Pale blue dot VC: Smarter & Faster Reporting via Vestberry

About Pale blue dot VC

Pale blue dot, a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Sweden, backs the most exciting climate tech startups across Europe & the US. It was founded by three former entrepreneurs in 2020 who wanted to build a better venture capital fund that understands entrepreneurs, and channels capital into founders solving one of humanity's biggest problems: climate change.

They invest in climate tech companies who want to build a world that founders would want to live in. They invest primarily in seed & pre-seed rounds with ticket sizes between €500k to €1.5 million.

In their portfolio, you can find companies such as Climate X, a climate risk analytics solution; Betta F!sh, a producer of seaweed-based fish alternatives; and Overstory, an intelligence solution tracking the planet's vegetation.

Client's Background

Imagine relying solely on Google Sheets as your data tool, only to realize it no longer scales with your growing operations. That's exactly what the Pale blue dot team encountered. As they expanded their venture capital activities, they urgently sought a portfolio management tool that seamlessly integrated with their tech stack.

In May 2022, they discovered Vestberry — an innovative solution that has revolutionized portfolio management for VC investors. With Vestberry onboard, Pale blue dot were able to tackle their pain points head-on. Through the onboarding process, the key pain points they aimed to address were identified.

Client's Challenge: Internal Reporting as a Major Challenge

The Pale blue dot team used to create their internal report using Google Sheets. The report consisted of over 20 different sheets that provided detailed information on fund performance and the performance of each portfolio company. However, the team found that manually inputting data and completing the report was becoming more and more time-consuming. With the expectation of a growing portfolio and additional funds in the future, the team aimed to find a smarter approach to this process.

The driving force behind this initiative to work smarter was Agata Bremer, Head of Finance & Administration at Pale blue dot VC. Before Vestberry, their internal reporting was an extremely time-consuming project.

• Challenge 1 — Tracking investment round details like number of shares, price per share and valuations.
• Challenge 2 — Ensuring the team's easy access to important information while maintaining data integrity.
• Challenge 3 — Streamlining fund reporting to save time and avoid overwhelming the team's capacity.

Client's Goal

To streamline internal reporting to save time — eliminating manual data inputs to shorten report completion time, but keeping the existing design and structure.

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The Solution, Powered by Vestberry

The Ultimate Single Source of Truth

In Vestberry, Pale blue dot has revolutionized the way it manages fund and portfolio performance — saying goodbye to scattered data and hello to a single source of truth. Vestberry offers a cutting-edge data architecture designed specifically for portfolio management needs. Pale blue dot can rest assured knowing that its portfolio-related information is stored in a centralized hub, ensuring smart organization, maximum protection, and accessibility for every stakeholder.

Pale blue dot no longer struggles with diverse data in different formats from multiple sources. Vestberry provides a robust database that captures every detail with unmatched precision. Pale blue dot's data is not only well-organized, but also constantly updated in real-time, consolidating and harmonizing information seamlessly with best-in-market data granularity.

Excel Add-in

Vestberry's Excel plugin offers an exceptional advantage to Pale blue dot by enabling real-time data retrieval directly from Vestberry to an Excel spreadsheet. Available for both Windows and Mac, this powerful integration empowers Pale blue dot to generate fully customizable reports with remarkable efficiency. With the Excel plugin, Pale blue dot has been able to say goodbye to time-consuming tasks like manual copying and pasting of data, co-editing errors, and formula mistakes — freeing the team to focus on more impactful activities and achieve their objectives with greater speed and accuracy.

Interactive Custom LP Report

The Excel Add-in has been available to Vestberry clients since June 2022. In the fall of 2022, the Pale blue dot team asked Vestberry to recreate their report, both content and design, deploying the full capabilities of the Excel Add-in. The team received a report that looked the same as their original one but was smart and interactive. Data and information were loaded into cells directly from Vestberry — no middle-man or manual data inputs. Updating such a report for the next quarter took only a few minutes. To test the new report, the team completed their internal reporting for Q4 2022 via the original workflow and Vestberry's smart interactive template, comparing both the process itself and the content.