Timestamps of Video Interview00:00 Intro01:03 TotemVC in a nutshell02:01 Which fund sizes use TotemVC?03:44 PortCo Page UI04:50 Data Upload05:51 AI Abstracts from Mails07:10 PortCo Data Collection Tool10:11 Fund Overview UI11:28 Timeline View12:56 Usability Best Practice14:23 Complementary Stack15:44 Upcoming AI Features16:30 Will AI be the new UI?17.47 Outro AI Transcript of Video InterviewHello, welcome to Stack Genius,the podcast for data-driveninvestment professionals.My name is Silvan.I'm greeting you from Berlin today.And also, I'm greeting Steven,who in fact is joining usfrom beautiful Thailand somewhere, right?Absolutely.Nice to see you, Silvan.So normally,I think you guys are situated in Brooklyn,if I'm not mistaken.So this is your nice littlegateway to get to somewhere warm, right?This is definitely an escape,although I have nocomplaints about Brooklyn.I love Brooklyn.Very good.We will speak at Brooklynrestaurants after this call.So, yeah, thanks for joining us today.So, I mean, you are a co-founder of Totem.When you read your website, you know,Totem seems to be a ratherholistic investment suite,I think you're speaking about.an investment operating system.Can you tell us in a minute, you know,what do you do?So what is included?What's not included?Sure.So I think the word CRM getsthrown around a lot.It means a lot of differentthings to different people.What we're building is whatI believe to be the mostholistic fund operatingsystem that gives fund managers,specifically venture capital funds,the ability to understandhow their investments are doing,how that rolls up at the fund level,and how that rolls up atthe firm-wide level across all the funds.And when I was starting aventure capital almost a decade ago,everything was stuck in spreadsheets.And I think people werehoping for tools to comeonto the market to helpmake the process of runninga venture capital fund more efficient.And here we are just about a decade later,And I think we have anactually exaggerated problem.We now have hundreds oftools that have come ontothe scene for pointsolutions for things that funds do.But I think what funds stillcrave is something thatreally stitches that alltogether and gives themvisibility into what's going on.And that's what we have beenbuilding for the last several years.That's a very good overview.And do you have a specificsize of funds that yourtool is well suited for?Or is it agnostic dependingon whether you're a PE or a pre-seed VC?So we're definitely focusedon venture capital funds.And I would say our clientstoday fall into one of three buckets.In the smaller range,I'd say there are fundsthat are just getting started.They don't necessarily havesome of the pain pointsthat a tool like ours solves for,but they can put in place astructure that will scalewith them and avoid some ofthe pitfalls that someother fund managers whodon't think about it untilmuch later would run into.I'd say our kind of sweetspot are funds that aregoing from fund one to fund two.Fund one maybe was rightback of the napkin.Now they'reinstitutionalizing their process.Some of their companies infund one have grown up andthey have more advancedneeds for collectinginformation from those companies.And that's typically anotherpoint that funds will lookfor software toprofessionalize the operations.And then the third bucketare really funds with somesort of complexity,whether that's a complexityin the number of companiesthat are in their portfolio,like an accelerator.or an angel group that has many,many SPVs that they'remanaging or funds with veryspecific needs for detailedinformation on each oftheir portfolio companies.That's super helpful.Okay.So, I mean, for me,it's always helpful to geta glimpse at the actualtool to get a feelingbecause words only mean so many things.Can we just look at the toola little bit together maybeto make it more tangible?Sure.Awesome.So then if you start sharing,I will put you on.Here we go.okay perfect so I'm jumpinginto a portfolio company soimagine you're a venturecapital fund and you you'veinvested in this company umhere you get a really niceoverview of this particularinvestment so you can seeon the left hand side somehigh level informationabout the company the keycontacts the location etcand on the right hand sidesome key metrics about theinvestment how much you'veinvested what is thatvalued at you know what isyour latest ownershipum and scrolling down thepage we really have all theinformation that again youmight care about for thiscompany your full list oftransactions that come fromyour back office thevaluations of the companythe financial performanceof the company as reportedby the companies the captables of the company whichgot pulled in from cartayour relationship to thecompany so all the peoplethat work there as well asany of the emails andcalendar events that you've hadand a document repository for this.So really in one single place,if I'm a fund manager and Iwant to just understand my investment,I can jump in and veryquickly see all of theinformation that I mightcare about on each investment.And how does all this data get populated?So this is manual input fromsomewhere or how does it work?So I think there's reallythree core pieces of datathat we bring into the system.So number one is reallygoing to be from your back office.So we tie to your backoffice in whatever formatthat they're currentlyrecording things in.to pull in all of yourtransaction level detailsand valuation details.That's component one.Component number two is whatcomes from the company.We have the ability to setup outbound requests whereyou collect informationfrom your companies,and they would submit theirfinancial data on a monthly, quarterly,or yearly basis,as well as their cap tables.So that's kind of the secondpiece is what you requestfrom your companies.And thirdly is what lives in email.And I think email is atreasure trove ofinformation that is currently overlooked.Things will get sent to youin an email from an investor update.or a board deck,and that would often justsit there not really being useful.We've actually built AI,and I want to show you this.I think you're going to really like this.Now,we'll actually go into the investorupdates and pull out insights using AI.So simply by you forwardingan email to our system,we're going to be able to, number one,figure out which company inyour portfolio that's associated to,but number two and moreimportantly actually gointo the body of the emailas well as any of theattachments and pull outinsights for you to be ableto look at I like thatactually those littlesummaries and even theindication whether it mightbe positive or negativeupdate so where does itlive in email so do youhave to connect your officeor google work space or how does it workSo we've taken a differentapproach than some of theother tools in the marketthat read your inbox.I think that there tends tobe a lot of noise in email,and I think there cansometimes be privacy issues.So we actually have set up aforwarding system.So if there's somethingrelevant that you as apartner receive that shouldbe included in the firm wide tool,you simply take that emailand forward it to oursystem and the system will do the rest.The system, again,will figure out which ofthe companies to map thatemail to as well as go inand pull out those AI insights.for you to be able to thenquickly understand and lookat okay that's helpful soit's by choice that it isbeing recorded I want to gotwo steps back earlier yousaid that the data from theportfolio companies thefinancial data would comeinto this and you can setup the requests soDo the companies need to goto a specific form to a user interface?Do they send just their formats?How does that work?Yeah,so let's talk about the datacollection because I thinkthat's also unique to whatwe've built here.So I'm just going to jump toour data collection tool.And this is where a fundmanager can set up, you know,for each company, you know,what information do they want to collect?At what time, you know,when do they want to send it out?And they'll do this for eachof their companies.And I'm going to just openup an example so you cansee what it might look likeon the company's end.So the company would receivea simple link that they can click on.They don't need to create an account.They don't need to connecttheir QuickBooks.And all they do is uploadtheir standardized financial statements,as is whether it's a QuickBooks format,whether it's an Excel workbook,whether it's a PDF,they simply upload theirstandard financial statements.And behind the scenes,we've actually built AIthat will extract out thetop line numbers.So I think the name of the game is reallyreducing the friction forthe founders by not havingthem create a login.This is not a tool for companies.This is a tool for fundmanagers to make it easyfor companies to submittheir data to them.And I think this gives thecompanies a very easyability to just uploadtheir standard statementswithout having to key in a form.And on the receiving end,the investors to getstructured financial datafor each of their portfolio companies.I really like it if it works.How do you ensure quality orwhat's the feedback from your customers?Yeah, I mean,we've done a lot of work tomake sure that there are nofalse positives that get in.So I think, you know,particularly with GAAPaccounting statements,there are often ways thatyou can double check things.So for example, you know,on the balance sheet, right,lists cash as well as onthe cash flow statement lists cash.And, you know, you can reconcile those.So we have a bunch of doublechecks that are in place toensure that the right datagets put into the system.But of course, you know, I would say,uh humans will still want tobe able to review this sothere is an option that youcan turn on so that you theinvestor have the abilityto approve or reject everysubmission so what wouldhappen is this would go outto the companies they wouldupload their data behindthe scenes the data wouldget extracted with ai andpopulated in the structuredformat and you as theinvestor can then go in andapprove or reject thatsubmission as well asverify that what the aipulled out is accurateI like that.I mean,I probably would want to have thatbefore it goes out into the LP report.So I like the ability to do that.Okay, understood.So what else do you wantpeople to remember about Totem?Yeah,so I think we kind of walk throughwhat it looks like at the company level.Let's just quickly have alook at then being able tosee things at the fund level.Yes, please.Here you can see the fund.This is going to show youall of the performancemetrics and how this rollsup for this particular entity.I can see, for example, by industry,you know, the counts of companies.I can see my performance over time,as well as a full list ofour companies in this fundand a full list of the LPs.And then zooming out onelevel further is being ableto see things at the portfolio level.So this is going to show youacross all of your fundshow the companies are doing.So I can see here how muchwe've invested and what our ownership is.And this is just a default report.Every firm, of course,has their own unique way ofhow they like to look at things.And we've made it supersimple to be able to comein and create reports usingall the data in the system.So I can very easily, for example,come in here.and create a report and seehow much we've invested bya particular industry andfilter that down to just see that.And we've even gone furtheras to allow you to filter by transaction.So let's say you didn't wantto see the invested.Let's say you wanted to justsee the first check thatyou've written into those companies.You could even drill further.And I think this gives you alot of advancedfunctionality for beingable to query the data inways that are useful foryour internal analysis orfor reports that you mightcreate for LPs.The last thing I'll show youhere is this timeline view.So this really gives youthen a nice feed ofeverything going on acrossyour portfolio.So in the same way thatyou'd look at Instagram tokeep up with how your friends are doing,we've created a really niceand easy timeline that youas someone working at a fund can log intounderstand all of what'shappening across the fundso you can see here righthere was an email that wassent in and here all thepositive and negativethings and asks that thecompany might have and youcould easily click intothis and again it will thenopen up to that email or tothat document where thatinsight was pulled from andthis is great because atthe end of the quarter whenyou're going to puttogether your lp reportsYou also often will want toinclude some of thequalitative thingshappening at your portfolio companies.It's not necessarily justthat the companies have been marked up,but you want to speak tosome of the qualitativepoints happening at the portfolio,like perhaps there are newpartnerships that some ofyour companies have signedor big hires that they've made.So you can come in here atthe end of the quarter and I can say,let me see highlights as ofa particular date for aspecific fund and reallythen drill down and exportall of this qualitative data.So I think between havingthe structured data thatgets extracted out offinancial statements andthe qualitative data thatgets extracted out ofemails and documents,we really then give you theability to draw from all ofthat for the purposes ofeasily creating the LPletter that will go out every quarter.Mm-hmm.I really like, by the way,just to give you kudos.I really like the,the user interface is very clean,but at the same time, very,very functional.Um, so I think that's,that's definitely up therein the best practice.Good job.I appreciate that.Yeah, we've, we've definitely, I think,spent a lot of cycles ontrying to figure out how tomake something complicated, very easy.And I think.You know,one of the things that we hearagain and again whendemoing our tool to people is, you know,they've looked at all thedifferent providers in themarket and I think they seeour tool and they just get it.They understand, you know,how to navigate it.We try to keep it verysimple for the people thatare just coming in andwanting to consumeinformation while stillgiving flexibility to thepeople that are ultimatelymanaging the data at the funds.Yeah.No, that seems to have worked for sure.Maybe if we zoom out for a second.So if I try to summarize inmy head who this works for.So I can definitely see thisto work for mid tier andearly stage funds.I can see it work for some larger funds,but also the PE world mighthave slightly different requirements.So what have you seen yourcustomers combine your solution with?Which other tools do theystack together to buildtheir perfect world?Have you seen any best practices?Yeah, I mean,I think one thing that we haven't done,because there are a numberof other solutions thathave created greatsolutions on the market for it,is the kind of broaderrelationship management.So tools like Affinity, I think,being the obvious one inthe venture space andDealCloud in the private equity space,they built great tools forwhat I would call generalrelationship management,whether that's creatinglists of contacts that youwant to bring to an eventor other co-investors thatyou want to keep in close contact with.We're not necessarily tryingto solve for that.So often when you use a tool like ours,you may compliment thatwith a CRM for some of themore general purposerelationship managementneeds that you have.Just to interject, though,you do have a CRM module, right?So you do have the base functionalities.I would say we have a lot offunctionality that youmight find in a CRM,but we're not necessarilytrying to go after the general use cases.We really care about peopleto the extent that they'reassociated to investmentsthat you've made or dealsthat you're looking at,less so about some of the, again,general purpose CRM needsthat you might have.Okay, that's super helpful.Thank you.Awesome.So looking at the time,we're almost through.So that gave me a goodoverview of what you guys are doing.Is there anything else thatyou want people to remember?Yeah, I mean,I think this is the year of AI.I think, you know,we've been building thisnow for many years,and I've been reinvigoratedby what is now becoming possible with AI.So I think all of theproviders in the space aretrying to grapple with howthis affects them.So I'm very excited aboutwhat this is going toenable and you've seen someof the early signs of thisworking and what I demoedtoday and there's gonna bea lot more to come.That's exciting.Yeah, I mean,I'm definitely lookingforward to speak about thenext product update with you guys.I do like, by the way, what you showed,you know,the little highlights and lowlights.I think that's already avery distinct use case thatis helpful in creating value to people.maybe then almost in inclosing so because youalluded to it a little bitlet's speak about theindustry for a second Imean there is the ai is youknow looming and mightbecome the new interface sodo you see a future and youknow nobody can tell whenit happens is it two yearsfive years or ten years doyou see a future where theuser interface becomesirrelevant because ai willbe the new interfaceI think there willdefinitely be certainthings that are currentlybeing done in software thatmight get abstracted awayto a chat interface.I do think though,with chat becoming more prevalent,In a way,the visual aids become moreimportant as well.So when other use casesstart moving to chat,I think what remainsbecomes very critical to bein a visual format.So I would say AI is goingto aid more so in the datainput rather than the waythat you consume this.So I think that's the trend,at least in the near term.I mean,who knows beyond that what may happen,but I would guess that thedata input is gonna be thething that gets affected first.very interesting wow thankssteven uh a lot of stuff inthere so um and I hinted atit at the beginning so myonly restaurant tip frombrooklyn is champ steinerin williamsburg is reallygood it's it's vegan butit's really really good andI will send yourecommendations for goodislands in thailand afterthis call there we gothere's really beautiful places out thereSo we won't keep you fromthe beaches any longer.Thanks for being with us today, Stephen,and looking forward to Connect Next.Thank you very much, Sylvain.Thanks for having me.All right.Take care.Bye now.