How Connect Ventures adopted a new fund management strategy with Vestberry

This case study was created based on a blog post by Andrew Baldwin at Connect Ventures.

The process of migrating 9 years' worth of historical investment data onto a brand new platform is never an easy task. Now it's been completed, the day-to-day maintenance of Connect Ventures' portfolio & fund management has drastically reduced whilst its functionality and UX have increased. Connect Ventures now has more time to analyze its data and create insights, rather than inputting data into poorly scalable databases.

About Connect Ventures

Connect Ventures is a thesis-led venture capital firm that invests in product-led companies in Europe, usually at the seed stage. Founded in 2012 in London, Connect Ventures has now invested in more than 80 startups and its AUM is currently over €130 million. Over the last nine years, the firm has helped guide investments in product companies such as Typeform, Citymapper, Soldo, TrueLayer, Curve, Kheiron, and Second Nature.

Client's Challenge

As with many venture capital firms, Connect Ventures used Excel as the primary tool for keeping track of all its fund and portfolio data.

"Excel didn't work for us, as it got more complex and convoluted with each new drawdown, investment, or distribution. The multiple worksheets and tabs became overwhelming very quickly, and we had to find a different solution," said Andrew Baldwin, Senior Finance Associate at Connect Ventures.

Connect Ventures also used Airtable to update its portfolio KPI monitoring practices through form submissions. This process was designed to be as lightweight and painless as possible, in order to maximize engagement and completion rates. However, after one year of using Airtable, this process was no longer scalable as, for example, each new analysis required the creation of a new view with a couple more columns of additional data points. "After realizing what kind of limitations Airtable had in the long run, it was time to look for another solution."

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Solution Powered by Vestberry

Connect Ventures was looking mainly for the following key features in its portfolio management software:

• Live metrics across all funds and portfolios — daily and accurate FX updates as well as live TVPI and IRR movements.
• LP reporting using the data within the platform to create customizable and visually appealing reports that could be shared with LPs through a self-service portal.
• Time machine reporting showing progress over time.
• KPI collection allowing portfolio companies to easily update KPIs with minimal time and effort, as well as allowing fund managers to track their progress and trends.
• Cap table management giving one centralized place for all cap tables in a single format.
• Round, exit, and liquidity modeling, so they could use inputted liquidity preferences to run waterfalls and exit models easily.
• Dedicated dashboards for each fund and each portfolio company.
• Personalized views by assessment, sector, stage, or geography.

The Results Thanks to Vestberry

The process of migrating 9 years’ worth of historical investment data onto a brand new platform is never an easy task. Now it's been completed, the day-to-day maintenance of Connect Ventures’ portfolio & fund management has drastically reduced whilst its functionality and UX have increased.

3 areas of improvement the client identified upon Vestberry implementation:

• Minimized time spent on inputting data into the system.
• Enhanced user experience with sleek solution.
• Reduced daily fund management processes.