My VC Product Stack

I’ve been spending some time over the past few weeks thinking about time management and the tools I use to facilitate the best use of my time, keep me organized and not let anything slip through the cracks as an investor. 

I’ve mapped out my product stack according to how regularly I use a given product and/or have set time to check/review/reorganize/clear-out the content a particular product holds for me. In reflecting on my stack, I realize that many of the tools of my trade are just containers of information. The essential value then is in getting information out of my head before its forgotten as well as presenting it back to me (and others depending on the product) in a much clearer format in order to process it or collaborate with it. 

A few other thoughts from reflecting on this map: 

Trello has long been a go-to source for company tracking for me as a vc. It is lightweight, has a fantastic mobile experience and each card works well as a unit of summary for a specific startup. The columns are perfect for the stages of meeting, diligence and review. What is lost with Trello as far as a VC-CRM is data - there’s no tagging, filtering, or analysis, even when manually exporting to excel. There may not be a ton of insight from a seed stage venture ‘CRM’ but I would be very interested in what other tools people have used especially those that offer any degree of analysis.

Since the first time I downloaded the desktop version, I’ve never moved off of Tweetdeck as my primary Twitter organization and consumption tool. I wish Twitter would pay more attention to it as far as bugs and simpler UI/UX. It is clunky as hell to get  your initial columns of follower lists set up correctly and, even if that improved, its still only for a power-user. But its amazing once you put the time in and relatively straightforward to shuffle and update. 

If anyone has calendar recommendations as we watch Sunrise ride off into the sunset as a Microsoft product, I would love to know them. The same goes for mobile email client. I’ve begun testing Outlook on my phone for the first time ever as a mobile calendar and email solution and its better then I expected, but I don’t really want to use it as my permanent solution.