Clarum

What do they actually do

Clarum is a SaaS tool that automates much of investment due diligence for private equity, venture capital, family offices, and consulting teams. It connects to a firm’s deal data and data rooms, parses documents, extracts key financials and terms, reconciles statements, and generates outputs directly in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint so teams can keep working in familiar files and templates (site, YC launch).

In practice, users plug Clarum into their shared drives or data rooms, review structured metrics and flags for inconsistencies, and receive screening memos, model reconciliations, and slide drafts that are ready to edit. The product emphasizes quick setup and enterprise security; Clarum publishes a SOC 2 Type II report and a recent penetration test in its security portal, signaling readiness for IT/compliance review (security portal).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Private equity associates and analysts: They spend hours pulling numbers from CIMs and data rooms, tying out income statements, and keeping slides and Excel in sync. They need outputs that drop into Excel/PowerPoint with minimal rework (site, YC launch).
• VC analysts and associates: They screen many opportunities and need fast, consistent summaries of decks, CIMs, and term sheets to increase coverage without adding headcount (site, YC launch).
• Family offices and lean investment teams: With limited staff, they struggle to run thorough diligence at scale and want reconciled financials and clear memos without building a large internal modeling team (site).
• Consulting or third‑party diligence providers: They face repetitive document extraction and formatting work and need faster, consistent deliverables that match client templates (site).
• Heads of IT/compliance/ops at PE/VC firms: They are cautious about onboarding new tools that touch sensitive deal data and require strong security controls and easy integration with existing drives and data rooms (site, security portal).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Run short, paid pilots with boutique PE/VC shops and family offices sourced via warm intros (YC network, founders, early investors). Automate one live deal end‑to‑end, deliver Excel/PowerPoint outputs and a simple time‑savings summary in exchange for a reference and case study.
• First 50: Scale to small–mid boutiques, diligence consultancies, and family offices via targeted outbound, partner referrals, and events. Offer a low‑cost standardized pilot with a one‑week onboarding playbook; use SOC 2/pentest artifacts to clear IT/compliance and convert on simple annual contracts (security portal).
• First 100: Move upstream to larger PE firms with a direct sales motion selling pilots into specific deal teams, supported by customer success for template mapping. Close larger accounts with procurement‑friendly contracts and integrations/partnerships so Clarum becomes a repeatable step in each firm’s deal workflow.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

The buyer universe spans tens of thousands of investment organizations that run diligence on private companies, including 11,000+ family offices globally and an active VC/PE ecosystem (e.g., 14,320 U.S. VC deals in 2024; U.S. PE AUM at $3.1T) (PwC 2024 Family Office study, NVCA 2025 Yearbook, S&P Global).

Bottom-up calculation:

Assume ~140k potential deal‑team seats across PE firms, VC firms, family offices, and diligence consultancies; at $5k–$10k ARR per seat, TAM is roughly $0.7B–$1.4B. This focuses on core diligence users rather than entire firms to stay conservative.

Assumptions:

• Seat count example: 5,000 PE firms × 8 seats + 5,000 VC firms × 4 seats + 11,000 family offices × 2 seats + 500 diligence providers × 15 seats ≈ 139,000 seats.
• Pricing assumption: $5k–$10k ARR per active diligence seat for automation that outputs to Excel/Word/PowerPoint.
• Not all organizations or seats are immediately serviceable; counts represent potential over a multi‑year horizon.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Daloopa: Automates financial data extraction to speed up model building and analysis for investment professionals—overlaps with Clarum’s goal of reducing manual data work in Excel (Daloopa, Daloopa).
• Luminance: Legal AI used for contract review, investigations, and compliance; widely applied to M&A document review and due diligence—adjacent to deal document analysis workflows (Luminance).
• Zuva: Contracts AI used in M&A diligence pre‑screening and contract data extraction, with UI and API offerings and SOC 2 Type II—relevant to extracting structured terms from deal documents (Zuva).
• DiligenceVault: Digital diligence platform for asset owners and managers that standardizes DDQs and centralizes data—more manager due‑diligence‑focused, but overlaps on diligence workflows and flagging (Platform, ILPA factsheet).
• AlphaSense (incl. Tegus): Market intelligence and expert insights platform; after agreeing to acquire Tegus, it combines research search, expert transcripts/calls, and financial data—used by PE/VC for market diligence (AlphaSense–Tegus, PR).