IThe problem
Portfolio data lived across more than 30 disconnected spreadsheets. No single source of truth, no easy way to look at the fund holistically.
Quarterly LP reporting consumed several days of the VP of Ops's week. Every cycle was a fresh manual stitch — copy from one sheet, paste into another, reconcile, format, send.
Nothing was queryable. Questions like "which companies are ahead of plan on revenue but behind on hiring?" took half a day and a lot of cross-referencing to answer.
LP updates were stitched together by hand from disparate sources. The team knew the data was right; couldn't always show it.
IIWhat I built
aCustom portfolio platform
Single source of truth for companies, rounds, ownership, KPIs, board notes. Built on Retool + Xano + Affinity API. The VP of Ops owns it end-to-end; I'm not in the loop on day-to-day operation.
bAI-queryable layer
Natural-language questions over the live dataset. A Slack bot wired to the platform's data layer + Claude — partners ask in plain English, get charts and tables back.
cLP-facing exports
Quarterly packets generated from live data in minutes, not days. Branded templates, signed off by ops, sent without manual reconciliation.
dFounder check-in workflow
KPI capture from portfolio founders without nagging. Async forms, intelligent reminders, data flowing straight into the platform. No more Q3 fire drills.
IIIStack
IVResult
~90% reduction in quarterly reporting time. The VP of Ops gets her week back.
Platform now answers questions like "which companies are ahead on revenue but behind on hiring?" in one Slack DM. That used to be a 4-hour spreadsheet exercise.
Used as an operational differentiator in LP conversations — Elyse describes the platform on LP calls as evidence of how the fund runs.
The team owns the system. I'm available for new build work but not in the critical path for day-to-day operation.
— Elyse Crowston · VP Operations · Active Impact Investments
