In 2019, Sourcescrub experienced rocket ship growth! As the world's leading private company data provider, we added hundreds of thousands data points to our database, doubled our staff, serviced thousands of custom research requests and more than doubled our client list. We are proud to say we offer proprietary private company data to over 250 Private Equity, Banking, and Investment Banking firms.
2019 was a blockbuster year in the financial markets with most indexes hitting record highs. IPOs saw both ends of the spectrum with the spectacular performance of Beyond Meat and the spectacular implosion of WeWork. M&A activity continued at a strong pace with deal volume up 1.7% and price per deal slightly down by 3.6% (according to Factset's 2019 M&A report.
As this next year gets underway, despite growing concerns over the economic climate and political turmoil, most advisers anticipate deal volume increasing. Respondents in Deloitte & Touche's 2020 M&A Report were bullish with 63% reporting an increase in deal volumes. While this sentiment signaled increasing activity, most respondents signaled anticipated headwinds from economic uncertainty and high valuations. Many firms are embracing technology and process investments to boost their chances of identifying and sourcing attractive deals.
As these dynamics played out in 2019, deals in the "Pure-Private" sector - that is, companies with no institutional funding - continued to be one of the most highly sought- after areas in both investing and M&A. As we ring in the new year, Sourcescrub believes 3 factors are driving the push towards the Pure-Private sector: (1) the overwhelming abundance of corporate cash and search for accretive acquisitions, (2) an increasing uncertainty of public markets, and (3) the increased competition within both the private equity and investment banking markets. While these factors have driven an increased sense of urgency to access the Pure-Private segment, being able to execute an effective deal sourcing strategy remains a substantial challenge.
Some of these factors helped make 2019 a record setting year for us here at Sourcescrub. In our mission to become the world's leading source of private company intelligence, last year saw the doubling of our customer base as well as the tripling of the size of our team.
Not only was customer growth and demand for data products at an all- time high, the Sourcescrub platform added nearly 400,000 companies to our data set. The amount of companies added in 2019 was 55% more than in 2018.
Of the companies added in 2019, 79% are Pure Private companies - that is, companies without outside investment.
Other major ownership types include non-profit, venture capital and private equity, and government and education institutions.
Our platform now holds employee counts, job postings, financial metrics, and news updates - to mention a few - for over 1 million companies worldwide. And these numbers grow by the day. Sourcescrub is proud to be the leading provider of hard-to-get information for privately held companies. The 1 million companies in our database are located around the globe; 64.4% of them are in North America while 26.4% reside within Europe and the UK. Over 750 thousand companies in the database are privately owned.
One of the things that sets Sourcescrub apart is the richness of data points that we provide. We offer over 42 thousand data sources made up of buyers' guides, tradeshow exhibitor lists, professional associations and more. We added over 20 thousand data sources in 2019 alone - a 90% increase from 2018. A whopping 11,000 of these sources were tradeshow and event exhibitor lists making Sourcescrub the leading source of information on Conferences.
2019 also held many product updates for our platform. We now offer integrations with SugarCRM, Affinity, and DealCloud in addition to Salesforce. Product features now include data on headcount growth rates, the ability to import companies with custom tags, and the option for CRM daily syncing.
We now work with over 250 customers, have thousands of users who submitted tens of thousands of research requests.
As you can see, 2019 was a record setting year across many fronts. As the market evolves in 2020, Sourcescrub continues to invest in our people, technology and resources to further enhance the world's leading data service for private company intelligence. More importantly, we look forward to continuing to serve our many customers and partners in finding investment and advisory opportunities in the Pure-Private economy.
Interested in learning more? Request a demo today to learn how to Sourcescrub can be easily improve your data?
