Even on small investment teams, it can be hard to keep track of all the different investment opportunities and make sure everyone is on the same page. When teams work in different offices, countries, and time zones, the challenge only gets harder. Here are some ways that your company can keep managing its pipeline well even as it grows into a global team.
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Engaging founders with a global deal team
The global team at Samsung NEXT has offices in Israel, Korea, and all over the United States. They use their international locations to connect with founders and other investors all over the world.
Sam Campbell, the Global Venture Operations Manager at Samsung NEXT, said, “We have 50 people who work on investment, support after an investment, and finance.” “Our investors try to talk to as many founders and investors as possible to find deals, and they also look in different industries.”
The deal team at Samsung NEXT has to keep track of thousands of data points because they are focused on a wide range of industries, from cryptocurrency to health and infrastructure. The first step in keeping global connections active was to accurately keep track of them by automating the data collection.
When you know for sure that all of your teams have access to your data as soon as a meeting is set up or an email is sent, anyone can pick up a relationship right where it left off. And as relationships change, any member of the team can use information about existing relationships and deals to set reminders for follow-ups. This way, you can keep every connection in your global network warm.
Collaborating across regional teams
Your team’s relationships with the company’s founders and other business partners are very important. However, as your company grows, it’s important not to forget how important it is to build relationships and partnerships within your own teams.
When a business has different regional teams talking to founders and companies in different languages and about different things, it can be hard to keep track of what is being said. Keeping this information in one place helps your team work together and gives you a clear picture of how your network works as a whole.
“We have about 150 active companies in our portfolio, and between 35 and 40 people work with each of them. “Doing all of this by hand would be a nightmare, so it’s great to have a system that works and lets our team know who’s talking to whom,” Sam said.
With a shared system of record in their CRM, team members can update statuses and give new investments to a team that provides support after the investment has been made. Bringing on new clients can involve handoffs between different departments, investors, and several members of the operations team.
Automatic contact creation is an important first step toward keeping these records up to date, but these team members also need to keep detailed document trails. Teams need a central system that can also be used to store documents. During the process of making a deal, a lot of paperwork is exchanged. This includes contracts, translations of contracts, term sheets, due diligence documentation, and dozens of other pieces of paper.
Making the most informed investment decisions
To stay ahead of the competition, your company needs to be able to make the best decisions possible. Information visibility has a direct effect on how quickly you can change processes and how well your team works.
Even though regional offices can make their own investment decisions, deals in one region can be affected by information from other regions. That comes from other teams sometimes for Samsung NEXT.
“Through Affinity, teams can see what’s coming up in the pipeline in different offices. If they haven’t been involved in a deal in which they have specific expertise, they can weigh in. This has been a good way to look at all these different companies from a global point of view.
Access to enriched, expanded datasets is becoming a must-have for leading investment teams. This is in addition to the information your team has. When you combine your own relationship data with data from third parties, you can find signals faster, find ways to get warm introductions to new opportunities, and even look at all of the data points together to find patterns from past deals.
Maintaining a global presence with relationship management
Firms like yours and Samsung NEXT are powered by relationships. Building and nurturing connections to people are what VCs do best. Those that support their dispersed teams with the right VC tech stack help them engage with new opportunities, collaborate more efficiently, and make more informed decisions than the competition.
