How Intel Capital created a 360 view of their deal flow with Affinity

Introduction

Intel Capital, the venture arm of Intel Corporation, lacked a CRM that was designed for VC, resulting in investors managing multiple lists across multiple applications. With Affinity, the firm now has one place to manage deal flow, allowing them to run their weekly meetings using the same views across domains and regions. The team can view more opportunities and make faster, data-driven decisions using a system of record enriched with valuable deal data and relationship insights. 

With Affinity, Intel Capital can now:

• Run meetings using Affinity’s kanban view, easily dragging and dropping opportunities to the respective next steps and allowing for smoother collaboration
• Use Affinity’s AI Notetaker to automatically capture clean, standardized notes during meetings, eliminating the need for manual work to transfer notes from paper or another application into the CRM
• Report back to their LP using Affinity’s standardized reporting and easily answer deal-related questions that may arise

Challenge

A new tech stack, but one lacking pipeline visibility

Reevaluating and rebuilding a tech stack can be a tedious process that requires laying down a foundation you hope will work for a long period of time. There’s always the debate of “build vs. buy” and the resources needed to keep up with those operating systems. 

For Intel Capital, a CVC that’s been around for over 30 years, building the right tech stack required even more considerations. “We have to report through the Intel general ledger, and we are a public company, so that means we have some reporting requirements that are really necessary for us to make sure that we manage,” says Jen Ard, Managing Director and Head of Investment Operations at the firm. This is on top of having to manage their investment workflow and the operations and financials for more than 250 portfolio companies. 

After years of using seven in-house developed solutions managed by a global team of 10, maintenance had become unsustainable and leadership aligned on finding a better solution. “It became this whole evolution around what can we get off the shelf,” Ard shares.

The number of new applications were implemented to help manage finances, operations, data, portfolio companies, and deal flow. Unfortunately, Intel Capital found that the CRM chosen, Salesforce, was more suited to sales teams than their needs as a venture firm. 

As a result, investors worked out of multiple Excel spreadsheets and Airtables, limiting deal flow visibility and making it harder to share information internally or externally to their LP. “We have over 30 investors worldwide, and investment discussions were just not going well because partners were unable to tell what was in the pipeline”, Ard says. 

Solution

Real-time updates and reporting

Salesforce was a good fit for Intel Capital’s portfolio management operations. Wanting to augment it with something more suited to venture deal flow,  they began asking peers for their recommendations. Ard shares that there was a clear frontrunner: “We had a discussion with all of our VC friends, and asked who they used [as their CRM]. The clear choice was Affinity; everybody we knew used the system.”

Intel Capital implemented Affinity on top of Salesforce within 3 months, creating a pipeline layer that was quick to set up. “It was one of the fastest sales cycles we've ever been through, and we have really not looked back since,” says Ard.

One critical requirement was the ability to quickly review pipelines, pull data, and make updates. Affinity’s kanban view allows the team to run their weekly Deal Concept meeting more efficiently; they can quickly drag deals between stages and use the shared source of truth to have productive discussions. “Within that meeting, we can compare deals and move them around,” Ard shares. “That is how we run all of our pipeline meetings now, within all of our domains across Intel Capital.”

Affinity also increases visibility across the firm. As a globally-dispersed workforce, consisting of four domains (Cloud, Devices, Frontier, Silicon), Ard notes each individual and team used to have different methods to capture pipeline. “We had a lot of investors who were keeping their pipeline list on Airtable or Excel. People were trying to share Airtables, and I think I had probably seven different Airtables from seven different investors who all put their info in differently.” Now? “Nobody’s using Airtable. Nobody's using Excel. We share views and have everybody on the deal list.”

From handwriting analysis to actionable AI-driven insights

Intel Capital’s team has invested in 250 companies, a result of meeting with thousands of founders over three decades. As investors meet with founders, the notes from those sessions can help determine whether the firm will decide to move forward with an opportunity. For many years, notes lived on people’s desktops, phones, and sometimes pieces of paper. 

Once the firm moved to Affinity, people would copy notes into the CRM—which required lots of manual work. This has changed with the implementation of Affinity’s AI Notetaker, with positive results. Ard shares, “that streamlined process is so nice; it takes notes and automatically uploads them. We just have way more robust reporting and metrics around our firm.” 

The Notetaker also establishes a permanent system of record that doesn’t disappear when a partner leaves, allowing for continued understanding of previous decisions. “So many times, investors were not very disciplined about putting notes into Affinity or really tracking why we didn’t move forward with a decision. Notetaker has been a great asset for us to be able to clean that up and just be really diligent about getting notes and information into the system,” says Ard.

One LP, one streamlined way of reporting

Like many other CVCs, Intel Capital only has one LP. But like any other LP, Intel Capital is still required to report back on deal flow and portfolio companies. Affinity’s reporting capabilities allow the firm to share progress and quickly answer questions that may arise about previous decisions. “With Affinity, the leadership team is able to be more accountable for what we're looking at, and report that to our senior management team,” Ard shares. 

The notes captured via Notetaker are particularly useful if LPs ask questions about deals the firm passed on. “All the notes are there, so I can go in and say, ‘No, we didn't miss that deal. We just didn't want to invest because of x, y, z, reason,’” Ard adds. “Just being able to report on how many AI companies we've seen, or how many Silicon deals we've looked at, that reporting process has been really, really seamless in Affinity.”

Affinity’s filtering capabilities even allow the firm to track and report on progress within a specific domain or region. Ard says, “being able to make decisions and know how things stack up relative to others has been really great.” The Affinity team has supported the creation of custom dashboards that analyze time from deal intro to Deal Concept meeting, which allows Intel Capital to identify areas for improvement. “You can use it as a way to help your team make sure they get the development that they need to keep things moving through the process.”

Results

A CRM that leads to better sourcing, discussions, and decisions

Intel Capital needed real-time updates on their investment pipeline. With Affinity, they can easily review deals and take quick action to move opportunities forward. “With Affinity, we can have real time discussions, whereas before that our pipeline was so murky that we didn't feel like we were really on top of it,” Ard says. 

The efficiency gains from Affinity’s tracking capabilities mean Intel Capital is looking at more companies and making more informed decisions. “With easier tracking mechanisms in Affinity, the number of companies we're able to look at has gone up. We can now surface better companies and have better discussions.”