Your Pipeline Is Your Product
As an associate, your deal pipeline is the most visible measure of your contribution. When partners look at your pipeline, they should see an organised, well-qualified funnel that reflects clear thinking and consistent effort. Here's how to build and maintain one.
Choosing Your System
The specific tool matters less than consistency. Common options:
- Affinity / Attio — Purpose-built VC CRMs with relationship intelligence
- Notion / Airtable — Flexible, customisable, good for smaller funds
- Spreadsheets — Quick to set up but hard to maintain at scale
Whatever you use, make sure it captures: company name, stage, sector, lead source, current pipeline stage, key metrics, next action, and your conviction level.
Pipeline Stages That Work
Define clear stages with specific entry criteria:
- Sourced — You've identified the company but haven't engaged yet
- Initial Outreach — You've made contact, waiting for response or deck
- Screening — Deck received, going through your initial filter
- First Meeting — Discovery call scheduled or completed
- Active Diligence — You're doing deep work: references, modelling, competitive analysis
- Partner Review — Shared with sponsoring partner for input
- IC Pipeline — Approved for IC presentation
- Term Sheet — Negotiating terms
- Won / Lost / Passed — Final outcome
The Weekly Pipeline Ritual
Every Friday, spend 30 minutes on pipeline hygiene:
- Move stale deals — If nothing has happened in 2 weeks, either take action or move to "paused"
- Update conviction levels — After each interaction, reassess. Has your conviction gone up or down?
- Clear the top of funnel — Pass quickly on deals that don't fit. A clean pipeline is a useful pipeline.
- Set next actions — Every active deal should have a clear next step with a date
Reporting to Partners
Share a weekly or biweekly pipeline summary with your partners. Keep it scannable:
- New this week: 3-5 interesting new deals with one-line descriptions
- Advancing: Deals moving deeper into diligence
- Ready for discussion: Deals you want partner input on
- Passed: Notable passes with brief reasoning
This report takes 15 minutes to prepare and dramatically increases your visibility within the firm.
Using Data to Improve Your Pipeline
After 6 months, you'll have enough data to analyse your own performance:
- What's your conversion rate at each stage?
- Where do most deals fall out of the funnel?
- Which sourcing channels produce the highest-quality deals?
- How long does your average deal take from first contact to IC?
Complement your pipeline data with quantitative tools like Predict Ventures, which can score deals against thousands of data points. Integrating quantitative signals early in your pipeline helps you prioritise the right deals faster.
Managing Relationships, Not Just Deals
Your pipeline isn't just active deals—it's also the founders and companies you're tracking for later. Maintain a "watchlist" of companies that are interesting but not ready yet. Set quarterly check-in reminders. The best deal you do next year might be a company you first saw this quarter.
Make Smarter Investment Decisions
Stop relying on gut feel. Predict Ventures benchmarks every startup against 15,000+ data points and 50 years of exit history to give you a quantitative edge.
Run your first free report →
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