How Dropbox helps Australia’s first dedicated pre-seed fund win big
Co Ventures built a system that allows them to Send and Track confidential information, sign potential investors and maintain a robust historical database.
“DocSend and Sign seamlessly fit into our workflows, enabling us to be more efficient, securely send information we otherwise wouldn’t be comfortable sharing and close deals with investors.”
Challenge: Confidential information, many investors; one big problem
Co Ventures sits in the middle of entrepreneurs and founders on one side, and investors on the other. As a result, founder Maxine Minter and her team needed ways to share confidential information such as financial projections, product roadmaps and market facts. They needed to know the right people had access to the company data and the wrong people didn’t, while keeping track of the documents as well. With 14 Venture Partners and a large community of Limited Partners making 30 investments from a single fund, “there are an enormous amount of materials flying around all the time,” Minter says. “Limiting content risk and the ability to share sensitive information is a massive priority for us.”
Make signatures simple
Co Ventures also required legally binding signatures, tracking who signed, who still needed to sign and who had viewed the document in question. In the non-stop world of venture capital, speed and efficiency can be the difference between investing in the next unicorn and missing out, so having a simple and quick way to see outstanding signatures can be worth millions.
And with so many documents constantly circulating, a system that automatically categorised and filed completed documents into the correct place in the Co Ventures cloud would eliminate busywork, prevent versioning issues and help maintain an organised and secure database.
“Investing is so much about trust, right? A way to send documents securely and track who sees them helps build and maintain that essential trust.”
Solution: DocSend, Sign and G Suite integrations keep Co Ventures coordinated
DocSend, Sign and the Dropbox G Suite Integrations are baked into Co Ventures’ daily workstream and help facilitate a more efficient flow of sensitive documents.
DocSend is used most during the fundraising process and also when sharing materials with Venture Partners. It allows Co Ventures to manage materials, set expiry dates and keep information in the appropriate silos. With DocSend, Minter and her staff can be sure a confidential document isn’t shared openly or accidentally. They also create templates and use links to streamline processes, saving time and energy, and avoiding headaches. “DocSend is a way for us to professionally send materials to partners and potential partners that can be easily stored and managed in our drive,” Minter says.
Sign saves the day
Sign is about getting that deal done. “It’s secure,” Minter says. “It’s easy to delegate. It’s really helpful to not have to administratively manage who’s signed, who hasn’t and who’s still dragging their feet.” The Co Ventures team established workflows detailing what to do when a Venture Partner hasn’t signed a document after a certain period of time, streamlining the process of following up.
Co Ventures runs hundreds of workflows every day in Notion, in Canva, in Zoom and in many more applications. The Dropbox G Suite integration helps track, simplify and maintain these workflows. “For example, a contract comes out of G Suite and into Sign,” Minter says. “Once it’s signed, it automatically ends up back in G Suite. It’s so simple.”
Results: Winning investors and closing deals with ease
The Dropbox suite of products helped Minter and Co Ventures close their latest round. “They’re a pretty integral part for the pieces that they play,” the founder says. “They do exactly what they’re supposed to do, which is they’re so easy to use that I don’t have to think about them that much. I don’t spend my time agonising over the features. They just work.”
The ability to send a prospect information that previously would have only been shared verbally is invaluable. So are the detailed analytics, which allow Minter and her team to tailor a follow-up conversation and pitch. If the prospective investor has only spent a minute viewing the Co Ventures fund strategy, Minter knows she needs to provide a high-level overview, whereas if they’ve spent lots of time looking at the document, she can dig into the details more quickly.
Closing the deal happens faster and more efficiently, too. Following a call, or even during it, Minter can pull the templatised standard venture partner agreement, add a few key details, send it over and wait for the signed doc to return. Another deal, signed, sealed, delivered and automatically filed into the correct spot.
“There are materials we share as a result of using DocSend that we wouldn’t share if we only had a PDF or a Google Drive link. Confidence in the confidentiality of the information supercharges how effectively we work.”
Maxine MinterFounder and General Partner of Co Ventures and Co Lab