Private markets data provider PitchBook Data Inc. today opened its platform to startups for free at Web Summit in Lisbon.

Those that sign up have to share their financials. Some of that information will reach investors through the company’s new deal sourcing service, PitchBook Origin.

The launches come as more startups than ever are landing a first round. In the U.S., the 2021 record for first-time financings had already fallen by the end of September, PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association found in their latest Venture Monitor report.

PitchBook credits artificial intelligence with part of that growth, since the technology has made companies easier to start. AI tools have also compressed investor diligence from weeks to days. Sourcing has not kept pace, the company argues, particularly where the signals are not public.

Free access for startups runs through a program called PitchBook for Startups. Founders who have bootstrapped or raised only from angels, grants or accelerators qualify as long as they are now seeking a first institutional round and can show at least a mockup of their product.

Once a startup has handed over its financials and details on its leadership team and product, its founders can use the PitchBook platform to research which firms are actively writing checks in their sector and stage. Investor research tops PitchBook’s own list of what founders can do with the access.

That founder data lands in a much bigger pool on the Origin side, where coverage starts at about 25 million companies and 250 million people profiles. Bootstrapped businesses and companies that have not yet raised money or announced what they are building are part of that count, and some 15 million of the companies are new to PitchBook.

Third-party data enrichment and PitchBook’s own machine learning models supply part of the coverage. PitchBook said it has not had founder-verified data at scale before.

Each company gets a score, and investors can tune relevance filters to their own criteria. Real-time alerts, saved searches and customer relationship management integrations are meant to replace the manual monitoring that deal teams do now.

Chief Solutions Officer Paul Santarelli said the missing piece for investors has been visibility into “the stage before a company raises, when the most important signals are the hardest to see.” Every company that joins the startup program and contributes verified information sharpens that picture, he said.

PitchBook “was once a startup itself, working to get in front of the right backers,” President and Chief Operating Officer Rod Diefendorf said. Founded in 2007, the Seattle company now serves more than 100,000 clients worldwide. Morningstar Inc. has owned it since 2016.

Startups can apply for the program now. Origin is available as a standalone product or as an add-on to the main PitchBook platform.

Image: PitchBook