The 9 most time-consuming activities in venture capital

How does a company achieve sustainable success? This question has countless answers, as the path to success depends heavily on the market, people and opportunities – and is therefore highly individual. Nevertheless, what we hear time and again from founders and venture capitalists is a call for greater ‘efficiency’ and ‘scalability’. Even though digital tools are already used extensively, there are still too many time-consuming activities and too many manual processes that could have been automated long ago. This is particularly an issue when a company wants to decouple its revenue growth from headcount growth. This applies to every start-up – that's logical. But does it also apply to their investors? Absolutely! Our daily work at cloudworx shows us that there is enormous potential for greater efficiency and scalability here too – which can be harnessed through digitalisation with Salesforce.

We will therefore show you the nine most time-consuming processes in everyday venture capital work – and how you can scale them with Salesforce.

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#1. Deal flow – Retire your Excel deal funnel!

In Salesforce, you can map your individual investment process. This allows you to track (potential) deals, responsibilities, documents, categorisations and statuses in one central location. Why? Because you'll never lose track of your funnel again, you won't waste time on manual updates, and you'll be up to date in real time without having to ask your colleagues. The best part: in your weekly deal flow meeting, you'll have access to visualised data and dashboards that you can call up with a single click. No preparation required. And in real time. Even if changes are made during the meeting.

#2. Fundraising – Invest your energy in the next pitch, not in managing it!

Every now and then, even investors need to look for investors. As with start-ups seeking capital, two factors are crucial to success in fundraising from venture capitalists: transparency and efficiency. Transparency is created by mapping your fundraising process in Salesforce. You know exactly who you have discussed what with, under what conditions, and where the potential investor stands. Efficiency is achieved through clear task management, teamwork, and an overview of exactly what needs to be done next.

#3. Reporting – Create more accurate reports in less time!

As founders, we experienced first-hand what monthly reporting means in terms of effort (and pain): days of manual work to update data, aggregate it and derive KPIs from it. In the end, the reports were almost useless because they were out of date. Even worse, all this effort kept us from our actual operational work. Investors are no different. Heterogeneous reports have to be laboriously prepared manually as a basis for internal decisions or fund investor reports. This costs resources and – just like the founder – time and precision. Using Salesforce helps to drastically simplify these processes. And to standardise them. When data is available in a clean structure, reports can be generated automatically. Startups gain insight into their own performance in seconds and can incorporate analyses into everyday management decisions. Data can be automatically transmitted to investors, where it can be aggregated and prepared for their own purposes or for possible further distribution. In real time. With minimal effort.

#4. Deal sharing – manage your co-investments from a single system!

Do you have other investors with whom you would like to co-invest? But no clear process for structuring joint investments?

Salesforce can help: approve deals for your partners, obtain approval from start-ups, share information, track interest and initiate concrete co-investments. With automatically sent notifications, a partner portal for presenting deals and NDAs created with a single click.

#5. Contact initiation – find the right contacts for your start-ups at any time!

No high-potential start-up is looking for dumb money. Most VCs invest smart money and, in addition to the financial investment, aim to support start-ups with targeted contacts within their group, portfolio or other networks. Does this apply to you? I would be surprised if it didn't. Unfortunately, the problem is that contacts are often made emotionally, out of random situations. The structured facilitation of contacts using a clearly defined process in Salesforce can greatly increase the efficiency of such measures. Find the right contacts for your portfolio companies with just a few clicks. Or let your start-ups choose who they want to talk to via a portal. You can send introductory emails automatically. With zero effort.

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#6. Recruiting – Get ready to hunt down high potentials!

Order a book with a single click – and it arrives just two hours later. The Amazon mentality has prevailed.

No one wants to wait for anything anymore, and very few can. This also applies to recruiting. After all, what good candidate is going to wait two weeks for an initial response, a phone call to get to know them, or an invitation to an interview? By then, they will have long since left the job market. ‘Time to hire’ is the magic phrase – and it can be reduced enormously if the recruiting process is right. For example, through (partially) automated communication and application forms that store data directly in Salesforce. Talent pools can be created to quickly find and contact high potentials.

#7. Interaction – Put an end to the flood of email applications!

Every day, you receive an endless flood of applications from start-ups. Wouldn't it be nice if these were automatically sent to your deal funnel for further processing? This means that start-ups apply via a web form, receive direct feedback and can view the current processing status at any time via a portal. What's more, your co-investors have access to potential investments via a portal, and your fund investors can view automated reports via a web interface. Salesforce makes it possible. Customised, interactive interfaces enable seamless information exchange in the context of your website, from existing email communication or via specially created login areas. With a direct connection to your Salesforce instance. This saves time and improves the experience of your potential deals, your cooperation partners and your fund investors.

#8. Emails – Put an end to the flood of email applications!

The same old story every day? Please, no! Whether it's feedback on a start-up application, a rejection due to a mismatch in investment focus or an introduction to a potential cooperation partner, constantly rewriting the same correspondence every day is not only incredibly time-consuming. It also leads to frustration, because our minds strive for meaningful activity. Another important factor in this context is the clear documentation of outgoing correspondence. If this is missing, it costs your team valuable time when familiarising themselves with deals that need to be processed. Our tip: Avoid unnecessary manual effort through sensible automation and intelligent standards. Templates stored in Salesforce save you from having to write the same emails over and over again. They can be sent with a single click – or fully automatically. And they are documented directly in Salesforce.

#9. Documents – Never again will you have to adapt, format or convert templates!

The number one time waster across all industries, manual document creation, is no stranger to the investment industry. The manual creation of NDAs, presentations and term sheets costs one thing above all else: time. Through input errors, the battle with formatting, and conversion to the correct final format. Salesforce enables your team to generate documents fully or partially automatically. What used to take hours is now done by the system with a single click or completely independently within a few seconds. On request, this can even include freely configurable participation agreements.