“The interactive LP report has helped us reduce our report compilation time by nearly 50%,” Tommaso from P101

The story

Hi Tommaso, can you introduce yourself and share with us your VC’s background?

Sure. I’m Tommaso, Data Analyst at P101 Ventures, a venture capital firm from Milan, Italy. It was established in 2013. Presently, at P101, we have three main funds and a sidecar fund, managing around €400M in total.

Which industry and stage do you mainly invest in? How many active portfolio companies do you have currently and is there any investment success you want to share?

We predominantly invest in early-stage digital companies across Europe, focusing mainly on Series A and Series B startups. But some of our older funds also look at seed startups. We pride ourselves on being more than just financial backers. Our aim is to provide in-depth collaboration, strategic advice, business development, and access to a network of advisors and potential clients. As of now, we have investments in over 50 companies.

We have investments not only in Italy but also across various European countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany. To date, we’ve achieved 17 exits. Among these exits, some stand out as successful investments:

• MusixMatch was acquired by TPG PE Fund.
• Deporvillage was bought by JD Sports.
• Tannico, a wine startup, was purchased by Campari.

The challenges

What were the challenges you had been dealing with before getting to use Rundit? 

Like many private equity and venture capital funds, we traditionally relied on methods that have been around for the past 20-30 years, primarily spreadsheets and static reports. But now, there’s a shift towards more modern tools tailored to our operations and the entire investment ecosystem. Instead of these legacy tools, the trend is moving towards SaaS models like Rundit.

Spreadsheets and traditional methods have their merits, but they’re time-consuming and prone to human error. This approach can also hinder collaboration, data presentation, and extracting valuable insights from our portfolio.

With Rundit, we aimed to address these issues and enhance four main areas of our portfolio management:

• Funds transactions mgmt. – i.e., tracking all investments and realizations from the initial investment, follow-ons all the way to the exits

• Collection and Tracking of KPIs from Portfolio companies – from business to financial and operational KPIs

• GPs and LPs reporting – i.e., report on our portfolio performance to LPs

• Fund and LP management – i.e., Fund Performance, Capital Accounts, GP Fees, Cash Flow, Net IRR

The solution

How long did it take to onboard your portfolio metrics and investment data? Can you briefly describe the process? 

Onboarding our investment data to the Rundit platform was fairly straightforward, taking about three weeks. We started by extracting data from our old system, cleaning and formatting it, and then uploading it to Rundit. 

The beauty of tools like Rundit lies in their ability to enforce processes and back-end datasets. They emphasize the importance of maintaining a robust, up-to-date backend to ensure data quality and consistency.

How do you use the portfolio and investment dashboards in Rundit? 

With Rundit’s dashboard, we’ve enhanced our data visualization process. It offers flexibility, unlike our previous reliance on Excel and other business intelligence tools, which were rigid and required maintenance. The dashboard provides a broad view of our funds, allowing us to aggregate data and understand how investments are distributed. It offers real-time insights into our portfolio, covering investments and the performance of our startups. 

Rundit stands out in its portability; accessible on laptops or phones, which proves invaluable when managing numerous startups in our portfolio and needing quick data reference. The dashboard’s versatility enables us to analyze details at various levels, distinguishing between our main and sidecar funds and delving into individual company metrics. Instead of using multiple tools, Rundit centralizes data visualization, offering real-time insights, and is pivotal for communicating with our Limited Partners (LPs). When examining individual companies, we can see detailed charts on ownership, valuation, cash fluctuations and other investment metrics.

How do the dashboards serve different purposes of your team members?

The dashboard caters to varied uses. High-level dashboards, for instance, aren’t examined daily. Those overview numbers remain relatively stable. The audience for these dashboards is also diverse. Our entire team has access to Rundit. The higher-tier roles, like managing partners, gravitate towards the overarching dashboards, seeking a comprehensive snapshot of our operations. 

Conversely, at the operational level – analysts and investment teams focus on specific companies. They assess how these entities are performing based on the monthly data provided, and also scrutinize individual investment metrics like stock purchases, previous valuations, and current ownership percentages. This granularity aids in evaluating follow-on rounds or potential dilutions. 

How have the interactive LP/fund reports improved your analysis or presentation of data? Do you find its customization intuitive compared to static reports or PDFs? 

The interactive LP/fund reports have significantly elevated our reporting capabilities. From an LP’s standpoint, this approach is notably advanced compared to the traditional PDF format. Although PDFs have their place and we have nothing against them, the interactive nature of our new reports offers a more captivating and exploratory experience. A simple rearrangement of the same information into this interactive format has rendered it more user-friendly and engaging.

The primary advantages of this feature aren’t just limited to the quality of reports we produce. Significantly, we’ve managed to cut down our report compilation time by nearly half. With data readily available and automatically generated, coupled with the GP comments at both the fund and company levels being easily accessible, the entire process has become more streamlined. The older method of manually entering comments and collaborating on worksheets was considerably more time-consuming.

Do you utilize the comments feature for internal & reporting purposes? Can you share an instance where this feature is particularly beneficial?

Yes, we actively give comments at the fund and company levels: 

For the fund, we detail the macroeconomic dynamics within a reporting period, highlighting events, investments, and the criteria for those investments. 

At the company level, we focus on performance, comparing it to the previous reporting period. Depending on whether the company received an investment, we either clarify the investment criteria or analyze its overall business performance within its market and industry. 

A key feature we appreciate is the system’s tracking capability. It ensures accurate comment entry for each period and doubles as a project management tool. Additionally, when evaluating a company, we can access past comments which provide us with comprehensive narratives about the company. This centralized history negates the need for manual searches and offers a coherent story, fostering better understanding and facilitating collaboration, and knowledge-sharing among the team.

When preparing LP reports, how do the comments assist in communicating your insights or decisions?

When preparing LP reports, comments play a crucial role in providing context. They offer a narrative to the data, explaining anomalies or highlighting significant achievements, making it easier for LPs to understand our decision-making process.

The result

Have you been able to enhance team collaboration and productivity in your internal process?

Absolutely. With Rundit, there’s been a noticeable improvement in team collaboration, especially during quarterly reviews. 

We’ve reduced our reporting process time by almost 50%. This isn’t just about speed; our project management tools confirm that the duration required for tasks has been halved since adopting Rundit. The ability to comment and interact with the data directly has fostered more in-depth discussions. Also, information is accessible to the team in a very intuitive format.

However, beyond the quantitative metrics, there’s an invaluable qualitative aspect. Rundit acts as a single source of truth, eliminating data duplication and ensuring data integrity. While we still have a single manual step – inputting data – the subsequent processes are automated. This minimizes the chance of human error which is an inherent risk in manual processes, especially when transferring data between platforms.

While the platform offers numerous features, one of the standout attributes is its ability to safeguard the accuracy and consistency of our data. Errors aren’t just about incorrect numbers; they can erode the trust of our stakeholders, but Rundit helps ensure that trust is preserved.

Which functionality(s) do you find the most helpful?

The most unique and stand-out feature has to be the LP report. It has transformed our data presentation and communication process and saved us a lot of manual work. 

We’ve explored various portfolio management tools, and none seem to offer this functionality the way Rundit does. It’s a game-changer for us. Operationally speaking, having a centralized log and ledger of all our fund transactions is invaluable. While this is a fundamental feature of any portfolio management tool, the way Rundit presents and manages it adds an element of distinctiveness and efficiency that we truly appreciate.