We were losing potential investors. Not because our fund lacked merit or the right connections, but because promising relationships went cold without us noticing, until those same LPs committed funds elsewhere.
At Speedinvest, we've scaled from a modest first fund with a handful of LPs to €1.2B across six EMEA offices. Our investor base grew from a few early backers to dozens of institutions and family offices worldwide. Our previous approach to managing these relationships? We relied on someone remembering to follow up.
Touchpoints lived everywhere: emails, Zoom calls, conference run-ins, a partner's mental reminder to "circle back next quarter." With interactions scattered across channels, follow-ups slipped through. We lost chances to convert interest into commitments.
Relationships decay in silence. You don't wake up thinking, "I should check if that LP has gone cold." By the time you realize it, months have passed without contact, and they've often allocated their capital elsewhere by then.
How we track 500+ LP relationships systematically
Without systematic tracking, LP relationships exist in individual inboxes and memories. One person can handle, perhaps, 20 relationships manually. But across a partnership with multiple team members and hundreds of prospects? It’s impossible without infrastructure.
Our approach has three components: real-time relationship insights showing which LP contacts need attention, automated alerts preventing relationship decay, and firm-wide visibility eliminating blind spots in our fundraising pipeline.
All of it runs automatically via activity capture: no manual data entry required. Here's how each layer works.
Why manual tracking fails
Spreadsheets seemed logical until we realized nobody had time to constantly update "last contact" dates. During fundraising, teams juggle due diligence, portfolio work, and endless meetings. Asking people to stop and update cells? Unrealistic.
Calendar reminders weren't better. A recurring ping to "touch base with Investor X" fired even if we'd spoken last week, or failed to account for yesterday's critical email. Generic reminders without context became noise.
Memory doesn't scale. One partner might track a dozen key LPs mentally. But as a firm, with each partner cultivating their own contacts, someone important inevitably slips through.
As we grew, the pattern became clear: manual relationship tracking works with a few dozen LPs but breaks at scale. We needed visibility into relationship decay before it was too late, without creating an administrative burden.
How the system works
We built three layers running automatically to keep fundraising relationships warm and progressing.
Stale relationships highlighted for action
The system surfaces any LP prospect that has gone too long without contact. We set a 60-day threshold; once hit, that relationship flags for action. Each partner has a dashboard showing at-risk investor contacts. If an LP hasn't heard from us in two months, it's obvious. The moment we see a key name highlighted, we reach out. We've converted something invisible (a relationship slowly dying) into something unavoidable (a prominent alert in our daily workflow).
Set it once, forget it
We each set simple automated triggers for the highest-priority relationships. Example: "Alert me if more than 60 days pass with no contact from our team." The system monitors every relationship continuously. When a relationship approaches that threshold, it sends an automatic reminder to the responsible partner. Nobody mentally tracks dates or combs through Sent folders. The trigger is set once, and we forget about timing, confident we'll be notified before any important LP goes cold.
Firm-wide visibility into our LP pipeline
We built dashboards showing the entire fundraising pipeline in real time: which LPs each partner covers, when they were last contacted, and where they are in the commitment process. This firm-wide view eliminates blind spots. That awkward moment when everyone assumes someone else updated a major investor, but nobody did? Or when two partners unknowingly approach the same LP? Doesn't happen. We see immediately if a cornerstone investor hasn't been touched in a while, or if family offices in a particular region are being overlooked. The whole team has visibility, so nothing falls through, and efforts aren't duplicated.
The technical foundation
These layers sit on one foundation: automatic activity capture. We use Affinity firm-wide, connected to email and calendar systems, to automatically log every interaction with current or prospective LPs. Every email sent, every meeting scheduled, every call is captured without manual data entry. The platform creates contact records and updates profiles behind the scenes, calculating relationship strength based on real communication patterns. Everything stays current in real time.
We maintain control over sensitive information through permissions. Team members can see that a relationship needs attention (an LP's "last contact" is aging, their engagement score is dropping) without necessarily exposing full email content. We get visibility and coordinated action without compromising confidentiality or compliance requirements.
What changed
I don't lose sleep worrying about ignoring interested investors. We don't lose prospective LPs to unintentional neglect anymore. Every important relationship is tracked and tended to on time. We have complete visibility into fundraising outreach. When a partner asks, "Have we updated Investor Y lately?" we answer in seconds. Partners don't waste time hunting for the latest email thread or status update.
Nobody manually pieces together a fundraising pipeline from memory or scattered notes. Our team focuses on the content of LP conversations and building genuine relationships, while the system keeps the process tight. We actually leverage the collective network and momentum we've built with LPs, rather than letting connections fade between fund cycles.
The difference is stark: what used to be hazy and informal now runs like clockwork. Every quarter, we pull up a full report of LP interactions without scrambling to compile data. During active fundraising, we're always a step ahead: reaching out proactively instead of reacting after an opportunity starts slipping.
Why this works when other systems don't
Most CRM solutions assume people will do data entry if prodded enough or given a shiny interface. That assumption is flawed. Our approach doesn't ask busy partners to painstakingly log every call or email, because we know they won't. Instead, it captures all that data automatically and serves up insights. The system fits into our workflow, not the other way around.
Our solution addresses a daily pain point, not just a reporting need. It's not about producing a nice end-of-quarter report (though that comes free); it's about preventing a promising LP conversation from dying out. By focusing on real-time relationship health and immediate next steps, we solve the problem at its source.
Because everything is captured and visible (with appropriate privacy controls), our team operates with more unity. Associates spend less time chasing down updates for investor relations reports. Partners avoid the embarrassment of crossed wires or forgotten follow-ups. We're actually making use of the relationship network we've cultivated over years. That network becomes a tangible, quantifiable asset, and not just a talking point in marketing materials.
What we learned
LP relationships don't go cold because people are lazy or forgetful. They go cold because manually tracking dozens of ongoing conversations doesn't scale, and preventing that decay shouldn't rely on heroic personal effort. The key is removing human fallibility from the equation as much as possible. By building a system that removes the work of remembering and tracking, we remove the primary cause of missed opportunities.
Today, we manage our entire universe of LP relationships with full visibility and confidence, something impossible with the ad-hoc, manual methods most funds start with. No blind spots, no quietly faded conversations, and transparency that lets our whole team operate in sync on investor outreach.
The system works precisely because it removes work from our plates. If you're solving this problem at your firm, stop asking, "How can we get the team to log more information?" Ask instead, "How can we capture the data automatically so the team can simply get value from it?" Once we reframed the challenge that way, everything else followed.
For venture firms and investment managers juggling dozens or even hundreds of prospective LPs across different regions and funds, automatic capture and proactive alerts are the only way to prevent fundraising blind spots at scale. It's the difference between hoping your network comes through for you, and actually making sure it does.
This is one of seven workflows we documented from firms managing billions in AUM. Read the complete guide to see how Gradient Ventures finds proprietary deals in 30 seconds, how Notable Capital automated 500+ portfolio introductions with a two-person team, and how BlackRock 5× their research capacity overnight.
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