How We Give Our Portfolio Companies the White Glove Treatment
Last week, I talked about the Uncork Platform team and our purpose: adding value. Now, I want to focus on how building our infrastructure and back-end support has made us more efficient and effective to better serve our portfolio companies and founders. We are committed to their success and strive to make a difference in their journey.
Twelve or thirteen years ago, the VC Platform function didn’t really exist at all. A few firms were doing piecemeal things to assist the portfolio outside the funding/partner relationship, but nothing comprehensive. Years later, VCs have built platform teams and systems to support their portfolios in all facets of their business. That holds true for Uncork.
The need for Venture firms to offer platform services (talent, events, advisors, resources, biz dev, discounts, etc) has only heated up in recent years. We face increased competition to woo the hottest startups. Like many other VCs, we need to improve our efficiency and provide more holistic support to our portfolio, so we rely on relationship intelligence, automation, and technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to succeed.
A single source of truth, fewer manual tasks
Our use of technology to support our portfolio has evolved since we first started building out our platform years ago. We were early adopters of Affinity CRM (2018, to be exact) because we needed a solution that could provide a single source of truth for all our relationships.
As a team of one back then, it took years (really, years) to get Affinity to where it is today. First, we started by segmenting our audience to manage our network effectively. After the “fun” work of building out the database and hiring more team members, we used data from Affinity to provide insight into our overall network and eliminate manual tasks.
Affinity created a foundation for the firm’s tech stack to automate many tedious processes around onboarding new portfolio companies and founders and streamline operations for more informed decision-making. We accrued all those benefits and more — by increasing our efficiency, we were able to focus efforts on what really matters: providing value to our portfolio.
Today, after building the platform from the ground up, we can do more for our portfolio than we ever could before. For instance, we can assist portfolio companies with introductions to support providers and advisors, funding announcements, hiring, community building, and negotiating discounts, just to name a few.
The results?
In terms of results, we saw a 45% increase in engagement with portfolio founders, a 122% increase in engagement with portfolio executives, and a 71% increase in engagement with essential people in Uncork’s network, such as LPs, co-investors, and sponsors.
Our Seed-stage companies use our platform services daily, but what’s most remarkable is that our later-stage companies continue to use them as well. This is a true testament to the effectiveness of our team and services. What we’re doing really works!
A final thought
Technology has significantly boosted our efficiency and has also been instrumental in building positive, nurturing relationships with the people in our portfolio companies. As many funds compete to attract portfolio companies and win deals, it’s essential for founders to understand how our firm can provide assistance and support post-investment. After all, our portfolio companies and their talented people are our most important and valued assets.
