We went from a 5,000-line spreadsheet to DealCloud. It changed our lives.
Arc Ventures, a New York–based venture capitalist (VC) firm specializing in founders, relies on DealCloud for deal flow management, deal sourcing, portfolio management, and ad hoc projects. DealCloud helps the firm’s ventures operations manager (VOM) with key functions like determining which funds are returning and ensuring that portfolio companies are up to date — and helps the ventures operations team manage deal flows from end to end.
Like most VOMs, the VOM at Arc Ventures manages the financial, legal, and back-office administration of the operations team. We interviewed Arc Ventures’ VOM to learn more about how technology can empower operations managers at venture capital firms.
The world of venture capital is becoming even more competitive and complex
The venture industry is a founder’s market — and incredibly competitive. It’s not unusual for ventures operations teams to have only a week to sign the documents after receiving a deal, which is why they must always stay up to date on incoming opportunities.
The venture capital world has seen rapid growth in mega deals, nontraditional investors, and available investment capital in just the past few years. Venture capital companies must diversify and pivot to seize unique opportunities across an unprecedented global economic market — and they’ll need technology that can support an increasingly complex, competitive, connected, globalized, and diversified financial world. A consolidated deal management system like DealCloud brings everything together, improving connectivity, transparency, and visibility.
Deal flow management helps you stay on top of your deals — and get more deals done
At Arc Ventures, the ventures operations team tracks the status of prospects, incoming deals, and portfolio companies. DealCloud’s business development features make it easier for team members to stay on top of their incoming deal flows without missing key information.
Previously, the ventures operations team stored deal flow management data across multiple systems, such as Microsoft Word documents, email inboxes, and notes. Now, during their Monday morning meetings, team members can leverage DealCloud to look at their whole pipeline — including which deals are currently on the table, where those deals are in legal review, and who they need to fund. When one team member updates the status of a prospect or portfolio company, everyone has access to that data, increasing visibility across the team.
Managing mission-critical data within a single suite improves efficiency
With DealCloud, the Arc Ventures operations team is now able to access third-party data faster than ever before. DealCloud automatically syncs with third-party data wells, providing a single source of truth for documents, deals, and contacts. By creating a centralized data repository via DealCloud, the ventures operations team can complete more deals in less time.
“Before DealCloud, [our data] was in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, and personal notes,” said the VOM at Arc Ventures. “DealCloud allowed us to bring it all together. You can look at a company dashboard and get a true understanding of who works there, how often our team has spoken to them, how many emails we’ve received, and what financing rounds this company has had.”
Due diligence is faster with checklists, flags, and templates
While exploring other solutions, Arc Ventures discovered that most technology only lets firms manage certain deal flow elements, such as sales enablement. A more complete software solution, however, can help firms speed up the due diligence process by tracking tasks and enhancing visibility as well.
Unlike other deal management solutions, DealCloud tracks everything via checklists, flags, and templates. DealCloud lets Arc Ventures’ operations management team, financial specialists, and legal counsel all operate within a single collaborative workflow — helping them keep the deal moving forward.
Arc Ventures’ VOM works closely with the firm’s general counsel to review financing round documents, equity documents, and loan agreements. To successfully accomplish this, the VOM leverages DealCloud to automatically pull necessary data, build checklists for due diligence and legal review, and begin the due diligence process within a unified space without missing anything — even when corresponding between departments.
Real-time consolidated data helps improve relationships with portfolio companies and prospects
When Arc Ventures started the DealCloud implementation process, its biggest goal was increasing connectivity and understanding how the company was connected to people, deals, and deal sources. Using DealCloud’s Relationship Intelligence, the entire team can now build stronger relationships with their contacts.
Before a meeting, members of the Arc Ventures operations team review all pertinent information about a client within the DealCloud platform. The VOM can then start every conversation with a greater understanding of the company’s current status and needs.
The team can access other essential data within DealCloud, such as when a person or company last received an email. Firm partners can also determine who they’ve talked to and what they talked about — maintaining a consistent relationship across all company-to-company interactions, saving time, and avoiding confusion and duplicate effort.
For example, the Arc Ventures VOM once received a cold email that indicated a great opportunity. But after looking up the company in DealCloud, the VOM realized that the prospect had already emailed a partner a few days ago, and that the partner had passed on the deal. The VOM didn’t have to forward the email or communicate with the partner, saving both of them time.
Customized templates, forms, and automation reduce administrative hours
The Arc Ventures operations team standardizes correspondence and saves time by using DealCloud templates for memos and documents. The VOM can customize these templates to better fit different types of investments and deal stages, and easily add new types of memos and entry forms. Everything within DealCloud can be modified to the needs of the VOM’s team and the broader organization.
Using DealCloud’s third-party integrations, DealCloud automatically syncs core company data in your templates so you don’t have to enter it manually. Automatic data entries reduce administrative labor burden and human error, ensuring nothing is missed.
DealCloud connects your world so you can get more done
VOMs are frequently inundated with complex and often disparate data sets. These managers must analyze prospective deals and manage portfolio companies — all while interfacing with other departments, such as financial and legal teams.
According to Arc Ventures, DealCloud has significantly increased the efficiency of its ventures operations department and lightened its VOM’s workload. Rather than storing data across multiple systems, the firm can use a single platform to track every deal that comes in. Every email, event, and meeting across all prospects and current companies are automatically synced.
DealCloud consolidates your most essential data while reducing the noise, letting you track the information critical to your firm’s success. Start a conversation or schedule a demo today.