Venture capital research firm CB Insights is looking to make a “buy” as it steps up competition in the venture/investment news space with competitors such as Dow Jones Venture Source and others.
So what are the criteria to attract CB Insights’ interest?
There are three, with various subpoints as spelled out Anand Sanwal, CB Insight’s CEO and co-founder:
- Acquisition interest #1 – Vertical media / niche B2B media
“When we boil down what has worked for us, it comes down to two things:
“We have an amazing research team that develops content that generates a lot of interest in CB Insights
That research gets people to try out an amazing product.”
CB Insights wants more “vertical” products, thus it is looking at “acquiring vertical media sites which are focused on a very specific industry or topic and whose readership is largely B2B.”
Key points:
- The site should be covering technology or emerging industry trends within the space
- A team with deep domain expertise and intense passion for the space
- A highly engaged readership. The readership need not be big (although that is of course nice), but the content/research must be great.
- Acquisition interest #2 – Vertical newsletters
“While newsletters might often go hand & glove with vertical media categories outlined in #1, we do know of a few newsletter-only companies so wanted to call this out separately. The criteria we look for and the reasons a vertical newsletter would benefit under the CB Insights umbrella are largely the same as for vertical media / niche B2B detailed above.”
- Acquisition interest #3 – Proprietary data
“We are building software that uses data to predict technology trends. Our customers use insights into tech trends to do a few things:
- Predict the next market they should enter
- Predict the industries of tomorrow
- Predict their next M&A target
- Predict competitor strategy and likely moves
- Predict their next investment
- Predict the S&P 500 of tomorrow
Interested? Learn more at:
https://www.cbinsights.com
