Over the last two years, I built a robust operating system for running a VC fund. It is built in Airtable and integrates with Google Calendar and Slack. It allows you to manage investments, meetings, LPs, portfolio companies and more. Check out the videos below or get a copy.
This is a guide to the Airtable-based Operating System that I built to run a VC firm - investment pipeline, portfolio tracking, LP CRM, meeting tracker, productivity, etc.
Using this tool, I have been able to manage 70+ portfolio companies and 100+ LPs efficiently as a solo GP without any admin support.
This is meant to handle a lot of different functions involved in running a VC firm, but it is build modularly, so that it can be used for just parts. For example, as a portfolio management tool alongside a dedicated CRM, this can work very well (especially with cross linking).
It can also be used by Angel Investors who want to track the companies they meet, their co-investors and intro sources, along with their holding values.
I recommend spending time exploring it and then making the necessary modifications and additions to suit your working style and needs.
All videos can be found here.
The Investment Pipeline sits within the company tab. It allows you to track deals at various stages as you reach out, meet with them, conduct diligence, etc. It captures intro sources, categories, team members, etc. There is a lot of detail to explore and metadata to create here to enrich the entire deal process through data.
Sync with Google calendar to automate meeting creation or enter manually. This table allows you to take notes during meetings that link to both people and companies. You can categorize meetings by type for future analysis of productivity and time allocation.
Holdings is where the investment detail lives. It allows you to track everything from share prices to co-investors to closing status and more. Holdings boil back up to companies to give a full picture of your position in each company even with multiple holdings.
You can define 3 KPIs for each company (in the company tab), and then create metrics updates every time new data comes through for those 3 KPIs along with cash reserves, headcount and burn rate. The sheet automatically determines the most recent update and by marking the initial investment date, you’ll be able to see the overall progress of the investment in the memos section.
This lives in the people tab and allows you to tag your contacts as angel investors, mark what strategic angle they bring and tag specific companies for which you think they might be relevant.
There are three separate ways to track LPs - you can use all of them or just one. The LPs tab is a unique entity that combines people and companies(funds) and allows you to specify the roles for each person in that entity (i.e. back office or exclude from emails).
In the companies tab, it is focused on funds and their stage in the process. This also links back to the F1 and F2 fund detail and stage tabs.
In the people tab, which is probably the most straightforward method, a person represents an LP and moves through the stages of closing like any sales method.
This is a killer feature - if you fill in all the relevant information and upload logos, this page designer app will automatically generate formatted 1-page investment memos with all the relevant operating and valuation data.
These tables are useful references and planning tools. Locations syncs across several tables.
If you also happen to do hourly consulting, this integrates with meetings and companies to track how much you’re earning and is a great way to send detailed invoices to clients.
This is traditional opportunity-based CRM functionality for fundraising wherein we combine LP entities with Fund products to form a specific opportunity.
Portfolio views - both tables and galleries for sharing including detailed calculations, thesis and description overviews and more.
As questions come up, I plan to publish more detailed videos.
Another overview video can be found here:
You can also so a basic taxonomy here:
For a live demo and questions, reach out to alexoppenheimer [at] gmail
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