Streamlining Portfolio Data Collection and Analysis Across the VC Firm

Belle Raab

Many Venture Capital firms struggle to efficiently collect updates from their portfolio companies and turn the data into meaningful insights for their firm and Limited Partners. It’s usually a painful process consisting of messy Google Sheets or Excel file templates being sent to companies. Then, someone at the VC firm is responsible for the painful task of tracking down companies and convincing them to send the metric template back to the investor. The end result is typically an unreliable master sheet that isn’t accessible or easy to digest for the rest of the firm.

Visible has helped over 350+ VC firms streamline the way they collect, analyze, and report on their portfolio and fund performance. Keep reading to learn how.

Streamlining Portfolio Data Collection

To set up a more efficient portfolio data collection process at your firm make sure you:

  • Don't require companies to manage another login
    • Visible’s data Requests are delivered directly to your companies’ email inboxes and the secure-linked base form ensures there is no friction in the data-sharing process.
  • Maintain founder privacy
    • Visible supports over 3.5k founders on our platform and the consistent feedback we hear is founders do not want their investors to have direct access to their data sources. Founders prefer to have control over what and when their data is shared with investors.
  • Customize which information you request from companies
    • Visible allows investors to create any custom metric, qualitative question, yes/no response, multiple choice, and more. This provides investors with the flexibility to use Visible for more than just financial reporting but also impact or diversity reporting and end-of-year audit preparation.

Related resource: Portfolio Monitoring Tips for Venture Capital Investors

Related resource: Which Metrics Should I Collect from My Portfolio Companies

Easy Ways to Analyze VC Portfolio Data

While having up-to-date, accurate investment data is important, being able to extract and communicate insights about your portfolio data is when it really becomes valuable. Visible supports three different types of dashboards to help you analyze your portfolio data more easily.

Flexible portfolio company dashboards — Visualize KPI’s by choosing from 9 different chart types and combine with rich text and company properties. These dashboards are a great fit to help facilitate more robust internal portfolio review meetings.

Portfolio metric dashboards — This dashboard allows you to compare performance across your entire portfolio and easily identify your top performers and the companies who may need additional support.

Fund analytics dashboards — This flexible dashboard lets investors control how they want to visualize and analyze their fund performance metrics. Choose from over 30+ fund metrics and auto calculated insights and easily add them to your shareable dashboard.

View an example of all three types of dashboards by downloading the resource below.

Sharing Portfolio Updates with Limited Partners

It’s important to remember that while Limited Partners are primarily focused on financial returns they also care about insights. VC firms who empower their Limited Partners with updates about sector trends and high-level insight into portfolio company performance are setting themselves up to be both trusted and valuable long-term partners to their investors.

LP Update Template Library — Visible makes it easy for firms to make engaging communication with Limited Partners a habit by providing free and open-source Update templates. Want to feature your LP Update template in out library? Get in touch!

Tear Sheets — Tear Sheets or One Pagers can be a great way to provide high-level updates about portfolio companies to your LPs. Visible’s tear sheet template solution helps VC firms create reporting with ease by merging information and data into beautiful charts that are automatically kept up to date.

View Tear Sheet examples to inspire your next reporting.

Related resource: Tear Sheets 101 (and how to build one in Visible)

Visible supports 400+ funds around the world streamline the portfolio data collection, analysis, and reporting process.

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