As a venture capital firm, the CRM system you choose could speed up the process of making deals, but you have to pick the right one for your needs. A CRM is only one part of a venture capital tech stack, but it is an important one. Why? Because, like other markets that are built on long-term relationships, venture capital deals are built on the network and relationships of a team.
Dealmakers who want to stay competitive need a CRM that can do more than an Excel spreadsheet or a database of contacts. Using automation to reduce the amount of manual data entry and relationship intelligence to find opportunities can help team members find and close good deals faster than the competition.
Also, you don’t want to settle for a sales CRM that has a lot of extra, useless features that your team won’t use. VC firms don’t have to keep track of things like unit prices or inventory. Instead, you should choose a CRM that has features that are useful for VCs.
Dealmakers need a CRM platform that lets them work on deals with different people, such as internal team members on their deal team or VPs, directors, or even limited partners (LPs). They also need tools that save them time, such as automated contact data entry. A single source of truth can make it easy and quick to report to your investors and make sure you don’t do work that someone else on your team has already done.
Due diligence isn’t just an important part of making a deal; it’s also an important part of choosing software. In this buyer’s guide, we’ll look at seven of the best customer relationship management platforms for venture capitalists so that you can make a better choice. After reading this, you should have a better idea of which features are most important for your team and which ones might be too much. You’ll also know how to use key features to increase your firm’s reach and a number of wins.
Table of contents
Top venture capital customer relationship management platforms
A. Affinity
Affinity CRM was made for people whose businesses depend on how strong and good their relationships are. The AI-powered platform gives relationship intelligence, which is information about their team’s networks, business relationships, and interactions with clients that helps them find, manage, and close deals. This makes CRM more than just a contact database and more of a source of information that teams can use.
By processing and analyzing all of the data about and from your team’s network, Affinity CRM can quickly find the fastest path and warmest contact for an introduction. Team members can act quickly and with confidence, knowing that their information is correct and that the right person on the team is acting on a particular opportunity.
Key features:
- An intuitive, familiar, spreadsheet-like interface
- A lightweight but sophisticated platform that is quick to implement
- Data captured accurately and automatically from your email and calendar
- Customizable deal management views for visualizing your deal pipeline your way
- Easy-to-access, in-depth reporting and analytics
- Automated custom reminders that ensure you never lose track of a connection in your network
B. Pipedrive
Pipedrive, as its name suggests, is a CRM software for managing sales pipelines. Pipedrive’s Activity Schedule lets users keep track of simple tasks, but it’s not as powerful as project management software that’s not part of Pipedrive. One of the best things about Pipedrive is that it has a UX interface that is very visual and makes workflow management easy. Even though these workflows can be changed, Pipedrive does not have automated data entry or workflow automation. Teams that want to make a lot of changes will probably need to upgrade their plan to get the flexibility they want and need.
Key features:
- Marketing automation
- Customizable reporting
- Activity scheduling
C. 4Degrees
Both of 4Degrees’ founders have worked in venture capital, which gives this CRM solution an edge over traditional CRM solutions that focus on sales. 4Degrees gives users information about their relationships that can help them find new business opportunities. They can use the website or mobile app at the office or on the go. Lastly, 4Degrees does have some automated features like automated reporting and automated deal data enrichment. The platform’s artificial intelligence is a step up from tools that are more focused on sales, but it might not be the best fit for fast-moving deal teams because it doesn’t have automated data capture or built-in reports and analytics that can be changed.
Key features:
- Limited artificial intelligence into business connections
- Lead management
- Relationship management
D. Salesforce
Salesforce is one of the most well-known CRMs out there. It’s one of the oldest CRM solutions, and the fact that the company has clients in real estate, government, healthcare, and SaaS startups shows how flexible it is. This industry standard can be used as a database to keep track of customer information for sales teams with linear, standard, short-term sales.
Salesforce is a powerful, large-scale tool that deal-making teams all over the world use to manage their contacts. Even so, it can be hard to get new team members up and running on the platform because of its many customizable options, wide range of features, lack of automated contact data entry, and hard-to-reach support teams. This can slow down the already complicated, relationship-based deals at the heart of venture capital teams, so it’s important to think about how many of the features your team will use and who will use them.
Key features:
- Lead management
- Email marketing
- Contact and account management
E. MadeMarket
MadeMarket is a SaaS CRM tool that was made by people who used to work in finance. The software then has features that meet the needs of venture capitalists, private equity professionals, and other financial companies. They have a lot of options for customization, such as transaction execution and business development features that can be changed. But the company is small, and customer reviews say that this can slow down customer service and response times.
Key features:
- Workflow management
- Secure workspaces for all transactions
- Milestone chart option to track sales goals
- Integrations: Microsoft Office 265, Zapier, Exchange 2016
F. Navatar Edge
Navatar is a traditional CRM built on top of Salesforce. It has been used by people in the financial services industry for nearly 20 years. It was one of the first CRMs made for investment banking, venture capital, private equity, commercial real estate, and other capital markets firms. Navatar is best known as a CRM for its tools for managing deals and pipelines, but it hasn’t changed enough to keep up with the industries it serves. Like other CRMs that focus on sales, Navatar doesn’t have any automated relationship mapping or data entry options.
Key features:
- Deal and pipeline management workflows have been streamlined.
- Asset management
- Portfolio management
- HubSpot, Zoom, Marketo, Excel, and Google Drive are all integrated.
