How can your company achieve sustainable success?
This is probably the most pressing question for entrepreneurs, as the path to success depends heavily on the market, people and opportunities – and therefore can only be answered on a highly individual basis.
What we hear time and time again from founders and venture capitalists is the call for more efficiency and scalability. Even though digital tools are already used extensively, there are still too many manual processes that could have been automated long ago. This is particularly an issue when the goal is to decouple revenue growth from headcount growth. This applies to every startup – logically. But does it also apply to their investors? Absolutely! Because here, too, there is enormous potential for greater efficiency and scalability. This potential can be tapped through digitalisation with systems such as Salesforce.
Based on our many years of experience, we will show you the 9 most time-consuming processes in everyday venture capital – and how you can easily solve them with Salesforce. How can your company achieve sustainable success?
Dealflow – Retire your Excel deal funnel!
In Salesforce, you can map out the entire individual investment process. This allows you to track (potential) deals, responsibilities, documents, categorisations and the respective status 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. Best of all, in your weekly deal flow meeting, you'll have access to visualised data and dashboards that you can call up with just one click. No preparation required. And in real time. Even if there are changes during the meeting.
Fundraising – Invest your energy in the next pitch, not in managing it!
Every now and then, even the lender needs to look for investors. As with start-ups seeking capital, two factors are crucial to the success of fundraising from venture capitalists: transparency and efficiency. Transparency is achieved by mapping your fundraising process in Salesforce. You know exactly who you have discussed what with and on what terms, and how the potential investor feels about you and your company. Efficiency is achieved through clear task management, teamwork and an overview of exactly what needs to be done next.
Reporting - Create more accurate reports in less time!
As founders, we experienced first-hand how much effort monthly reporting involves: days of manual work to update data, aggregate it and derive KPIs. In the end, the reports were almost useless because they were no longer up to 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, time and precision.
Salesforce helps you drastically simplify and standardise these processes. When data is available in a clean structure, reports can be generated automatically. Start-ups 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 processed for their own purposes or for possible forwarding. In real time. And with minimal effort.
Dealsharing – Manage your co-investments from a single system!
Do you have other investors you would like to co-invest with? But no clear process for how to structure 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.
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 their financial investment, aim to support start-ups by establishing targeted contacts with corporations, portfolios or other networks. Does this apply to you? We thought so. Unfortunately, the problem with this is that contacts are often made emotionally, out of random situations. The structured mediation 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 then send introductory emails automatically. And with no effort at all.
Recruiting – Get ready to hunt for high potentials!
Order a book with a single click – and it arrives just two hours later. The Amazon mentality has become the norm. Nobody wants to wait for anything anymore, and very few people 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 a personal interview? By then, they will have long since left the job market. ‘Time to hire’ is the magic word – and it can be reduced enormously if the recruitment process is well organised. For example, through (partially) automated communication and application forms that store data directly in Salesforce. Talent pools can be created so that high potentials can be quickly found and approached.
Interaction – Put an end to the flood of email applications!
Every day, you receive an endless flood of start-up applications. Wouldn't it be nice if these were automatically sent to your deal funnel for further processing? This means that startups 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.
Emails - Save time with automated correspondence!
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, 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, your team will lose valuable time familiarising themselves with the deals 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.
Documents – Never again will you need to adapt, format or convert templates!
The number one time-waster across all industries, manual document creation, is no exception in the investment industry. The manual creation of NDAs, presentations and term sheets costs one thing above all else: time. This is due to input errors, formatting issues and conversion to the correct final format. Salesforce enables your team to create 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.
Start the digital revolution today. With your personal Salesforce strategy workshop.
We have introduced them to you: the 9 biggest time wasters for players in the venture capital market. 9 activities that offer enormous potential for optimisation. Through the digital transformation and automation of your business processes. With our white paper, we would like to encourage you to critically review your processes for efficiency and scalability. And to improve them. Want to dig deeper? Book your free Salesforce strategy workshop now.
After our workshop, you will know how to get the most out of Salesforce.
Timo Müller
Founder and CEO of cloudworx
Timo Müller, the man behind cloudworx, is an entrepreneur with a passion. He has always had two loves in his life – technology and business. After several start-ups, challenges, setbacks and successes, one thing has become increasingly clear: his love, talent and enjoyment of optimising work processes.
Your path to a free Salesforce workshop.
As we receive a large number of enquiries, we are unfortunately unable to offer this workshop to everyone. We limit ourselves to companies where we are 100% certain that a workshop will really help you.
Step 1
Fill out the form below. Give us some information about yourself and your company.
Step 2
We will contact you and arrange a brief telephone call to discuss your requirements.
Step 3
If we are confident that your company will benefit, we will conduct a free 60-minute Salesforce workshop.
This is how your workshop will proceed.
Analysis
We analyse your business processes together and go through them step by step. We pay particular attention to the areas that require the most manual effort from you and your employees.
Concept
Together, we will develop a "digital ideal", i.e. a process that is efficient for your company. We will draw on our many years of experience and provide tips that can be applied immediately.
Strategy
We compare your ideas with technical best practices and develop a feasible and sensible strategy for implementing them. You will know exactly what options you have and what exactly needs to be done.