How Bdev Ventures scaled from CRM chaos to their biggest investment month ever with Affinity

Introduction

Bdev Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in high-growth startups across the U.S. and Latin America. With 23 team members spread across multiple time zones, the firm needed a relationship intelligence platform that could keep pace with their deal flow while serving as a reliable foundation for their increasingly sophisticated data operations. After struggling with a custom-built CRM that consumed more resources than it delivered value, Bdev Ventures turned to Affinity—and transformed how their entire team works.

The impact was immediate and measurable:

• 100% team adoption across all 23 employees
• Eliminated weekly CRM troubleshooting meetings that had become a drain on productivity
• Reallocated an entire CRM management team to higher-value analytical work
• Built AI-powered portfolio tools with Affinity as the data foundation
• Reduced meeting prep time to 20 minutes with complete confidence in data accuracy

Challenge

A technical team drowning in CRM complexity

Before Affinity, Bdev Ventures was using Bitrix, a highly customizable CRM platform that seemed perfect for their technical team. "It's all about customization," explained Keshia Theobald-van Gent, Partner at Bdev Ventures. "And that feels like such a great idea—until you're actually in it."

The reality was far more painful. The integrations were overly complicated. Data accuracy was inconsistent. Team members would ping each other on Slack asking if anyone had talked to a company, only to discover conversations had happened but weren't logged in the CRM. "We'd actually hired a team of people just to manage our CRM," Keshia said. "We had a weekly meeting about our CRM. At one point, we all took a step back and said, 'This just isn't working.'"

The firm evaluated multiple alternatives, including Salesforce and HubSpot, but needed something purpose-built for venture capital workflows. More importantly, they needed something the entire team would actually use. "The best CRMs are really hard to get everybody to use," Keshia noted. "That's one of the biggest pain points in any organization."

For a 23-person firm investing globally across the U.S. and Latin America, the stakes were high. Without a reliable centralized source of truth, they were losing time, missing opportunities, and building technical debt instead of a competitive advantage.

Solution

A turnkey system that just works

Bdev Ventures chose Affinity after speaking with numerous customers whose needs mirrored their own. "The focus of Affinity and knowing they were already working with customers whose needs were very similar to ours—they had the community," Keshia explained. "I talked to so many of your customers before we pulled the trigger."

The decision paid off immediately. "Affinity was so turnkey," Keshia said. "The integrations are so easy. All of our emails are right there. Our calendars are integrated. Every conversation is captured—not just my poor notes, but also the notetaker within Affinity. It's keeping track of everything. We can go back and look at transcripts."

The implementation became an opportunity for organizational transformation. The team reviewed every process, every button click, every memo format. "We took it as an opportunity, not a challenge," Keshia said. "We had the entire team sit down and review every single process. Why are we doing this? Is it useful? Who is this for?"

Through this process, they changed their data provider, updated their memo format, and most importantly, created buy-in across different teams. "Going through that process together and creating buy-in was magical," Keshia explained. "Today, everyone across the organization is signing in—which I could not say a couple of years ago."

Building on a solid foundation

With Affinity as their centralized source of truth, Bdev Ventures began building sophisticated integrations. They connected their data sources, implemented the AI notetaker, and built integrations with LLM tools to help draft investment memos.

The most ambitious project is "Bdev Pro," an internal AI tool that ingests both structured and unstructured data from portfolio companies. "My portfolio companies send us all kinds of crazy stuff," Keshia laughed. "Sometimes it's a beautiful deck, sometimes it's a text message. We built this AI tool that allows us to ingest all of that and push out a structured data report. Affinity is at the core of that."

Results

From CRM burden to competitive advantage

The transformation was dramatic. Most of the team that had been managing their old CRM was reallocated to analytical work. "We didn’t want to let anyone go—we've been able to repurpose that team," Keshia said. "The analytical work we're doing today is 10x better than before, because we're no longer spending time on Slack asking if anyone talked to a company."

The most significant impact is confidence. "When I log in and I'm looking at a company— because I have a call in 20 minutes, not two days—I now know that whatever notes or call logs are in Affinity are accurate," Keshia said. "I don't have to go to Slack. I don't have to text anybody. That's genuinely the biggest deal."

This confidence enables better decision-making. Bdev Ventures tracks success metrics around deal flow—number of startups reviewed, first calls, second calls, diligence processes. "We're making sure that on the quantitative side, we're doing what we need to do to ultimately get to the investments we want to make," Keshia explained. "On the qualitative side, we're using data with Affinity at the core to understand if the activities we're doing are the activities we should be doing."

The results speak for themselves. In June, Bdev Ventures made seven new investments—their biggest month ever. "Things are good," Keshia said. "Next month is looking like it's going to be the busiest month ever."

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