Building a market data integration platform from the ground up is not easy. We did that for three firms before productizing Filament Syfter into the technology platform dealmakers know and love today.
As the market has evolved over recent years, many firms approach has followed along this natural progression:
1. Buy: Off-the-Shelf Sourcing platforms
The historic approach of the last decade has been to buy a combo of off-the-shelf SaaS sourcing platforms. There are ever more options for firms to broaden that set of SaaS tools and data sets for sourcing. But as good as some of these are, no one sourcing /SaaS platform will ever give full market coverage.
Plus adding to the workload of the origination team who must hop between systems, manually drive origination on a batch by batch process. In pursuit of a more tailored, automated approach, many private equity firms then saw the imperative to start building their proprietary deal engines.
They have appointed Heads of Data, Heads of AI, data scientists, and data engineers and sought approaches to automate and add scoring.
2. Build Yourself: with in-house resources
Some firms then began to develop their own market data architecture in-house. This offers full control and the potential for full customization. But building from scratch is expensive, resource-intensive, and slow.
It requires recruiting and retaining highly specialized talent (data scientists, engineers, AI product managers). That’s talent that’s often outside a firm’s core competency. Worse, by the time the first version is delivered, market expectations and AI capabilities may have already shifted, leaving you with an outdated or incomplete system.
3. Build With: leverage purpose-built technology
Our ever-expanding client base are gaining the best of both worlds: leverage an existing, proven AI baseline while tailoring it to your firm’s unique investment approach. By “building with” a trusted technology provider like Filament Syfter, you gain access to a robust platform already deployed successfully across leading firms — meaning your foundation is tested, audit-ready, and scalable.
From there, you can configure workflows, data sources, and decision logic to match your strategy. This approach minimizes risk, accelerates time-to-value, and ensures ongoing innovation as the technology evolves. In other words, you don’t just buy technology, you gain a partner that helps you operationalize it effectively, keep pace with change, and maximize ROI.
Reflections on the state of the market
At recent industry gatherings such as FINTOP’s annual conference and the BVCA Summit, I’ve heard firsthand from firms making impressive progress in either deal origination or the management information layer. Yet one theme continues to emerge: to gain better insight and control of the deal-making engine, firms need a partner for data engineering. As has been the case since I started my AI career back in 2012, the data engineering is the differentiator, even if the AI is the eye candy.
Data engineering is where firms can truly separate themselves from the pack. While off-the-shelf data sources level the playing field, it’s the ability to design pipelines, normalize disparate sources, and build lineage-aware datasets that allows deal teams to trust the insights in front of them. Without robust data engineering, firms risk drowning in noise, wasting analyst hours reconciling mismatched formats, duplicating records, and manually cleaning data instead of surfacing the next winning investment opportunity.
In the high-velocity world of private equity, speed and precision matter. A well-engineered data foundation gives firms confidence that their AI and analytics models aren’t just running on “eye candy,” but on clean, contextualized, and decision-ready information. Data engineering transforms raw inputs into differentiated insights, turning data exhaust into alpha. It enables deal professionals to ask more complex questions, cut through the clutter, and respond to opportunities faster than the competition.
At Filament Syfter, we’ve seen firsthand that the firms winning the most competitive deals are the ones who invest in this data engine layer. Our platform was built to partner with in-house data leaders, helping them “build with” rather than starting from scratch, whilst having the ability to customize the interface and AI brain to each firm’s unique needs.
Ready to give your deal teams a true advantage this busy season?
Book a demo of Filament Syfter today and see how we can help engineer your edge.