Affinity (CRM)

How nearly 3,000 VC firms are actually putting in the work. The relationship work. Read the full report: https://buff.ly/ETb1lbZ

It’s soup season—the perfect excuse to highlight one of our core values: “taste the soup.” It means you only really understand something by getting in and trying it yourself. And no one on our team lives it quite like Will Wedell, our Senior Customer Success Manager, and the latest Affinian to earn a Value Spotlight. Will’s whole approach is doing the thing himself before he guides a customer through it—so when someone needs a hand, he can show instead of tell. That’s the difference between advice you nod along to and advice you actually act on. Congrats, Will!

How 300 PE firms are actually putting in the work. The relationship work. Read the full report: https://buff.ly/vcHnbzU

This Wednesday: Learn more about the best practices of high-performing private equity firms with Niklas Krusche from Armira, a Munich-based PE firm managing ~€5 billion in capital. Veronica Mora, VP of Customer Success at Affinity, will be joining Niklas to help you understand how leading firms are thinking about network strategy, relationship management, and what it takes to turn a network into a lasting firm asset. See you then: https://lnkd.in/gz6TRRA8

Tristan Ratchford occupies one of the most pivotal roles in the private equity industry. As the Chief Technology Officer at hg catalyst, Hg's in-house AI product incubator, he bridges the gap between high-level investment thesis and real-world technology execution. Our latest episode of Carried Interest features Tristan chatting with host Sam Andersen about what it means to operate at the front lines of portfolio value creation, evaluating software architecture, stripping away the AI hype, and building enterprise systems that turn technology into a measurable driver of margin expansion. Watch the full episode: https://lnkd.in/gu6FBUe7 Or give it a listen on Apple or Spotify. Link in the comments.

🆕 Build a market map that captures your firm’s coverage (and identifies any gaps). Try it now by dropping a prompt in Claude, ChatGPT, and more.

Highlights from last month’s product updates (including several MCP updates you’ve been waiting for)👇 𝟭. 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁: Build a market map that captures your firm’s coverage (and identifies any gaps). Try it now in Claude, ChatGPT, and more. 𝟮. 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗳𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁: Generate meeting briefs on demand with relationship history, deal/pipeline context, and recent news. Try it in Affinity or your preferred LLM. 𝟯. 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱 𝘂𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀: Get suggested field updates based on meeting notes (including from Granola). Tweak them yourself as needed. 𝟰. 𝗨𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲: One less thing to slow down your workflows. Feed a deal doc into your LLM of choice and save it to Affinity’s record. 𝟱. 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲: Organize people, organizations, and opportunities into easily filterable views. Now with 2x faster loading, more intuitive search/filtering, and saved views. For more context, check out this video roundup from our own Kristin Daley: https://buff.ly/NYp0OmE

This past Tuesday at our September all hands, we celebrated Anderson Sacare ("Andy," to those of us who have been saved by his diligent help in Slack). As a member of our IT team, you could argue it's Andy's job to be a "helper," but he goes above and beyond, exemplifying our company value of being a playmaker. He's someone who always happily lends his expertise and exhibits exceptional followthrough, all while seeking out opportunities to improve the processes he's a part of whenever possible. Congrats on your win, Andy! And for having potentially having the cutest picture we've ever featured in our value spotlight posts—click through to the second page.

Private equity is a relationship business. Deals are won by who you know, and who your firm knows, long before there’s a formal process. But when PE firms use a traditional CRM, a system of record for “relationship management,” those CRMs often fail. They are ill-equipped to quickly and easily capture relationships and their association with specific deals. When I sat down with Devin Mathews on the PE FunCast, we talked about this contradiction and how mapping a complete relationship graph is table stakes at Affinity (CRM). In the same way we automate data capture, we’re automating your workflows through our increasingly advanced MCP and Ascend, our agent platform for private capital. The more data a firm captures about its deals and relationships, the more powerful its AI becomes. Thanks again to Devin for such a great conversation. Here’s the full episode: https://lnkd.in/ghHkaQ6w

Mark Shoberg is an expert allocator serving high-net-worth individuals (or HNWIs) as partner and Chief Investment Officer at Capital Creek Partners. With over two decades in investing, Mark leads his team in managing wealth for their clients by carefully considering portfolio risk, liquidity constraints, and the best managers and co-investors to partner with as they ride out the market's ups and downs. In our latest episode of The Cap Table, Mark joined us to chat through his day-to-day as a multi-family office CIO, why he thinks $5-10B is the sweet spot for an endowment-style program, and how Capital Creek hedges against inflation and debasement. Catch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gcpQSbD4 Or give it a listen listen on Apple or Spotify. Link in the comments.