Best Databases to Find Equity Partners for SMB Tech (2025)

For small-to-mid-sized tech companies, raising equity in 2025 increasingly means looking beyond venture capital and tapping into family offices. These private investment firms, often representing the wealth of a single family or multiple families, are not bound by the rigid timelines of traditional VC funds. Instead, they can provide patient, flexible capital that aligns well with founders seeking long-term partners.

Globally, there are now more than 8,000 family offices managing trillions in assets. Surveys suggest that over 70% of them plan to make direct investments in 2025, up significantly from just two years ago. This shift has created unprecedented opportunity for SMB founders — but also a practical challenge. Family offices are notoriously hard to find. They keep a low profile, avoid publicity, and rarely make it obvious who the real decision-makers are.

That is why specialized databases have become indispensable. The question is no longer if you should use one, but which one actually helps you find the right principals, CIOs, or portfolio managers who are writing checks. Below, we walk through the major options — FINTRX, Dakota, Preqin, PitchBook, Tracxn, and Crunchbase — and show how Altss is carving out an edge with global, real-time intelligence.

FINTRX – Deep Profiles, U.S. Focus

FINTRX is a family office database that has become a standard reference point for fundraisers in North America. It lists around 4,200 family offices and more than 24,000 decision-makers, with detailed profiles that include AUM, sector preferences, and links to wealth origin. Its strength lies in the segmentation options: users can filter by asset class, geography, or wealth level and export lists directly into Salesforce or HubSpot.

The data quality is high because of its in-house research team, but FINTRX has a clear U.S. tilt. Coverage of Europe, Asia, or the Middle East is thinner, and the platform does not provide live mandate or allocation signals. It is essentially a static but well-curated Rolodex. Pricing is in the five-figure range per seat, making it a heavy investment for a small founder team.

Dakota Marketplace – CRM-Like Investor Rolodex

Dakota Marketplace was built by fundraisers for fundraisers. It covers around 4,000 family offices globally, but it also includes pensions, endowments, and consultants. Its design resembles a lightweight CRM, allowing users to track outreach, log calls, and build organized pipelines of contacts.

The appeal of Dakota is its workflow simplicity. However, its family office profiles are often shallow — names, emails, and basic descriptors rather than detailed investment mandates. It also does not track changes in real time. Pricing starts around $15,500 per year for the first seat, with additional user costs and modules for international coverage. For a placement agent or IR team running broad outreach campaigns, Dakota works well. For a founder seeking precision, it often feels too blunt.

Preqin – The Institutional Research Powerhouse

Preqin is a household name in alternative asset data. It tracks over 15,000 institutional investors globally, including around 4,500 family offices. Its strength lies in analytics: users can see fund commitments, allocation breakdowns, and long-term trends across asset classes.

The weakness is outreach. Contact information is often outdated, direct emails are rare, and updates happen quarterly at best. Preqin is designed for institutional asset managers and consultants who need market maps, not for founders trying to reach an FO principal next week. Pricing starts around $25,000 and can run well above $50,000 annually, which makes it inaccessible for most SMB tech companies. For research, it is unmatched; for actionable outreach, it falls short.

PitchBook – Comprehensive Private Market Data

PitchBook is widely used by VCs, PE funds, and corporate development teams. It covers tens of thousands of investors globally, and family offices appear if they have participated in visible deals. That makes it comprehensive, but also selective — if a family office has not done a public deal, it may not be listed at all.

The platform excels at connecting dots. A founder can look up a competitor’s funding round, see which investors participated, and trace that to family offices who have shown appetite in their sector. PitchBook integrates well into workflows, with Excel plugins and CRM syncs.

But like Preqin, PitchBook was not built for family office precision. It provides names but often lacks verified contact details, and it does not deliver mandate or timing signals. Pricing falls between $12,000 and $18,000 per seat annually. For founders who also need company valuations and comparables, it is worth it. For those solely focused on family office fundraising, it can feel like overkill.

Tracxn – Wide Coverage, Affordable Entry Point

Tracxn began as a startup tracker but has evolved into a broad database of investors, including family offices. It claims coverage of over 200,000 investors worldwide, with specific filters for single family offices, sector, and stage.

The platform is popular among founders in emerging markets. It updates investment activity in real time, and it is significantly cheaper than legacy platforms at around $550 per user per month on annual plans. The trade-off is depth: family office profiles are basic, and contact details are sparse. A founder will usually need LinkedIn or other tools to connect with the principals.

For early-stage or emerging-market companies, Tracxn can provide a wide discovery net at an attainable price, but it requires more manual follow-up.

Crunchbase Pro – The Starting Point

Crunchbase is one of the most familiar names to founders. Its investor data comes primarily from funding announcements, which means it includes family offices only if they were named in a deal. Profiles are basic, usually limited to the office name, location, and investments made.

Its main strength is accessibility. For $588 per year, a founder can quickly filter for “Family Investment Office” investors, see who has backed similar startups, and export initial lists. The downside is accuracy and depth — Crunchbase rarely provides the names or emails of principals, and many family offices will not appear at all.

For a solo founder or small team starting their search, Crunchbase is a low-cost way to build a first draft pipeline, but it is not a complete solution.

Where Altss Wins

Each of the above tools has clear strengths, but they also share limitations: static data, regional blind spots, stale contacts, or expensive licenses. Altss was designed to solve those gaps.

Altss provides global coverage of over 6,000 family offices, including underrepresented regions such as Southern Europe, MENA, and Asia-Pacific. Unlike legacy platforms, every profile is refreshed every 30 days using open-source intelligence — from filings to news to event rosters. Users receive live alerts when a family office hires a new CIO, attends an industry conference, or makes a fresh tech investment.

The contact data is verified with a 99% deliverability guarantee, and principals, CIOs, and analysts are clearly identified so founders can reach the real decision-makers. Mandate insights are dynamic, showing sector interest and deal activity in real time. The platform is designed for speed: founders can generate a fresh target list in minutes, export it instantly, and receive alerts in Slack or email without needing a full IR team.

Pricing is straightforward — $15,500 per seat per year for LP access.

Conclusion & Special September Offer

Family offices have become critical equity partners for SMB tech founders in 2025, but they remain difficult to access without the right tools. FINTRX offers deep U.S. coverage, Dakota provides a CRM-like Rolodex, Preqin and PitchBook deliver unmatched breadth for large institutions, Tracxn offers affordable discovery, and Crunchbase remains a popular entry point.

Altss, however, was built for today’s fundraising reality: global reach, live signals, and verified contacts in a founder-friendly package. For startups raising their first institutional round, or for established managers expanding their LP base, Altss provides the edge that static databases cannot.

👉 Book a demo today to see how Altss can accelerate your next raise and lock in September’s family office pricing.