#5- Running a Team of One - How I made technology my new intern?

Learnings from someone running a team of one!

How to be more productive?

I’m sure this is a question that has come to everyone’s minds numerous times!

I work as an associate at a family office. My department has exactly one person - myself. I am the sole team member in angel investments, meaning I am responsible for deal sourcing, deal evaluation, due diligence, the initial go/no-go, initial phone calls/zoom calls, drafting and reviewing term sheets and SHAs, hankering founders for the monthly MIS (sorry guys!), sitting on monthly review calls with founders, helping them with connections, or business plans, and also relaying all this information to our CIO & the principal family. Phew!

When I took over this job, I found myself buried in smaller tasks, and I thought I was very very busy. But there was also a time when I was asked, Sid do you have enough work to do? Well sure does hurt when you think you’re hauling ass 6 days a week!

It took reviewing a couple of weeks worth of time spent at work, and its evaluation meant I was spending the majority of my time in smaller tasks vs meaningful engagement! And for a family office that prides itself in meaningfully engaging with the founders of their portfolio companies - this does not bode well!

Common wisdom told me to follow The Eisenhower Decision Matrix-

But being a Team of One, I couldn’t delegate most tasks, nor could I delete tasks that I was required to do!

I made my ‘new’ Eisenhower Decision Matrix

How did I do it?

Automate, automate, automate.

Technology is my best friend.

Let’s see what all did I do?

Automating screening deal flow

I automated my incoming deal flow - set up a google form as a screen for founders to enter the most basic information that we require to look into a company! My 45-60 mins per new deal to look at the pitch deck, make a couple of quick calls to the network regarding the industry, maybe requesting for some financials (we only fund revenue-making cos), etc went down to 15 mins! I essentially ‘delegated’ my tasks to the founders by using technology!

Now I only need to make those couple of calls regarding the industry. If we pass a deal, from the data I collect via the form, I know exactly what feedback I need to provide the founders regarding the pass. Additionally, I also know which of my channels of the incoming deals are the most productive since I control the funnel!

Automating minutes

Remembering what was discussed in a meeting 3 months ago is a pain. Hence we write minutes. But writing minutes is an even bigger pain if you’re the only one in the meeting. Let’s face it, deeply engaging and taking notes is both a bit difficult at the same time! People record calls, and then listen to it - now it wastes more time for myself because I’m essentially repeating the same thing again!

So what did I do? I started using Speech to Text apps during the meetings. After every point that needed mentioning, I simply say ‘Hang on- so this is important… and I start the record button… Say the important thing mentioned…hit pause’. And the entire minutes are recorded in text, shared via email, and saves everyone the time.

Automating monthly MIS - a work in progress

We request portfolio companies share a monthly MIS - something that helps us understand what’s happening at our angel companies. Most companies share excel sheets, while some share emails. I have to take all this, check up on the key metrics we track to analyze any anomaly or progress, and put it on a presentation for our internal monthly review!

20 companies, 25 data points per company on an average mean up to 500 data points to manually laboriously put on the presentation. Something that takes up to a day. What I am ‘trying’ to do, and this is a work in progress, is that I’m slowly getting all portfolio companies to share their MIS via google sheets which will have metrics and graphs and data linked to the sheets - meaning I only have to copy and paste. This is a pet project of mine - and hopefully, by the end of next quarter I will be able to get most of my smaller and non-urgent tasks automated, and I can spend my time meaningfully engaging with our portfolio companies!

All of these things above, save me about an hour a day which doesn’t seem much. But when you add 6 hours per week leading to about 25 hours a month, it almost means 3 extra working days! Days I could have spent getting to know my founders better, or better yet focusing on writing or producing an investment thesis!

Surely, technology is my new intern!

In subsequent posts in the Team of One series, I will share templates of my deal flow, my weekly to-do list, and my google form!

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