Crowdfunding: 5 financing tools to manage your investment cycle

French start-ups raised more than €2 billion in 2016. This is the sign of a paradigm shift in project financing, which is now more than ever in the hands of venture capitalists. Whether they are business angels or venture capitalists, investors need to structure themselves in the same way as banks to manage the investment cycle effectively. Here's how.

What are the needs of investor groups?

When there are more than 20 investors in a single active fund, a number of issues arise, the main ones being as follows:

• How to manage the investor relationship, i.e. the relationship that the fund administration has with the investors?
• How to manage the investment portfolio and optimise its performance?
• How do you manage investment opportunities and deal flow?
• How do you determine the value of a project?

These questions arise at a time when funds are becoming more professional. It is essential to put in place best practice to streamline the investment cycle, otherwise the fund's performance will suffer from too much inertia when it comes to innovative projects.
These best practices come with the right tools: agile, structured and secure. Here are 5 of our investment management software comparisons that are particularly well suited to the uses in question:

1) DilRoom: sharing confidential files

The exchange of confidential information is not an option between entrepreneurs and investors. Entrepreneurs need to be as transparent as possible about their projects in order to convince investors. However, it does slow down project owners who are afraid of information leaks to competitors or other potential shareholders. The solution to this problem is called DilRoom.

DilRoom is end-to-end secure online file-sharing software. Its key features include

• Remote control of document rights,
• read-only preview of documents (cannot be downloaded),
• emergency closure of access to the Dataroom,
• the Q&A module, which allows investors to ask private or public questions.

DilRoom hosts your data in France in 4 ISO 27001-certified data centres that meet the highest standards of security and confidentiality.

2) Capital Venture: the complete solution for the private equity industry

Capital Venture is a solution published by the French company Klee Group. Klee Capital Venture covers 3 aspects of the Private Equity business:

• The Front Office manages prospecting and activity monitoring (dashboards and reports), in the manner of a vertical CRM for investment.
• The Back Office offers functions for administering your investment activity: managing holdings and funds.
• The Communication section is a private area for managing the relationship between investors and the fund. In particular, it enables you to get to know your investors better and offer them a space for monitoring their project financing.

3) Babbler: manage your press and media relations like a business

An investment fund or investor club can publicise its news to draw attention to its fund or the projects it finances. The benefits are immediate:

• By communicating about the investments made and the successes of the projects for which it has raised funds, the venture capital fund enhances its public image. As a result, the fund's image attracts the highest-quality, high-return projects.
• By communicating on behalf of the projects in which it invests, the fund raises the profile of the project at a time when it is fragile (unprofitable or in need of acceleration). This generates business opportunities for the company and, ultimately, for the investment fund.

Demonstration of the Babbler press relations management tool

Only 3% of press releases are read through traditional channels. At the same time, the number of fundraising announcements is multiplying, as is the competition between active funds. Babbler is therefore an effective tool to help you stand out from the crowd at low cost.

4) oodrive_sign: electronic signature of documents with legal value

Fundraising is punctuated by a series of compulsory stages, often marked by signatures. This is also the case afterwards, at shareholders' general meetings, to give just one example.

The electronic signature has the same legal value as a handwritten signature (law no. 2000-230 of 13 March 2000).

The large number of signatories means that the process takes so long that some investment projects are aborted. In the case of 10 new shareholders alone, each of them has to sign and initial every page of the 11 copies required to validate the deal. What's more, each shareholder has to go to the company's premises to sign all these documents. This situation is typical of the cumbersome nature of the administrative and legal process.

Testimonial from the Afflelou group on the use of oodrive_sign in a restrictive legal context.

The entire administrative and legal process can be reduced to a handful of minutes with oodrive_sign. The tool also has the added benefit of eliminating the costs associated with registered letters. oodrive_sign enables all parties involved in the fund-raising process to digitally sign documents such as minutes of general meetings, shareholders' agreements and letters of intent. oodrive_sign is ISO 27001 and Cloud Confidence certified, and uses CertEurope as a trusted third party.

5) Eudonet: XRM and vertical CRM

Eudonet is an XRM (eXtended Relationship Management), which means it can be used to manage extended relationships that are more complex than a simple customer relationship. Thanks to its rich segmentation and contact profiling functions, it can identify the exact profile of investors and build an intelligent relationship with each of them, despite their number.