Why Affinity is not well-suited for private equity?

Affinity is a relationship and deal management platform for the Venture Capital industry. Despite its success in among VC investors, it has made limited traction into the private equity market largely due to the underlying differences in workflow between a VC and a PE investors.

In our experience the variance in origination approach between VC (i.e., large amount of outbound emails, heavy reliance on events and conferences) and PE (lower deal volume, much deeper due diligence motion) is a significant factor in the design and architecture of the platform.

How are private equity funds unique in their CRM / dealflow software needs?

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Deal pipeline: Private equity investors have a narrow but a far more complex deal flow pipeline than VCs. Assets are introduced by M&A advisers or are discovered through origination and research initiatives. Target companies also need to be triaged into sectors, themes and business models for the purposes of IC evaluation.

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Importance of advisers: PE funds need to have the ability to track advisers (e.g., CDD, FDD, buy side M&A etc.) and to explicitly attribute their sourcing activities to introducers (M&A advisers, accountants, off-market, etc.).

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Financial metrics: Tracking financial metrics in deals is very important in private equity. E.g., enterprise value, equity cheque size, leverage ratios and EV/EBITDA multiples are critical inputs and are largely non-existing in VC

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For these reasons, most modern private equity funds prefer PE-specific platforms that are custom-made for their sourcing and origination approach.

Why ListAlpha is a better alternative to Affinity?

ListAlpha has been created from ground-up by PE investors for PE investors. The platform is custom-made for the front office and has been built with the following architectural tenets in mind:

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Extreme ease of use: Investors do not have the time to fill out empty records. If the deal flow platform does not provide them immediate value or give them an angle on an upcoming deal, they will not use it. As a result, we have built ListAlpha to be simplistic by design, allowing to add a deal or an M&A adviser within seconds, not minutes.

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Automatic contact enrichment: There is no need to manually enter names, work experience or emails of your contacts. Simply search for their name and all of the work experience, photo and contact details will appear on the platform in seconds

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Built-in company research module: Finding, tracking and researching new deals is the core activity of any private equity fund. ListAlpha offers powerful functionality that allows to research any company in the world, covering most of the standard commercial due diligence (CDD) topics, financials, ownership and management team quality.

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Powerful API integrations: ListAlpha offers deep integrations with the Microsoft and Google ecosystems. We are also integrated with leading data providers in the market, including Pitchbook and Gain.Pro

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Built-in AI capabilities: We take technology seriously and have built ListAlpha on-top of latest GPT models from OpenAI. ListAlpha allows to run AI-bassed company assessments on target businesses, which cover market description, competitors and risks associated with investing into the business

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Automatic Relationship Intelligence: Tracking your fund’s interactions with M&A advisers and owners of businesses is key for the origination function. ListAlpha offers native Microsoft Outlook and Exchange integration that allows to see the strength of relationship and potential contact points with any adviser in your network.

Key purchasing criteria
Ease of use
Modern user interface
Automated data capture & enrichment
Simple onboarding and migration
Flexible platform tailor-made for private equity
Module-specific considerations
Contacts management
Deal flow management
Company research module
Note taking & insights
Investor relations
Analytics and reporting
3rd party API Integrations

Key purchasing criteria

Ease of use

Modern user interface

Automated data capture & enrichment

Simple onboarding and migration

Flexible platform tailor-made for private equity

Module-specific considerations

Contacts management

Deal flow management

Company research module

Note taking & insights

Investor relations

Analytics and reporting

3rd party API Integrations

Conclusion: Make sure to do your due diligence

Choosing the right platform for your private equity fund is a critical decision, for this reason we always encourage customers to compare ListAlpha side by side vs. our competition in a live trial.

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To organise your free trial of our platform, please reach out to our sales team today.

Is ListAlpha or Affinity a better CRM for your private equity fund?

Why Affinity is not well-suited for private equity?

How are private equity funds unique in their CRM / dealflow software needs?

Why ListAlpha is a better alternative to Affinity?

Feature benchmarking

Key purchasing criteria

Module-specific considerations

Feature benchmarking

Key purchasing criteria

Module-specific considerations

Conclusion: Make sure to do your due diligence

Request a demo of ListAlpha