How Invus Opportunities increased centralized opportunity tracking by 40% with Affinity

Introduction

Launched in 2007 and focused on investing in private technology businesses globally, Invus Opportunities currently manages over $2.5 billion of assets. After using several different CRM systems without finding the right solution, Invus Opps adopted Affinity to manage their deal flow and improve investment team collaboration, automating activity capture and creating a streamlined view of the firm’s network and pipeline. 

With Affinity, Invus Opps can now:

• Surface all previous interactions with companies and coinvestors, eliminating the potential for crossed wires
• Access relevant third-party information in one place with Affinity’s data enrichment
• Save time preparing for weekly review meetings using Affinity’s kanban view

Challenge

Almost 20 years of inaccessible relationship history

Since Invus Opportunities was first founded in 2007, they had tried multiple CRMs. However, attempts to use the clunky systems were unsuccessful, with many requiring manual work to maintain. There had been no way to capture the history of the connections and previous interactions with companies and no easy way to capitalize on that advantage. 

"The friction of entering an opportunity, linking it to the entities, and logging the communications was just too much, and people couldn't be bothered, and so most of the time it didn't happen," says Bryan Kim, Partner at Invus Opps.

Some team members tried tracking their own deal flow and relationships in spreadsheets, but like the previous CRMs, the manual upkeep meant things would often get lost. “It became so unmanageable to the point that it became impossible to use Excel,” says Jeremy Yi, Investor.

Inconsistent data entry left the firm underutilizing previous conversations with prospective investment opportunities. "I may have talked to a company five years ago, but if that didn't get logged correctly, and another one of my colleagues talked to them now, that history didn't benefit the current conversation," says Kim.

With mixed CRM adoption and no way to automatically capture firmwide activity, Invus Opps risked losing institutional knowledge—and missing out on important opportunities to competitors.

Solution

A CRM that provides context

By implementing Affinity, CRM adoption has become second nature at Invus Opps since the platform automatically syncs the firm’s network, meetings, and calendars.

"So much of Affinity happens automatically in the background. It doesn't rely on somebody logging an interaction, particularly an email interaction," says Kim. “I have much better visibility into what my colleagues are doing than I did before.”

This means the firm can quickly access current deal flow while also being able to click into historical interactions. 

Invus Opps often coinvests with other firms, and the history of those relationships also now exists in Affinity. This is particularly helpful for newer members of the team trying to build their networks. “I was grabbing lunch with someone from another firm, and I realized through Affinity that we actually have a long history of investing side by side. It was a great point to bring up in the conversation" says Yi.

“What’s so powerful about Affinity is that it not only helps track existing connections, but also helps surface potential new ones. When I’m looking to trade notes with another investor in the same space, I first check to see if a team member is already connected. A warm introduction goes a long way in building those strong relationships,” Yi adds. 

Affinity’s customizable lists and filtering options allow for individual team members to take large repositories of companies and create hyper-targeted views based on specific verticals that might be of interest. "Having the flexibility to create the list in the way that your brain works is a real strength of Affinity’s," says Yi.

Thanks to integrations with Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and other sources, Invus Opps is able to easily filter by the criteria that most fits their buy-box. "Affinity has partnerships with a variety of different third-party vendors, which helps bring a lot of credibility to the data," says Yi.

Weekly reviews, simplified

Weekly reviews ensure investment teams stay on top of their pipeline, and previously, without a way to view deal flow, "it took too much effort for people to coordinate through a person to set an agenda," says Kim.

With Affinity, the investment team now runs effective weekly meetings with one accessible view. "We use the kanban view and we have our stages set up so that effectively, the agenda is automatically populated based on a particular stage in our opportunity pipeline," says Kim. 

This level of visibility also allows for better overall workflow management. “In terms of just being able to organize our teams around outbound and diligence efforts in a world where we have limited team bandwidth, Affinity is helpful with prioritization,” Yi shares.

Results

Smarter, faster decision making with all available information

Affinity has transformed how Invus Opps manages their investment operations, creating a platform that captures opportunities, historical interactions, and enriched data in one place to help drive smarter, faster decision making.

“Of all the opportunities that we're evaluating at any given time, there’s a percentage that makes it into the CRM and gets tracked and communicated across the team,” says Kim. “With Affinity, it's over 90%; with the prior systems we were using, it was less than 50%.”*

This equates to time saved by investors, who no longer have to ensure information is up to date. By automatically surfacing the firm’s pipeline in an easy-to-digest kanban view, Affinity "saves us a couple of hours a week in the preparation and execution of our pipeline meeting,” Kim adds, “and with how expensive good people are in our industry, a couple hours a week is worth a lot of money.”

With the success they have seen with their CRM, Invus Opps has begun testing Affinity Sourcing, which is helping them find relevant companies more efficiently. “With all of the value that we've gotten from Affinity's CRM, we're excited at the prospect of enhancing our sourcing efforts with the new sourcing capabilities,” says Yi.

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Disclosure: Invus Opportunities is both a client of and an investor in Affinity. The statements included in this case study reflect the firm’s experience using Affinity’s platform and are intended for illustrative purposes only. No cash compensation was provided in exchange for participation in this content. However, Affinity may derive marketing or reputational benefits from publishing this case study.

*Any references to process improvements, operational efficiencies, or platform usage reflect Invus Opportunities’ internal experience and workflows and are not independently verified. These statements are based on the firm's own assessment and may not be representative of other users’ experiences.

This content does not constitute a testimonial about investment advisory services or a guarantee of results. It is not intended as investment advice or an endorsement by Invus Opportunities of Affinity or its affiliates.