adding another layer to their insights.
Predictive Analytics Emerging: They are increasingly venturing into predictive analytics, attempting to forecast future market shifts or identify potential “unicorn” companies based on historical data patterns and emerging signals. This is an exciting, albeit challenging, area of development.

Key Features and Offerings

CB Insights is more than just a database.

It’s an integrated platform offering a suite of features designed to provide deep insights and actionable intelligence.

Research and Reports

One of the most highly valued aspects of CB Insights is its extensive library of research reports.

These are not merely data dumps but rather expertly curated analyses on various industries, technologies, and market trends.

Emerging Tech Briefs: These focus on nascent technologies, providing an early look at innovations that are still in their infancy but have significant disruptive potential. This helps users stay ahead of the curve.
Custom Research Services: For enterprise clients, CB Insights often provides custom research, tailoring their data and analytical capabilities to specific business questions or strategic initiatives. This bespoke service allows companies to get highly targeted insights that might not be available through standard reports.

Data Tools and Analytics

Beyond static reports, the platform offers dynamic tools that allow users to interact with the data directly.

Company Profiles: Detailed profiles for private companies, including funding history, investors, leadership teams, news mentions, and competitive intelligence. For instance, you can look up a startup and see every funding round they’ve closed, who participated, and what their latest valuation was.
Investor Profiles: Comprehensive profiles for venture capital firms, corporate VCs, and other investors, detailing their portfolio companies, investment focus areas, and exit history. This is invaluable for entrepreneurs seeking funding or LPs looking to evaluate fund performance.
Predictive Scores e.g., Mosaic Score: CB Insights developed proprietary scores like the Mosaic Score, which uses machine learning to predict the health and growth potential of private companies based on various signals e.g., funding, hiring, news sentiment, product launches. A higher Mosaic Score indicates stronger underlying health and growth potential.
Customizable Dashboards: Users can create personalized dashboards to track specific companies, investors, or industry trends that are most relevant to their needs, providing a tailored view of the market.

Pricing Structure and Value Proposition

Understanding the pricing structure of CB Insights is crucial for prospective users, as it’s often cited as a significant investment.

Their model is typically enterprise-focused, reflecting the depth and breadth of the data and insights provided.

Enterprise-Level Investment

CB Insights is generally not a platform for individual researchers or small startups with limited budgets.

Their pricing reflects the value they provide to large corporations, financial institutions, and established venture capital firms.

While specific pricing isn’t publicly disclosed it’s often negotiated based on user seats, data access, and specific modules required, industry estimates suggest annual subscriptions can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taplytics.com Reviews

Justifying the Cost

The value proposition for such an investment lies in several key areas:

Strategic Advantage: Access to proprietary data and analyses allows companies to identify emerging trends, competitive threats, and investment opportunities long before they become mainstream. This foresight can translate into significant competitive advantage, enabling proactive strategic decisions rather than reactive ones.
Time Savings: Without CB Insights, gathering this level of data would require dedicated teams of analysts, subscribing to multiple data sources, and significant manual effort. The platform consolidates and organizes this information, saving countless hours and resources.
Risk Mitigation: By providing comprehensive data on potential partners, acquisition targets, or emerging technologies, CB Insights helps organizations mitigate risks associated with uninformed decisions. Understanding market dynamics and company health can prevent costly missteps.
Data Validation and Benchmarking: The platform offers robust data for benchmarking against competitors, validating investment theses, and providing a data-backed foundation for internal strategic discussions. For instance, a corporate M&A team can use the data to validate the valuation of a potential acquisition target against similar deals in the market.
Improved Deal Flow and Due Diligence: For investors, it can help identify promising startups, conduct thorough due diligence, and track portfolio companies more effectively. For innovation teams, it helps scout for startups relevant to their strategic goals.

While the upfront cost is substantial, for organizations where strategic insights and market intelligence are critical to their core business operations, the return on investment can be significant, justifying the premium.

It’s about empowering strategic decisions with data that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to acquire and analyze on a similar scale.

User Experience and Interface Design

The user experience UX and interface design UI of a data platform are paramount.

Even the most robust data is useless if it’s not accessible or intuitive.

CB Insights generally receives positive feedback for its clean design and functional layout, though there are areas for improvement.

Navigability and Intuitiveness

The platform is designed to be highly navigable, allowing users to quickly drill down into specific data points or broader trends. Key features include:

Search Functionality: A powerful search bar allows users to find companies, investors, industries, or reports quickly. The auto-suggest feature and advanced filters help narrow down results effectively.
Categorization: Data is well-categorized by industry, technology, company stage, and other relevant metrics, making it easy to browse and discover information.
Dashboard Customization: Users can tailor their dashboards to display the most relevant information at a glance, improving efficiency. This means if you’re a VC focusing on AI in healthcare, your dashboard can prioritize updates in that specific niche.
Visualizations: The platform makes extensive use of charts, graphs, and market maps to visualize complex data, making it easier to interpret trends and relationships. For example, funding trend graphs can quickly show the ebb and flow of investment in a particular sector over time.

Report Presentation and Interactivity

Reports are presented in a clean, professional format, often combining compelling narratives with data visualizations.

PDF Downloads: Reports are typically available for download as PDFs, making them easy to share internally or with clients.
Interactive Elements: While many reports are static, some tools within the platform allow for interactive exploration of data, such as clicking on a company in a market map to view its profile.
Alerts and Notifications: Users can set up custom alerts for specific companies, industries, or keywords, ensuring they are notified in real-time about relevant developments. This proactive notification system is crucial for staying updated in fast-moving markets.

Areas for Potential Improvement

Despite its strengths, some users occasionally point to areas where the UX could be enhanced:

Learning Curve: For new users, especially those not accustomed to deep data analytics platforms, there can be a learning curve to fully utilize all the features and understand the nuances of the data.
Customization Depth: While dashboards are customizable, some users might desire even deeper customization options for reporting and data manipulation within the platform itself.
Mobile Responsiveness: While functional, the platform is primarily designed for desktop use, and its mobile experience, while adequate, might not offer the full richness of the desktop version for complex data exploration.

Overall, CB Insights offers a professional and highly functional user experience that prioritizes data accessibility and actionable insights, supporting the needs of its sophisticated user base. Macro.com Reviews

Competitor Landscape and Differentiation

The market for market intelligence and data insights is competitive, with several established players and emerging startups.

Key Competitors

Some of CB Insights’ notable competitors include:

PitchBook Data: Often cited as a direct competitor, PitchBook also provides extensive data on venture capital, private equity, and M&A. They offer similar company and investor profiles, deal data, and industry reports. PitchBook’s strength lies in its comprehensive coverage of private markets and often serves a similar professional audience.
Crunchbase: While Crunchbase also provides data on startups and funding rounds, it’s generally considered more of a discovery platform with a broader, more public-facing dataset, often relying on user-submitted data. Its depth of analysis and proprietary metrics are typically less comprehensive than CB Insights.
Tracxn: An India-based competitor focusing on tracking startups and private companies across various sectors globally. Tracxn emphasizes detailed company profiles and trend identification.
Gartner / Forrester: These are traditional market research firms that provide high-level industry analysis and technology trends, often through expert reports and consulting. While they offer strategic insights, they generally don’t provide the same granular, real-time private company data that CB Insights does.
Bloomberg Terminal / Refinitiv Eikon: These platforms offer vast financial data, including public market information, M&A, and some private company data, but their focus is broader and often requires more manual extraction for specific insights into emerging tech and private markets.

CB Insights’ Differentiators

CB Insights strives to stand out through several key differentiators:

Proprietary Analytical Frameworks e.g., Mosaic Score: The development of unique scoring systems and predictive analytics tools sets them apart. The Mosaic Score, for instance, provides a quick, data-backed assessment of a private company’s health and potential, something not readily available elsewhere.
Focus on Emerging Technology & Innovation: While competitors cover venture capital broadly, CB Insights has a particularly strong emphasis on tracking emerging technologies, disruptive trends, and corporate innovation. Their reports often highlight cutting-edge areas before they hit mainstream.
Curated Research and Insights: They invest heavily in a team of analysts who produce high-quality, thought-provoking research reports. This isn’t just raw data. it’s data interpreted and contextualized by experts, often providing actionable recommendations.
Data Granularity and Accuracy in Specific Niches: For venture capital and corporate innovation, their data on funding rounds, investor participation, and strategic partnerships is highly detailed and rigorously vetted. They focus on providing depth in areas critical to their target audience.
User Experience for data depth: While there’s a learning curve, the platform’s design is optimized for users who need to performs into specific companies or trends, allowing for efficient navigation through large datasets.

Customer Support and Resources

The effectiveness of any professional data platform is significantly impacted by the quality of its customer support and the resources it provides to help users maximize their subscription.

Customer Support Channels

CB Insights typically offers several avenues for customer support, reflecting its enterprise-focused model:

Dedicated Account Managers: For large enterprise clients, it’s common to have a dedicated account manager. This individual serves as a primary point of contact for onboarding, training, and ongoing support, ensuring the client gets the most out of their subscription. This personalized support is a significant value add, especially for complex use cases.
Email Support: Users can typically reach out via email for technical issues, data queries, or general assistance. Response times are generally professional and timely, aligning with enterprise service level expectations.
In-Platform Chat/Help: Some platforms integrate an in-platform chat or help desk feature, allowing users to get quick answers to common questions or submit support tickets directly. While not always real-time, this provides an efficient way to get assistance.
Training and Onboarding: For new clients, CB Insights often provides comprehensive onboarding sessions and training to familiarize users with the platform’s features, data navigation, and best practices for extracting insights. This is crucial given the depth of the platform.

Educational Resources

Beyond direct support, CB Insights provides a wealth of educational resources to empower users:

Knowledge Base/Help Center: A comprehensive online knowledge base typically houses articles, FAQs, and guides on how to use various features of the platform, troubleshoot common issues, and understand methodologies.
Webinars and Tutorials: They frequently host webinars, often focused on specific industry reports, new features, or how to leverage the platform for particular use cases e.g., “Using CB Insights for Competitive Intelligence”. These are invaluable for continuous learning.
Blog and Research Library: As mentioned earlier, their extensive blog and research library provide continuous insights and serve as a resource for understanding market trends, which in turn helps users interpret the data on the platform. These resources often clarify how to apply their data to real-world business problems.
Glossary of Terms: Given the specialized nature of the data venture capital terms, tech jargon, a clear glossary of terms can be very helpful for users.

Overall, CB Insights aims to provide robust customer support and a rich array of educational resources to ensure its clients can fully leverage the platform’s capabilities.

This commitment to client success reinforces its position as a premium data provider for strategic decision-making.

Potential Limitations and Considerations

While CB Insights is a powerful tool, it’s essential to consider its potential limitations and specific considerations before committing to a subscription.

No single platform is a silver bullet, and understanding its boundaries can help set realistic expectations. Infuse.com Reviews

High Cost of Entry

As previously discussed, the primary limitation for many potential users is the significant financial investment required for a subscription.

Not for SMBs or Individuals: The platform’s pricing structure effectively prices out small to medium-sized businesses SMBs, independent researchers, or individual investors. It’s clearly designed for enterprise-level budgets.
Budget Justification: Organizations must be able to demonstrate a clear return on investment ROI to justify the substantial annual cost. This often involves aligning the platform’s capabilities with specific strategic goals, such as identifying new markets, optimizing M&A strategies, or enhancing competitive intelligence.

Data Coverage Nuances

While comprehensive in its focus areas, there are nuances in data coverage to consider:

Private Company Data Challenges: By nature, private company data is harder to obtain and verify than public company data. While CB Insights does an excellent job, there will always be some level of data lag or incompleteness compared to real-time, publicly reported financials. Some smaller, early-stage deals might not be captured immediately.
Geographic Focus: While global, some users might find stronger coverage in certain regions e.g., North America, Western Europe compared to others e.g., emerging markets in Africa or parts of Asia, depending on the specific industry. Data availability can vary significantly by geography.
Specific Niche Depths: While broad in tech and innovation, if a user requires extremely granular data on a very niche, obscure industry segment, they might find the data less dense than for more mainstream tech sectors. For example, specific sub-segments within quantum computing might have less data points than general AI.

Learning Curve and Resource Allocation

Leveraging the platform effectively requires an investment beyond just the subscription fee:

Requires Dedicated Users: To maximize the value, organizations often need to dedicate specific team members to learn and regularly utilize the platform. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it tool.
Integration Challenges: While data can be exported, integrating CB Insights data seamlessly into internal CRM systems, BI tools, or proprietary databases might require custom development or API access, which could incur additional costs or technical effort.
Interpretation Skills: While the platform provides analysis, extracting actionable insights still requires human intelligence and contextual understanding. Users need to be skilled at interpreting data trends and applying them to their specific business problems.

In conclusion, while CB Insights offers unparalleled data and insights in its domain, potential users must weigh the significant investment against their specific needs, existing resources, and the criticality of the intelligence provided to their strategic objectives.

It’s a powerful tool for those who can afford and effectively utilize it.

The Future of Market Intelligence and CB Insights’ Role

CB Insights is well-positioned to play a significant role in shaping this future.

Trends in Market Intelligence

Several key trends are defining the future of market intelligence:

Predictive Analytics and AI: The shift from descriptive what happened and diagnostic why it happened to predictive what will happen and prescriptive what should we do analytics is accelerating. AI and machine learning will become even more central to identifying subtle signals of future market shifts.
Alternative Data Sources: Beyond traditional financial and news data, market intelligence platforms are increasingly incorporating “alternative data” – satellite imagery, social media sentiment, supply chain data, web traffic, and even anonymized credit card transactions – to gain a more holistic and nuanced view of economic activity and company performance.
Real-Time Insights: The speed at which markets move demands increasingly real-time data. Waiting for quarterly reports is no longer sufficient for agile decision-making.
Integration with Workflows: Market intelligence won’t be a siloed activity but will integrate more seamlessly into existing business workflows, CRMs, and decision-making processes.

CB Insights’ Strategic Positioning

CB Insights is already leaning into these trends and is strategically positioned for future growth:

Continued AI/ML Investment: Their ongoing investment in AI and machine learning for data extraction, normalization, and particularly for their Mosaic Score and other predictive tools, indicates a clear commitment to advanced analytics. Expect more sophisticated predictive models and anomaly detection capabilities.
Expansion of Data Scope: While already broad, they will likely continue to integrate new types of alternative data sources to enrich their insights, providing even more nuanced views of company health and market dynamics. This could involve partnerships with specialized data providers.
Enhanced Customization and Automation: Further enhancements to personalized dashboards, custom reporting tools, and automated alert systems will likely be a focus, making the platform even more integrated into users’ daily routines.
Focus on Specific Verticals: While maintaining a broad tech focus, they might deepen their expertise and data offerings in specific high-growth verticals e.g., climate tech, advanced manufacturing, biotech to cater to specialized client needs.
Thought Leadership: Their consistent output of high-quality research and reports positions them as a thought leader. This not only attracts new clients but also helps shape market understanding, cementing their authority in the space. They are not just reporting data. they are interpreting it and providing context.

Their trajectory suggests a continued commitment to providing the precise, actionable intelligence that empowers strategic advantage.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Cb-insights.com?

Cb-insights.com is a leading market intelligence platform that provides data-driven insights, research, and analytics on private companies, venture capital, emerging technologies, and corporate innovation to businesses and investors. Obie.com Reviews

What kind of data does CB Insights provide?

CB Insights provides data on private company funding rounds, investor profiles, M&A activities, emerging industry trends, patent filings, and proprietary scores like the Mosaic Score, which predicts company health and growth.

Is CB Insights a free service?

No, CB Insights is not a free service.

It operates on a subscription model, typically requiring an enterprise-level investment, with annual costs often ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Who is the target audience for CB Insights?

The target audience for CB Insights includes venture capital firms, corporate innovation teams, investment banks, private equity firms, large enterprises, and strategic consultants who need in-depth market intelligence.

How does CB Insights collect its data?

CB Insights collects data through a combination of public filings, news analysis, direct company submissions, and sophisticated machine learning and AI algorithms, all validated by expert human analysts.

What is the Mosaic Score on CB Insights?

The Mosaic Score is a proprietary machine learning algorithm developed by CB Insights that predicts the health and growth potential of private companies based on various signals like funding, hiring, and news sentiment.

How does CB Insights compare to PitchBook?

Both CB Insights and PitchBook provide extensive data on venture capital and private markets.

CB Insights often differentiates itself with a stronger focus on emerging technology and corporate innovation, proprietary analytical frameworks like Mosaic Score, and curated research reports, while PitchBook typically offers broader coverage across private markets.

Can I get a free trial of CB Insights?

While specific trial policies may vary, free trials are typically limited and often offered only to qualified enterprise-level organizations, reflecting the platform’s premium nature and target audience.

What kind of research reports does CB Insights publish?

CB Insights publishes deep-dive sector reports e.g., on AI, FinTech, emerging tech briefs, annual and quarterly industry overviews, and often provides custom research services for clients. Tattoodo.com Reviews

Is the data on CB Insights real-time?

While CB Insights strives for timely data updates, private company data inherently has some lag compared to public company financials.

However, they continuously update funding rounds and news events as they occur.

Does CB Insights offer customer support?

Yes, CB Insights offers comprehensive customer support, including dedicated account managers for enterprise clients, email support, and a robust knowledge base with tutorials and webinars.

Can I export data from CB Insights?

Yes, users can typically export data from CB Insights into various formats for further analysis or integration into their own systems.

What are the main benefits of using CB Insights?

Main benefits include gaining a strategic advantage through foresight, significant time savings in market research, mitigating risks, validating investment theses, and improving deal flow and due diligence processes.

Is CB Insights suitable for small businesses or startups?

Due to its high cost, CB Insights is generally not suitable for small businesses or early-stage startups with limited budgets.

It’s designed for organizations with substantial strategic intelligence needs.

Does CB Insights cover global markets?

Yes, CB Insights covers global markets, though the depth of data may vary by specific region or highly niche industry segment.

How often are CB Insights reports updated?

The frequency of report updates varies.

Some reports are annual or quarterly, while specific industry briefs or data points on the platform are updated continuously as new information becomes available. Flowcv.com Reviews

Can CB Insights help with competitive analysis?

Yes, CB Insights is an excellent tool for competitive analysis, providing detailed company profiles, industry maps, and insights into competitor funding, partnerships, and strategic moves.

Does CB Insights offer APIs for data integration?

For enterprise clients, CB Insights may offer API access to integrate their data directly into internal business intelligence tools or proprietary systems, though this might be an additional feature.

What is the primary focus of CB Insights’ research?

Is there a learning curve to use CB Insights effectively?

Yes, there can be a learning curve for new users to fully utilize all the features and understand the nuances of the data provided by CB Insights, especially for those not accustomed to deep data analytics platforms.

Cb-insights.com Reviews