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With ongoing economic challenges and stricter criteria for due diligence, many private capital firms took a more cautious approach to dealmaking in 2024.
But will 2025 be a better year for the industry? We surveyed hundreds of private capital professionals and discovered the answer is yes… for the most part.
Read the report to uncover:
- Why investors are turning up the notch on deal sourcing
- How firms are using AI to tackle data complexities
- What investors are doing to stand out amidst greater competition
Why our customers love Affinity
“We're using Affinity, and we have a way better view of our network and of who we know; and what, when, why do we know people; and when do we know that from, because previously, we didn't really. Now, we have a way better and way more effective method of engaging with the people we know, and getting productivity out of that.”
"Because Affinity is more intuitive [than our old system], you don’t have to go through a big training program. If we wanted to properly scale our old system, it would have taken up to twenty hours of onboarding training for new team members. Now, everyone is able to use Affinity immediately."
"Our clients want to know that we have key access to decision-makers. We’re able to show them this by showing them the core of our CRM system—Affinity. It’s about being honest and truthful—that is what matters to clients."
"Investment banking is nothing, if not, a relationship business, and Affinity is now core to our success."
“The combination of the CRM value plus a database approach for deal flow management is ultimately why we ended up going with Affinity.”
“What attracted us to Affinity was the fact that they were really focused on Venture Capital customers… this is a CRM for VCs.”
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“When founders come to me with requests, I use our network to source solutions. I call Affinity our ‘relationship ChatGPT’ because this is how we keep track of folks in our network.”
“Affinity creates visibility across teams, so if an investor chatted with someone […], then folks from our portfolio development team can go into that company's profile in Affinity and see how long the two have been communicating and ask for an introduction. That is the relationship intelligence that we're trying to unlock and super-power within Munich Re Ventures.”
“There are a lot of jobs to be done in venture. We’re always sourcing and fundraising, but we're also always looking to be human in those processes, and Affinity helps us do that most effectively.”
"We use Affinity Analytics to slice and dice everything to understand our decision making and see if there's a pattern. Feedback cycles in VC are long by nature. So we really try to make the most of the few information points available."
“We tracked 1,000 companies that turned into nine investments—with Affinity we now understand the characteristics that led to those investments so we can make better investments, faster.”
“A lot of CRMs provide structured data management, but in the end we had to do the data entry ourselves, and that was a no-go for us. Affinity’s automation and data enrichment meant we could focus on the thing that really matters to us: building relationships, gaining insights, and supporting the portfolio companies.”
“We've started to use Affinity Pathfinder on websites and LinkedIn, and it’s very valuable. It's easy for somebody to go to a website and see who we know without having to go to Affinity and look it up.”
"Affinity Alliances truly operationalizes our executive network. I use it every day to better understand the relationships I can leverage across Fidelity."
"We use Affinity to stay on the same page, hold each other accountable. It’s been a game changer for collaboration. "
"A product that has truly changed the way I work and made me so much more efficient across the team! Amazing and recommend to all! "
"Affinity has helped us centralize our CRM efforts in the most automated way. By organizing our pipeline, community, to-do’s, and distributing our Alliances to portfolio companies. "
We tried three market-leading CRMs but were never completely happy, and then we found Affinity. It’s genius — intuitive, flexible, super smart. What an effective CRM should be.
"Affinity has completely changed the way we do business, we are now far more organized and streamlined. Grouping advisors and target businesses using various filters and automatic logging of contact details, emails and meetings have saved us so much time in an administrative sense. If we ever have a query, Affinity is quick to respond."
"Affinity keeps us organized! It is perfectly tailored to what we need. Cataloging all of our emails and grouping them by an organization made it much easier to track contacts and report on how we’re managing deal flow. "
I built one of the first CRMs — Dynodex — in 1989, I feel like I’ve been waiting for a decent replacement for 30 years, now I’ve found it in Affinity. It automates many of the rote tasks and “digital fork-lifting” of legacy CRMs
"All our data is now centralized in Affinity, so information is never siloed with a single team member and we all understand the relationships among the entire team’s business network."
"We’re really impressed by the speed that the Affinity team operates and the availability of the team. "
"Managing your relationships is everything in commercial real estate. Affinity allows us to manage more clients and all our data in one place. That will lead to more top-line for our business. '
"Within weeks of moving to Affinity, we were able to easily discover and manage the thousands of entrepreneur and venture community relationships already latent within our team. What’s more, the Affinity Alliances professional network has helped us quickly build new and valuable connections. "
"Having all the documents and information in one place without having to clamp around on different systems is really valuable. Affinity is a massive time saver and enables us to be super-efficient."
"As an early stage investor, my constant focus is finding new ways to turn my connections into my portfolio’s next hundred opportunities."
"With Affinity, my team and I can track and nurture all of our firm’s most important relationships. In an industry like real estate, Affinity gives us a competitive advantage. "
