How DCM Ventures automatically capture every interaction with people and companies with Affinity

Introduction

DCM is a venture capital firm with over $4 billion under management. Since its founding, it has invested in more than 400 technology companies across the U.S. and Asia. With offices in Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Tokyo, DCM empowers entrepreneurs with hands-on operational guidance and a global network of business and financial resources.

DCM needed a way to automatically track all activity including meetings, email and calendars in one place to help teams prioritize what matters most to the business.  With Affinity CRM, the investing teams have context on who they are working with to make better investment decisions.  

Challenge

In every industry, let alone venture capital, manual data entry can negatively affect everything from productivity to customer service to profitability. 

The repetitive nature of adding emails and contact information into CRM systems and spreadsheets also takes a toll on morale. Manual entry is tedious, unfulfilling, and causes engagement to plummet. Low engagement can increase turnover and can also harm interactions with others.

When meetings, emails, and calendar invitations abound, it’s important to be able to focus and distinguish between what is and is not important.

DCM Ventures was not immune to this and needed a way to curate all of this in one place and democratize access to the information needed to manage dealflow and prioritize time. 

Solution

“The biggest problems Affinity helps me solve are how to track all of my activity and how to prioritize my time,” says Kyle Lui, Principal at DCM Ventures. “It makes me a better VC. All of the things I need to do on a day-to-day basis I now do in Affinity.”

Monitoring current and future obligations in a world where things happen ever more rapidly was increasingly a pressure to success.  The volume and speed of communication make it nearly impossible to track manually. Thankfully, solutions like Affinity leverage artificial intelligence and automation to ease the burden.

In linking with users’ email and calendar data, Affinity captures every interaction with people and companies, and auto-populates the information into a powerful online interface. In doing so, Affinity also understands when the lines of communication break and a response is required.

Results

“Affinity makes sure that I never miss an email,” says Lui. “It’s an awesome solution because sometimes the amount of email and follow-up that you have is challenging when you’re a VC.”

In many cases, questions will get asked at meetings searching for context surrounding people and companies. What was that company? Who was that person? When did we do that meeting? Combining the AI mentioned above with public data resources means that Affinity surfaces the context surrounding every interaction a user has ever had with anyone.

Lui concluded: “It’s simple. Affinity makes you a smarter, more organized networker. For me, that means I’m better at what I do.”