A PE CRM holds three records and most funds maintain two of them well. The source is who brings you deals. The opportunity is what arrived and where it got to. The pass is what you said no to, when, and why. The third is the one that gets discarded, and it is the most reusable asset in the pipeline, because a company passed on eighteen months ago is frequently live again at a price that has moved.
The source record compounds and the others do not
Bankers, lawyers, operators and previous management teams: a small list that gets more valuable every year and is almost never maintained deliberately. Recording who introduced what, with dates, is the only way a fund can ever say which relationships produce and which ones only produce meetings.
The opportunity record is the one everybody keeps
Stage, sector, size, who is working it. This is the part every tool does and the part every fund fills in, because it is what gets reviewed on Monday. It is also the least differentiating: two funds with identical opportunity records can have completely different businesses.
The pass record is the one that gets lost
Most of what a fund sees, it declines, usually within a week. If that decision is recorded as a deletion, the fund has thrown away its own screening history and cannot calibrate on anything but memory, which flatters. Kept with a date and a reason, it becomes next year's proprietary approach.
Why the reason matters more than the verdict
Price too high and wrong sector are completely different signals about the same company in eighteen months. One is an invitation to go back when the price moves; the other is not. A pass with no reason on it is a file nobody will ever reopen, which makes recording it almost pointless.
Questions people ask about pe crm
What is a PE CRM for?
Holding the source, the opportunity and the pass. Most funds keep the first two and lose the third, which is the most reusable of the three.
Should we keep deals we passed on?
Yes, with the date and the reason. A company passed on at one price is frequently live again eighteen months later at another.
Does it need to be a specialist tool?
Only if nobody will configure a general one. The modelling difference is the source and the pass, not a feature list.