Competitive Landscape

How Mars compares to Crunchbase, CB Insights, and PitchBook

Market Leader
Crunchbase
$49-199/month
AI + Predictions
CB Insights
$30K+/year
Institutional Grade
PitchBook
$25-30K/year

The Big Three Competitors

Crunchbase

The Market Leader

Pricing
$49-199/mo
Coverage
Millions
6B+ API calls/year

Strengths:

  • • Brand recognition (#1 in market)
  • • Funding round data
  • • Easy to use
  • • API & integrations
  • • Community contributions

Weaknesses:

  • • Data accuracy issues
  • • Limited international coverage
  • • No predictive analytics
  • • Export limitations

CB Insights

AI + Predictive Analytics

Pricing
$30K+/year
Coverage
10M companies
1B data points

Strengths:

  • • AI-powered predictions
  • • Tech/startup focus
  • • Market intelligence reports
  • • "Next unicorn" predictions
  • • ~$100M ARR business

Weaknesses:

  • • Very high pricing
  • • Tech sector bias
  • • Black box predictions
  • • Limited source transparency

PitchBook

Institutional Standard

Pricing
$25-30K/yr
Coverage
Millions
2,000+ researchers

Strengths:

  • • Institutional-grade quality
  • • Deep M&A & deal data
  • • Global coverage
  • • Private deal terms
  • • Industry standard for PE/VC

Weaknesses:

  • • Extremely expensive
  • • Manual research (slow updates)
  • • Inaccessible to SMBs
  • • Complex interface

Feature Comparison Matrix

Feature Crunchbase CB Insights PitchBook Mars
Pricing $49-199/mo $30K+/year $25-30K/year $5-10K/year
Company Coverage Millions 10M Millions 500K-1M (target)
Real-Time Updates 24-48 hours 24-48 hours 24-48 hours < 1 hour
SEC Filing Analysis ✗ Limited Manual ✓ Automated (26M filings)
Event Extraction ✗ Basic ✗ ✓ 30 event types
Predictive Models ✗ ✓ (black box) ✗ ✓ 10+ models planned
News + Transcripts News only News only Limited ✓ News + Transcripts + SEC
Data Transparency Limited Black box Limited ✓ Source + confidence scores
API Access ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ (planned)
Target Customer SMBs, VCs, Startups VCs, Consulting, Corp Dev PE, IB, Mega-funds Small PE, Family Offices, Corp Dev

Mars' Secret Weapon: Tester Event Extraction

What Makes Mars Different

While competitors rely on manual analysts or basic AI, Mars leverages the Tester event extraction pipeline to automatically convert unstructured text into structured, predictive data at massive scale.

What Competitors Do

  • • Manual extraction: Human analysts read articles/filings and enter data
  • • Static data: Company profiles with funding amounts, dates
  • • Limited scope: Only process news articles (miss SEC filings + transcripts)
  • • Slow: 24-48 hour lag from announcement to database
  • • Not predictive: Tell you what happened, not what will happen

What Mars Does (via Tester)

  • ✓ Automated extraction: LLMs convert sentences → 30 event types (M&A, delisting, bankruptcy, etc.)
  • ✓ Dynamic events: Track company state changes over time
  • ✓ Multi-source: News + SEC filings + earnings transcripts
  • ✓ Real-time: < 1 hour from publication to event extraction
  • ✓ Predictive: Build models from event sequences (10+ models planned)

The Tester Event Extraction Pipeline

Input
Unstructured Text
• News articles
• SEC filings
• Earnings transcripts
Processing
LLM Extraction
• vLLM on H200 GPUs
• 150-180 prompts/sec
• 30 event types
Output
Structured Events
• Event type
• Entities involved
• Confidence scores
Models
Predictions
• M&A prediction
• Delisting risk
• Bankruptcy risk

Current SEC Filings (Tester)

Event Types: 30 types
Processing Speed: 150-180 prompts/sec
Coverage: 26M SEC filings
Database: PostgreSQL
✓ Already Operational

Expansion News + Transcripts

→ News Articles: Real-time Benzinga feed + Google News
→ Earnings Transcripts: Quarterly calls from all public companies
→ Same pipeline: Apply Tester event extraction to all sources
→ Result: 100x more data, same 30 event types
📅 Planned for 2026

Why Event Extraction is Mars' Competitive Moat

1. Scale

Competitors can't manually process 26M SEC filings + millions of news articles + transcripts. AI can process all of it automatically.

2. Speed

Event extraction runs in real-time. From news article published → event in database: < 1 hour. Competitors take 24-48 hours with manual analysts.

3. Predictions

Event sequences enable predictive models. Track company evolution over time, predict future events. 10+ models planned (M&A, delisting, bankruptcy, etc.).

CB Insights claims "AI-powered predictions" but doesn't explain how. Mars will have transparent, event-based predictions showing exactly which events led to the prediction.

Strategic Positioning

Don't Compete With

  • ✗ PitchBook on institutional-grade private deal data
  • ✗ Crunchbase on breadth (millions of companies)
  • ✗ CB Insights on brand recognition

Compete On

  • ✓ Real-time speed (< 1 hour vs. 24-48)
  • ✓ SEC filing depth (26M filings mined)
  • ✓ Event extraction + predictions
  • ✓ Data transparency (show sources)
  • ✓ Price ($5-10K vs. $25-30K)

Target Customers

  • → Smaller PE funds ($100M-1B AUM)
  • → Family offices
  • → Corporate development teams
  • → Emerging VCs
  • → Research/consulting firms

Key Threats

  • ⚠ Competitors adding AI/LLM capabilities
  • ⚠ PitchBook launching lower-priced tier
  • ⚠ Data source restrictions (API limits, scraping bans)
  • ⚠ Well-funded new entrants
  • ⚠ Customers building in-house with LLMs

The Bottom Line

Mars can't beat Crunchbase, CB Insights, and PitchBook at their own games. But Mars doesn't need to.

By leveraging Tester's event extraction pipeline to automatically process news, SEC filings, and earnings transcripts at scale, Mars can offer something none of them can:

  • Real-time event tracking (< 1 hour from publication)
  • Automated SEC filing mining (26M filings, 130M company mentions)
  • Transparent predictive models built from event sequences
  • Affordable pricing ($5-10K vs. $25-30K)

Target: $10M-50M ARR business serving price-sensitive customers who value speed, transparency, and predictions

Ready to See How We Can Enter This Market?

Detailed market entry strategy: TAM analysis, financial model, phased roadmap, and risk mitigation

$117M TAM
Addressable market
$500K-750K
Total investment
$5.85M ARR
Year 3 target
150%+ IRR
Projected return
View Market Entry Strategy →