Venture capital deal flow management software gets evaluated on features and justified, if it is justified at all, on three reports. Everything else the tool does is convenience. The three are conversion by source, time in stage, and what happened to the passes, and all three depend on one field being filled in consistently rather than on any integration in the vendor's list. This page sets out the three and what each one changes.
Report one: conversion by source
Which channel produced the opportunities that became investments, over a period long enough to mean something. If accelerator introductions convert at a fifth the rate of founder referrals, that is a partner-time allocation decision available immediately, and it is invisible without the source field.
Report two: time in stage
How long opportunities sit before somebody decides. Long dwell times are usually a decision problem rather than a diligence problem, and they cost the fund allocations in competitive rounds. It is also the report most likely to be uncomfortable, which is a reasonable sign it is worth reading.
Report three: what happened to the passes
Of the companies passed on eighteen months ago, which raised, at what, and from whom. This is the only honest feedback loop a fund has on its own screening, and it requires nothing more than keeping the passes with their dates. Funds that never run it are calibrating on memory.
What none of the three needs
A new integration. All three come from the source, the stage and the date, which the fund is already recording if it records anything. Evaluations that drift into connector lists are usually evaluating the wrong axis, and the fix is to ask the vendor to produce these three reports from your own last twelve months.
Questions people ask about venture capital deal flow management software
What is the minimum a fund should record?
Source, stage and date. Those three produce every report that justifies the tool; everything else is convenience.
How long before the reports are meaningful?
Long enough for a cohort to resolve, which in venture is eighteen months or more. Recording has to start well before the reports are wanted.
Do we need integrations first?
No. None of the three reports needs one. An evaluation dominated by connector lists is measuring the wrong axis.