On the big screen, Marlon Brando “could’ve been a contender”. In real life he could’ve been a VC when he said, “Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to - it's an absolute prerequisite!”  The word “private” is a big part of the professional investor’s vocabulary. Private equity starts with companies whose stock is not publically traded.  “Private” also means “proprietary” – as in the exclusive right to invest in a company. And we can’t ignore the confidentiality meaning of the word.  With this past week’s announcement of our Investor Fundability we created a private-branded SaaS  solution as new way for private equity firms to manage their proprietary deal flow and maintain confidentiality about their deals.

When we talked to VCs and investment bankers they told us:

“We have brand equity. We don’t want to be listed in a clearing house with every other firm.”

“We’re bombarded with deal submissions and need a better way to manage the deal process."

“We already see more deals than we can invest in, but we can always use more quality deal flow and we want to have the first look.”

“Our proprietary deal sources create a competitive advantage."

We built Investor Fundability as an extension of a firm’s web site including branding, logo and colors. The idea is to makes it easy to capture and filter potential investments based on the firm’s criteria matched against pre-defined meta data. When a deal makes the cut Investor Fundability can be used by the fund team to work the deal through the process of research, due diligence, syndication and deal closing.  Once a deal is closed, there are secure digital reporting tools for ongoing investor relations as well as for Board-level communications.

Investor Fundability product works closely with our open Fundability Marketplace where early stage companies and accredited investors can connect on seed stage rounds. Firms using Investor Fundability can refer deals that are too small or too early over to the Fundability Marketplace which might be perfect for individual investors.  They can also go to the Fundability Marketplace when searching for fresh deals. 

Investor Fundability is the first of two new SaaS products. We will announce our second SaaS product in a few days to address the needs of later stage companies – private companies, of course.