The finance team at Menlo Ventures were looking for portfolio management software that gave the firm “a single source of truth” about portcos, funds, and the entire portfolio. They wanted all their data integrated into dashboards, workflows, and modeling tools so that they could get a “more timely pulse on the portfolio.” They wanted software that would show “what we hold and how it’s performing,” which meant unifying fund accounting, cap table, and KPI data and being able to easily slice and dice it. In their own words, they were looking for “the holy grail.”

It would be hard to find a private fund manager that isn’t at least thinking about what it means to be “data-driven” or “AI enabled” right now. If a firm has more than 15 or so people, there’s usually at least one investor or platform leader, motivated by curiosity and maybe a little impatience, who has taken the initiative to become an expert at using data, automation, and AI to find and diligence deals.