Denis Efremov, PhD

A couple of things I would encourage you to do. First of all, select several but not multiple social networks, if you spread on too many of them, you won't be able to maintain quality. I would rank Linkedin, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, and then Instagram and Facebook. You can use YouTube if you do videos or podcasts. Second of all, focus on regular activities: - If you post, post regularly - If you comment to posts of others, make it regularly and valuably (each post could generate 3-5 new connections - If you add new connections, try to add oneliner of why this connection could be valuable to your counterparty - If you accept conection request, ask the person for an introduction - blank connection is not a valuable one, not worth it.

Startups with high revenue retention are typically valued higher than peers. That's why you need to be sure customers are loyal, and a true question that you would have is - does data you have really mean that customers are loyal? Some signs that they are: 1/ Retention metrics are good - revenue retention, logo retention are high (or churn levels are low). Sometimes you don't have this data. At least ACV, TCV expansion, bookings. 2/ NPS surveys are valuable, but mostly if they are independent. 3/ Reviews on marketplaces like Capterra, G2, AppAnnie etc. Google Maps reviews are quite powerful. 4/ I'd also suggest to speak with clients: 1-2 who stays for long, 1-2 who left recently, 1-2 who signed up recently.

Lets assume we are speaking about the flow procees, not about ad hoc deep research excercise - VCs are constantly exploring new thesises and niches. I believe that the key goal is to explore different set of data and try to get insights driven by data: - Start with exploring Pitchbook, CB Insights, Gartner, Capital IQ, Crunchbase. There are plenty of insights available. - Dont forget to check macro on WorldBank, BIS, Eu portals, and use some local statistics resources, some of them are quite powerful. - Explore alternative trends: google search trends, ton of voice, SimilarWeb, G2, Capterra and other alternative data. - Make quick reference check: talk to 2-3 people in the field to polish the findings.

Assuming you are the leader and the person is working in your team, I believe the best strategy is to think about goal first - in case you want the person to close some gaps in order to improve and don't want to fire anyone, focus on these gaps in the first place and action points how to close them. It is important to be honest: "the performance is not as expected, let's work together in the specific directions to get back on track". Highlight the strengths of the person which you believe could help he/she to close these gaps, and focus on deliverables when providing the feedback on weeknessess. It is also important to ask for a reverse feedback, it will help to discover the bottlenecks, and removal of those could help a person to thrive.

VC teams are small, so comfort of every team member is incrementally more important than anywhere else. Few principles to get to the point of effective distributed team management: 1/ Make sure everyone is in the same conditions. In case 8 out of 10 people work offline and another 2 online, this would not work. 2/ Make sure you provide enough flexibility of communication channels - emails, Slack, messaging apps. You must tailor your communication style to be available to different team members. 3/ Investments are made creatively, but processes are strict. You have to develop the culture of task management, processes and templates so that the work becomes collaborative and easy. 4/ Have fun and maintain motivation through extra layers.

While the question itself is about the tools, I believe that it is still important to speak about the benchmarks you could use: 1/ Core benchmarks you could track: - CoC and TVPI, IRR gross and net, DPI. Those are the most crucial parameters; - Portfolio performance annually (could be compared with known private peers and available public peers); - Activity benchmarks: number of deals, exits, rounds of portfolio companies etc. 2/ Tools that could be used are different: - Preqin as the database and comparison tool could be used to track comparable metrics as well as Pitchbook - Specialized software could be used e.g. Aduro Platform, Carta; - The king of tools - Google Sheets or Airtable also could be used, simple and widespread.