Palace

What do they actually do

Palace is a hosted platform that replaces the spreadsheet/email chase for portfolio-company reporting at private equity and related investors. It ingests reports in their current formats (Excel/CSV, PDFs, decks, or data pulled from connected tools), checks incoming numbers against history, flags discrepancies, and provides single-company and portfolio‑level dashboards with an audit trail and role-based access (palace.so, YC profile).

Current users are deal teams, portfolio operations, finance, and investor‑relations teams at PE/growth funds, private credit shops, family offices, and corporate M&A. Typical workflow: onboard a fund or a single deal, schedule requests or connect integrations, let Palace parse and compare submissions to historicals, review flags for mismatches or covenant‑type issues, and monitor via live dashboards with Excel export when needed (palace.so, YC profile).

The company advertises 20+ integrations, live refresh from connected tools, end‑to‑end encryption, and SOC‑2 attestation. Palace publicly claims ~30‑minute setup and “15+ hours” saved per deal lead per month based on early customers, and says it has deployed at funds managing billions in AUM (palace.so, YC profile, LinkedIn launch post).

Near term, the team is building toward continuous monitoring at the fund level: more integrations and real‑time syncs, automated compliance/alerting (e.g., covenant checks, variance explanations), portfolio‑level benchmarking, and outputs that support LP reporting and fund‑wide rollouts (palace.so, YC profile).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Deal leads / investment associates at PE and growth funds: They spend many hours each month chasing, aggregating, and sanity‑checking portco reports across emails and spreadsheets, which takes time away from sourcing and deals. Palace centralizes collection and flags discrepancies to cut this manual work (palace.so, YC profile).
• Portfolio operations / operating partners: They can’t reliably compare KPIs across companies because reporting formats vary, so prioritizing interventions is slow. Palace parses varied files and builds portfolio‑level dashboards to surface apples‑to‑apples comparisons (palace.so).
• Fund finance / controllers: Maintaining an audit trail and catching post‑audit changes or covenant breaches late creates compliance and reporting risk. Palace advertises automated checks, discrepancy flags, and an audit trail to reduce blind spots (palace.so).
• Investor‑relations / LP reporting teams: Consolidating portfolio results for LP reports and fundraising decks is manual and error‑prone because data isn’t standardized. Palace automates collection and provides consistent portfolio summaries to speed LP reporting (YC profile).
• Portfolio‑company finance managers / CFOs: They’re repeatedly asked to reformat exports and respond to reminders, pulling time from running the business. Palace offers scheduled requests, integrations, and simple uploads to reduce back‑and‑forth (palace.so).

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

• First 10: Run low‑friction, single‑deal pilots via personal networks and YC introductions; highlight ~30‑minute setup and measured hours saved, then convert based on concrete time‑saving on one portfolio company (palace.so, YC profile).
• First 50: Use early case studies to sell repeatable POCs via outbound to similar funds; add referral incentives for portfolio‑ops/finance leads to introduce Palace across sister deals (palace.so, YC profile).
• First 100: Standardize onboarding with prebuilt integrations/templates for fund‑wide rollouts and partner with fund administrators, fund‑of‑funds, and ERP/CRM vendors to embed into existing workflows (palace.so, YC profile).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Private equity firms managed over $8T in assets in 2024, indicating a large market that relies on portfolio monitoring and reporting tools (Investopedia). Established solutions like S&P Global’s iLEVEL report 700+ asset manager and allocator users, suggesting thousands of relevant buyers globally for portfolio‑monitoring software (S&P iLEVEL).

Bottom-up calculation:

Assume ~5,000 target organizations worldwide (PE, growth, private credit, larger family offices/corp dev) that actively manage multiple portcos and would buy a monitoring platform. At a conservative $40k average ACV, TAM ≈ $200M per year (5,000 × $40k).

Assumptions:

• Buyer universe focuses on firms with recurring, multi‑company reporting needs; estimate ~5,000 globally (supported by competitor adoption counts and industry scale).
• Average ACV ~$40k, below legacy platforms (often six figures) to reflect mid‑market pricing and land‑and‑expand motion (Sheetgo cost overview).
• TAM defined as software subscription revenue for reporting/monitoring; excludes adjacent services (fund admin, data services).

Who are some of their notable competitors

• S&P Global iLEVEL: Long‑standing portfolio monitoring platform for private markets used by 700+ GPs/LPs; offers data collection, analytics, valuations, and reporting with managed data services (S&P iLEVEL).
• Allvue Systems (Portfolio Monitoring): Portfolio monitoring solution for PE/VC covering collection, analysis, and reporting; part of an integrated suite spanning fund accounting and investor communications (Allvue).
• eFront (BlackRock/Aladdin): Enterprise alternative‑investment platform with portfolio monitoring, investor reporting, and analytics; integrated with BlackRock’s Aladdin for whole‑portfolio workflows (eFront).
• Chronograph: Private markets data and analytics platform focused on portfolio monitoring, valuations, and LP/GP workflows; widely used by PE firms for reporting and analytics (Chronograph).
• 73 Strings: AI‑driven portfolio monitoring and valuations platform aimed at private capital managers, combining performance data, reporting, and ESG/valuation workflows (73 Strings).