How Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund leverages Affinity’s relationship intelligence

Introduction

Rise of the Rest is the seed fund arm of Revolution, a Washington, D.C.- based investment  firm with a mission to invest in early-stage companies located outside of traditional tech hubs.

With a team of investors regularly on the road, Rise of the Rest wanted to scale the level of support they offered their 200+ portfolio companies.

Affinity helped Rise of the Rest streamline their relationship-building capabilities and provided a proactive way to communicate with their portfolio companies and prospective founders. 

Challenge

Unable to be the BDR for every portfolio company

When it comes to companies looking for investors, Amira Ouji, Senior Director of Portfolio Success for Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund shares, “as founders evaluate who they want to join their cap table, it's really up to our team — equipped with our post-investment support resources — to show how we differentiate ourselves from other firms.”

Now in their second $150 million fund, Rise of the Rest’s team needed a way to continue delivering world class support to the startups they backed and differentiating themselves from other firms as their portfolio grew. 

The firm wanted a scalable solution to help report out on portfolio companies’ progress and help set up ways to proactively communicate with prospects and portfolio companies.

Solution

A relationship ChatGPT

To address these challenges, Rise of the Rest turned to Affinity to help the fund better manage their relationships. Affinity helped the fund track interactions and introductions with their portfolio companies.   

Ouji highlighted the value of Affinity in driving user adoption, stating, "The more you're in it, the more you understand it." The firm customized Affinity to meet their specific needs, creating a valuable integration with their operations. 

Ouji also credits Affinity’s Customer Success team in helping her team onboard and get value from the platform. “Every single month, I learn something new within my dashboard. It's similar to when you're first learning Microsoft Excel. There's a million formulas that make you think, ‘wow, I didn't know Excel could do this.’ That's how I feel about Affinity. The Customer Success team is constantly showing me metrics and ideas from which they think my team would benefit.”

Affinity's data-driven dashboards allow the team to make informed decisions around where to allocate resources within their portfolio. In regards to using Affinity, Ouji adds, “When founders come to me with requests, I use our network to source solutions. I call Affinity our ‘relationship ChatGPT’ because it helps us keep track of folks in our network.”

Results

Focusing on the right opportunities

With Affinity, Rise of the Rest Seed has supported their relationship-building capabilities for their growing portfolio. As Ouji notes, “Any VC firm can write a check. What founders want to know is what you can do for them after the check.” Affinity allows Rise of the Rest to democratize access to valuable networks for their portfolio companies.

With Rise of the Rest investing their second $150 million fund and bringing on several new portfolio companies, Affinity allows the team to unlock the full potential of their network.