CASE 01 — 2018–2020
UX / UI / PRODUCT / FINTECH
The world’s leading private market investment platform.
In the early 2000s, the idea of large-scale data exchange in private markets was unfathomable. CEPRES recognized that investors needed to look through fund performance into the underlying deal and asset performance to make better decisions. The platform began by providing institutional investors granular, actionable private market data — the kind nobody else was willing to expose.
PE.Analyzer offered unparalleled access to granular data — and no efficient way to filter, analyze, or output what mattered to the specific user. The platform was capable; the surface was opaque.
The platform served 76 distinct user roles — institutional investors, fund managers, data analysts — each needing a different cut of the same dataset. Sorting personas into seven broader use-case scenarios let the dashboard preselect default filters per scenario. Personalization moved to the entry point instead of being deferred to a settings page nobody opens.
PE.Analyzer exposed 125,000 filter options as a flat list — every option on equal footing, paralysis by default. The redesign tiered them: scenario presets at the top, common refinements one step in, the full taxonomy two steps deep. No options were removed; cognitive load was.
A seven-persona system fails at scale because real users straddle multiple roles. The dashboard layer let users drag-arrange data widgets per analysis they cared about — branded, persistent, shareable. The interface met institutional users where their existing workflows already lived.
Each version was tested with market experts, fund managers, and real users — not as accessory research but as the gating criterion for shipping. The seventh iteration is what shipped; the first six are why it works.
CEPRES is now the largest private market investment ecosystem on record — $45T asset value, 6,000 LPs and GPs, 125,000 PE-backed companies, 12,000 funds managed. The company grew from 15 employees in Munich to 120+ across New York, Singapore, Denver, and London during the engagement. ILPA selected CEPRES as its best-practice due-diligence partner.