John Gabbert’s Post

It’s surreal to be writing this. However, the time has come, and I have made the decision to step away from PitchBook.   PitchBook has gifted me a lifetime of memories and experiences, lifelong friendships, and the opportunity to make a dream come true. Starting this company in my early 30s, I came with a modest amount of experience, and I’ve appreciated the opportunity to grow, fail, and learn along the way.   Creating great career opportunities, great customer-centric products that are wicked fast with world-class customer service (NPS of 55!), creating beautiful systems, workflows, and operations – that’s what has fueled me. Most importantly, it's been creating a culture where our people feel welcomed, safe, respected, trusted, and challenged. Where we can grow and Make It Fun together. Maybe we didn’t always get it right, but I am happy that we got it mostly right, most of the time.   To my team ― thank you for your commitment to our customers, and to each other, especially those who took a leap of faith on me and the business in the early days. This includes our team in Ukraine who I started the company with in 2007. You are resilient, and strong. To our partners, leaders, and team in Kolkata, you have been a bedrock of PitchBook. To the OGs at PitchBook, thank you for your trust in me, for the incredible job you've done in making PitchBook a world-class company and for making it so damn fun. I love you and am so proud of what we have accomplished.    We’ve experienced a lot of life together. We’ve created a globally successful company, served 100,000s of customers, created nearly 4,000 jobs, thousands of friendships, a good number of marriages and a resulting bunch of kids. Overall, a beautiful thing and I couldn’t be prouder.   PitchBook would also not have been possible without the support of my family. I am eternally grateful to my wife Susan and our four kids for their love, patience, and support. Thank you from the very core of my heart. I'll try to make up for a little bit of traded time. Thank you to our early investors who trusted me to be a good steward of your hard-earned money. The business plan called for $3.8m in total to build, we did it for $3.7m. I hope you feel the bet paid off. And to our customers, the reason we show up every day, thank you for the challenge and opportunity to serve you.   It’s now time to let others lead. When you have surrounded yourself with people you trust, it's not hard to turn things over to them. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be working closely with our leadership team to ensure a smooth transition to the next chapter.     PitchBook's commitment to customers, strategy and operational mindset are deeply embedded into the culture. The business is well positioned for continued growth and I’m confident in its long-term success. Keep finding a better way, every day. Thank you for one hell of a run.   Godspeed, JG

As AI continues to influence industries, the venture capital landscape is also learning how to benefit and evolve. I recently had the opportunity to speak alongside Matt McIlwain at University of Washington’s Creative Destruction Lab 2023/24 Celebration Dinner.   We chatted about the state of the market and how the macro environment is still weighing on VC. We discussed challenges of building companies through different cycles and that in general, the pullback in the market has caused investors to re-focus on the basics of running a good business, which means strong operating fundamentals - a clear pivot from the run-up in the cycle, which was characterized by easy-money and growth at any cost. We also shared our thoughts on the very of-the-moment topic, AI, and how the realities of AI and ML are changing the way companies do business.   For PitchBook, we’ve been leveraging machine learning models for many years to innovate our data collections processes. Our core priority remains focused on expanding our datasets, tools and research in ways that help deliver real value to our customers.   It’ll be interesting to see how AI continues to shift business models and we’ll closely watch the key impacts to our industry like Generative AI search, AI-assisted data gathering and workflow automation to evaluate and inform our strategic roadmap.   Thanks to UW for including me in this event – it was fascinating to spend time with some incredibly smart people from ventures applying AI in Health and Manufacturing. Wishing everyone success as they continue building for the future! 

The first quarter of 2024 exhibited many of the same trends we saw in 2023 across private markets. Venture dealmaking continued to be lackluster as investors paid close attention to the Reddit and Astera Labs IPOs in hopes that the exit window may reopen soon. While dealmaking and exit trends in PE are more of the same, one big difference has been in PE’s resilient fundraising, which signals LP’s confidence in the asset class’s ability to generate returns in variable macroeconomic environments.    Meanwhile, the volume of leveraged loans has ballooned to levels we haven’t seen since Q1 2021. Although, this has largely been driven by repricing activity, not net new loan origination - according to PitchBook | LCD. To monitor trends in private market as they develop, private market investors can leverage several of our resources:     - Indexes: https://lnkd.in/gBUCRHtN   - Dealmaking indicators: https://lnkd.in/gzuvqB5w   - Returns barometers: https://lnkd.in/g9wv6kf4 

People are the core of everything we do at PitchBook. Our people enable our customers’ success, and we believe that building a culture where people can thrive starts with our values.  Our values: Customers are King, Excellence as a State of Mind, Embrace and Drive Change, Focus on Focus, and Make it Fun are integrated into everything we do. From pre- to post-hire, how we serve customers, to how we interact with team members, our values guide our actions every day.  Yesterday was our annual PitchBook Panther Awards ceremony that recognizes the employees who are the best of the best at living out our values. It’s an opportunity for us to gather as a company to celebrate each other's wins, take pride in the achievements of the past year, and have some fun.   The Panther Awards have become one of my favorite ways that we highlight how we operate in alignment with our core values to execute on behalf of our business. We get to share real-life examples of how we foster a collaborative culture, and how we deliver, inspire, and recognize best-in-class work.  Congratulations to all our Panther Award winners! I’m so proud of the employees we recognized yesterday as well as each of our employees whose contributions continue to drive PitchBook’s success. I’m consistently motivated by our people in new ways and am proud that we as a company make celebrating people a priority.  

2023 posed challenges across the private capital market landscape, so I’m sharing an overview of the trends grabbing my attention. While inflation growth began to taper in 2023, the impact of higher rates to stabilize inflation forced allocators and asset managers to re-price risk and entry valuations and dried up liquidity options across most exit paths. As a result, fundraising has slowed, and our research indicates that trend will likely continue through 2024. Capital deployment slowed too, as annual PE and VC deal value both fell by about 30% year-over-year.   That said, the leveraged loan markets had their best year in terms of total return since 2009, with yields climbing north of 10% due to their floating rate nature—according to PitchBook | LCD. While the market operated more conservatively last year, our customers are continuing to find creative paths to maximize value for their limited partners.   Our team also released a series of flagship annual reports. Take a look at our US venture capital (https://lnkd.in/g5rX5Gg2), private equity (https://lnkd.in/grb_8mTv), and credit research (https://lnkd.in/gxz9WBrx) for more insights. To review our analyst’s forward-looking outlooks, read through their reports: · US VC Outlook: https://lnkd.in/gyA5wECW · US PE Outlook: https://lnkd.in/gyvfwdV4 · 2024 US Leveraged Loan Outlook: https://lnkd.in/gjBd7Nvz

9.3 seconds: that was the average customer chat response time from our Customer Support team in 2023. It’s an incredible, best-in-class precedent, and I’m so proud to know we’re able to support our clients with speed and accuracy.    Today is Customer Service Day, and I want to share my gratitude for our team and for the care they provide our clients every day. This past year, our team handled 141,000 requests, launched six on-demand eLearning courses and conducted over 30 webinar style group trainings. We also added or updated over 1,000 client facing knowledge articles to help improve our self-service offerings for customers.    Since I started PitchBook in 2007, treating every customer like a king has been a core value of the company and central to how we do business. I often reflect on how the service we provide lays the foundation for the trust we build with our customers. Our average new hire undergoes around 175 hours of training to get up to speed on our products, clients, and services. To us, the details matter, we take serving our customers seriously. PitchBook is built on our customer relationships: we’re the stewards of the data they rely on to fuel their success. Our customer service team helps make that vision a reality.     So, thank you to our Customer Support team members for the transparency and service you provide, and to our customers for trusting us to help you win.  

Happy new year! Still on a high from celebrating the Husky win on Monday night - congratulations University of Washington! I've been cheering on the team all season and excited to be 14-0. On to the National Championship next week - what a great a way to kick off the year, thinking 2024 is going to be a good one!

Students from the Lavin Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business recently joined me for lunch at our PitchBook HQ. We talked all things entrepreneurship – validating new business ideas, understanding your target market’s needs, execution, and raising capital. It’s always fun to share how we built PitchBook, the challenges we’ve faced along the way and where we plan to take the business.    The students asked great questions and brought a curiosity to the conversation that’s emblematic of budding entrepreneurs. I love spending time with undergrads to learn how the next generation is thinking about problem solving and creating ventures they are passionate about. Thanks to the UW Foster School and the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship for including me in your program, I can’t wait to see how this group builds for the future.      Go Dawgs!  

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day and I want to take a moment to thank the heroic people who have chosen to serve our country. To honor their service, our PitchBook military and veteran-led Employee Resource Group, Valor, partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a home for a veteran in a community near our Seattle HQ.   The team and I built framing, put up walls and helped get the property ready for winter. We enjoyed a gorgeous fall day and had a great time working alongside each other. Thank you to the team at Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King County for including us in your mission to tear down barriers to affordable housing in our community. And to our Veterans, thank you for your service!