SerVC — Helping VC funds to maintain the trust of investors with transparency

Veiko Strauss
PDF Generator API
Published in
3 min readSep 30, 2022

SerVC is a platform designed for Venture Capital firms to manage their portfolio performance, investor relations (via a digital portal), create financial statements and much more. The idea for the endeavour was born when the founders realized that, regardless of the digitalization of business in recent decades, many VC firms were still using manual reporting in their everyday operations. So, they set out to digitize and structure the data to allow automation processes to introduce in their clients’ workflows. We spoke with Artem Petrushin, Chief Product Officer at SerVC.

Their solution supports various data formats and integrates with a wide variety of third-party platforms, such as Thoughtspot, BOX, PowerBIand, and others. At the same time, the destination for the structured data might be something as trivial as a SQL database. That allows SerVC’s clients to engage in further analysis or visualization of their data. Managing a digital portal with over 5,000 sophisticated investors globally requires creating an automated reporting system that must be reliable and have simple customization functionality. And this is where PDF Generator API steps in.

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Previously, SerVC used a standard PDF generation solution, which allowed them to present data in standard layouts and views. However, their clients were expecting more and asking about customization possibilities along the lines of — could the logo be in the other corner of the page or could the font be a bit bigger. So SerVC was on the lookout for a tool to allow for that customization for the clients that needed it. Having started with just one developer, building such a solution in-house was just not efficient or reasonable. After looking at 3–4 alternatives, SerVC stumbled on PDF Generator API, gave it a successful test drive, and has by now used the solution for 3 years.

In most cases, building additional functionalities in-house proves to be a far bigger challenge than buying the needed component as a ready-made building block off the market. Building vs buying is a term we hear about more and more in recent years and we have also addressed this development in our blog post “Building vs buying a document generation solution”.

According to Artem, integrating PDF Generator API with their stack was a relatively painless process and took about a week or even less. For SerVC, the main value they gain lies in customization possibilities — their previous solution did not allow for any major customization and the clients had to accept the standardized views. Also, it did not support expression language and other asked-for functions. By using an external solution, SerVC can focus on their core business of collecting and structuring their clients data and leave the rest to us.

SerVC would recommend using PDF Generator API to any company that has PDF generation as a crucial part of their business process. For them, the API itself is already a major selling point. Another one being the support that they receive — according to Artem, all of their urgent concerns are handled swiftly on the support chat channel.

To conclude, we hope we have a bright common future ahead of us with SerVC and we hope to continue our common growth also in the years to come.

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