Angel investing can be a rewarding experience - you meet brilliant people, deep dive into various tech trends and hopefully generate outlier returns. However, as you progress and grow your investment portfolio, it becomes more important to leverage your professional network to create value. A CRM can be your best ally for streamlining all investment activities. This article provides a step-by-step guide to identify the best CRM for angel investors.

Why Do Angel Investors Need a CRM? 

Angel investors are individuals who allocate personal funds into early-stage startups in exchange for an equity stake. Angel investor ticket size typically ranges from tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand dollars. 

There are 3 main types of angel investors: 

1. Opportunistic angel investors typically invest smaller ticket sizes on an ad hoc basis. They tend to opportunistically source deals within their network, have a handful of portfolio companies and are often driven by tax incentives. 

2. Professional angel investors are more focused, invest larger ticket sizes and have many portfolio companies. Professional angels tend to offer more value to portfolio companies, as they have a stronger investor network. 

3. Super angels are typically high net worth individuals who regularly invest large amounts into building up an extensive startup portfolio. They usually have a vast network, strong personal brand and industry expertise, which makes their mentorship and presence on the cap table a significant value add for startups. Some super angels even raise their own fund or set up special purpose vehicles (SPV) with other angel investors. 

Most angel investors have full-time jobs and do startup investments on the side. This means that in their limited free time, angel investors need to efficiently cover most functions of a venture capitalist; deal sourcing, due diligence, portfolio company support and admin. They operate in a high time pressure environment, as competitive rounds close fast and startups don’t wait for angel investors with relatively small ticket sizes. On top of this, angel investors typically operate solo and lack the speed of an investment team. Regardless of whether you do ad-hoc angel investments or at scale, leveraging your professional network can create an enormous competitive advantage across all stages of the investment process. 

CRM Use Cases for Angel Investors 

Angel investors can leverage a CRM to simplify their workflows across the different stages of the investment process. The five most common CRM use cases for angel investors include: 

• Contact management: CRMs can better manage contacts by allowing you to create detailed lists and filter the relevant people in your network. For example, a CRM enables angel investors to quickly find relevant industry experts for due diligence. 
• Communications: CRMs centralise your communication in one place. They provide an overview of emails, calls, notes, shared documents and reminders. CRMs can also allow you to link multiple email accounts, offering a full overview of all interactions. 
• Dealflow: CRMs can help maintain a structured pipeline of startups, making it easier to monitor their progress, track interactions, and manage follow-ups.‍
• Portfolio support: CRMs enable angel investors to scale portfolio support by quickly creating and sharing contact lists with portfolio companies, fast-tracking recruitment, facilitating introductions to potential clients. and networking with industry experts.‍
• Portfolio reporting: although CRMs aren’t dedicated tools for investment reporting, they can be customised to incorporate some basic portfolio company reporting elements. You can create custom columns to keep track of key investment data e.g. company valuation, percentage equity stake, multiple of investment capital (MOIC) etc.

Andy Ayim, a renowned super angel and member of Forbes list of top 35 angel investors shaping the UK ecosystem, has even publicly praised CRMs for making his life easier in an interview for the newsletter All the Angels in 2020. He highlighted their ability to simplify relationship management and add structure to his work by allowing him to keep all relevant contact information in one easily accessible place. 

How Can Angel Investors Choose the Best CRM?

With so many CRM options available on the market, how can you tell which one is right for you? We have shortlisted our top 4 considerations for choosing a CRM as an angel investor :  

1. Customisation: unlike VCs who cater to a team, angel investors have the flexibility to shape their own work process. A CRM with a high degree of personalisation is therefore essential to allow you to optimise processes that fit you and effectively manage your investments. 
2. Integrations: a valuable CRM for angel investors should integrate with platforms like LinkedIn and Investory.io which offer enriched company data and can be key for effective network management especially as angel investors work emails often can't be linked. The CRM should also efficiently track every stage of the deal flow process, from the first contact to closing the deal.
3. Pricing: unlike venture capital firms, angel investors often have to work within tighter budget constraints. An ideal CRM for angel investors should offer a good balance between cost and value proposition. 
4. Time Investment: angel investing is often a secondary job or a part-time commitment. A CRM that requires minimal setup and maintenance time is hence highly desirable. It needs to be user-friendly and quick to navigate - freeing time for key investment decisions.

Overview of Popular CRMs Used by Angel Investors

Angel investors often use CRMs for relationship management, with each presenting unique advantages and disadvantages. Here are some commonly used CRM softwares examples : 

• Streak is a user-friendly CRM that is easy to use and navigate. However, it lacks data enrichment capabilities and is only compatible with Gmail.
• Notion is a freemium productivity tool that can be used  as a CRM. It is renowned for its high degree of customization, allowing you to adapt the platform to your needs. However, it offers limited integrations and lacks features that can be tailored to an angel investors’ workflow.
• Folk.app is a platform that allows you to more easily manage your network. It comes with a free subscription option. However, with the free subscription, there is limited functionality and sometimes irrelevant contacts get integrated when you sync your email. Manual list creation might hence be required, which can be time-consuming for angel investors.
• Attio stands out for its freemium offering that provides extended functionality without required payments. It offers a wide range of features that make it a popular choice among super angels. Its features are however more suited for venture capital teams and do not offer angel investors the flexibility to shape their own work processes.
• Affinity is a popular data-driven CRM that offers advanced startup and contact insights. It can hence be a great tool for maintaining professional relationships and portfolio company support. However, its high price point might make it inaccessible for some angel investors.

Benefits of Tiva For Angel Investors

Tiva addresses the challenges angel investors face with current CRMs by allowing them to save time and truly optimise their workflow across all stages of the investment lifecycle: deal sourcing, due diligence and portfolio support. 

First, by offering via LinkedIn integration, Tiva allows for more effective deal sourcing by enabling investors to leverage their professional network more effectively.

Then, Tiva allows angel investors to create dynamic lists to easily access relevant insights and quickly find the right people for various needs during the due diligence process such as reaching out to industry experts. 

Ultimately, with Tiva, angel investors are also able to customise their own newsfeed by defining triggers for specific portfolio companies or contact lists which makes it easier to provide their portfolio companies the support they need along the way.

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Further Reading

👉 What Is an SPV, and How To Set Up SPVs with SPV Platforms & CRMs?

👉 LinkedIn CRM Integration: How To Pull Data from LinkedIn into Your CRM 

👉 Venture Capital CRMs: Use Cases, Important Features & Top CRM Examples

👉 What Is a Personal CRM, and Which Should You Choose?

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