KEY WORDS
Deal flow: a term used by investment bankers and venture capitalists to describe the rate at which business proposals and investment pitches are being received
Future Shape: an investment and advisory firm founded in 2014 that invests in engineers and scientists that develop deep technology
SITUATION
The team at Kushim developed the Dealflow tool in order to put an end to time-consuming de-centralized methods venture capitalists used to keep track of incoming potential deals. This usually includes scanning through endless emails, spreadsheets, and even stacks of analog documents and then using separate tools for storing documents and managing their portfolio. The Dealflow tool is a comprehensive and synchronized ecosystem that brings together all these disparate activities into one and avoids any data falling through the cracks.
TASKS
However, the Dealflow tool is very information heavy, with every potential deal linked to a company profile with various metrics, any communications with the company so far, to do lists with next steps to keep pushing the company through the flow, and more. The team attempted to solve for the potential overwhelm of the user by building a customizable filtering system with use of keywords, source, investors, stage, etc. in order to search for companies or group them together. Customers kept asking for something lighter that would allow them to quickly take the pulse of their deal flow efforts.
ACTIONS
I lead a round of user interviews with a few VCs. Having had exposure to the world of venture capital previously, I tapped into my network to recruit a few participants who would not be familiar with Kushim's products. I also interviewed a few of their existing customers, including David Sloo of Future Shape.
From these interviews, I gleaned three key learnings:
Team members on venture capital teams who filled in company details, communicated with companies in the dealflow, and did due diligence were not usually the team members who could zoom out of one potential deal and instead focus on analyzing the quality of the deal flow as a whole.
These team members who focused on quality usually wanted to know how efficient their team was at moving companies through the flow and they wanted to get this information fast. This reframed how I thought about our typical user for the Dealflow product. I originally hypothesized that users were spending at least 20 minutes to an hour using the tool to input and manipulate data, but I found that the users who were reaching out to us with a pain point were looking to only spend 5-10 minutes. When communicating these findings to the Kushim team, I framed this overlooked user much like a nurse taking a patient's vitals in opposition to the users we had been building for, who were more akin to a doctor performing a full-blown surgery.
In addition, this overlooked user wanted to know where most companies who ended up in their deal flow were located geographically, and what activity sectors and markets they were in.
After mapping out the key functionalities my target user required, I proposed to build an "overview" feature that would serve as a gateway before delving deeper into the deal flow.
RESULTS
In my final design, I prioritized these key metrics in the information hierarchy:
Adding a filtering tool bar which allows the user to quickly see data on all the companies or by those at different stages (all, watchlist, new, stage 1, closed etc.)
Showing how many companies were currently in the dealflow stage selected and the average amount of time they stayed in the stage
Showing a drop-down further timeline view of time spent by companies in the selected stage and a list overview of these companies
Breaking down how many companies had been accepted, rejected, and watchlisted
I then created click-through column sections that highlight other important metrics:
Geographies (where the companies in the deal flow are located)
Activities (what activity sectors the companies in deal flow fall under)
Sources (who is bringing companies into the deal flow within the fund)
Markets (which markets the companies in deal flow fall under)
Funding (the total funds to commit, average fundraising companies are looking for, total target fundraising by all companies in deal flow, etc)
User activity (a table breakdown showing which team members are responsible for pulling x number of companies into the deal flow, how many investments they have made, their ratio of accepted vs. rejected companies, etc)
After going through a few design rounds with feedback from project manager Alexandre Crenn, the above "overview" page was sent to development (marked up in Zeppelin) and eventually pushed live. It continues to be part of the product today.
Soon after launch of this new feature, investor Fabrice Grinda (FJ Labs) said of the Dealflow product:
