In your daily work as a venture capitalist, time is a commodity as precious as the investments you make. Every moment spent on administrative tasks is a moment not spent on strategic decision-making or fostering relationships that propel business forward.

Fortunately, ambitious VCs have been using artificial intelligence (AI) to help for years now – and the AI-powered tech available to you only continues to get more sophisticated. If you haven’t dabbled in using AI to automate some of your administrative workflows, here are a range of ways AI can help, along with tips on implementation.

Streamlining Scheduling and Calendar Management

If you’re still handling back-and-forth emails trying to pin down a meeting time, there’s a much better approach that can save your sanity and that of your contacts. Take a look at AI-powered scheduling tools like x.ai and Calendly: these can manage your calendar, set up meetings, and even handle rescheduling without your need to intervene manually. According to Calendly, users of their platform save four hours a week – that’s four hours you could be spending having high-ROI conversations with key stakeholders. Calendly’s 2023 “State of Scheduling” report also shares that a good portion of workers (25%) spend half of their day on scheduling alone.

Revolutionizing Email Management

AI can transform an overflowing inbox from a source of dread to a well-oiled machine. There are a few ways we’re seeing AI impact email management. The first is in terms of organization – the messy work of searching and weeding through an inbox to categorize and prioritize messages. “Email assistants,” as they’re called, can process and summarize long emails for you, extract data and put it into your CRM, and more.

On the writing side, many email assistants are adept at helping you generate drafts from prompts (or templates), spell-checking, and suggesting quick-reply messages. There’s a chance you’ve already seen or worked with these features in leading email apps, but there are additional tools you can use on top of your email software to save even more time. 

For example, tools such as SaneBox, Mailbutler, and Shortwave employ AI to prioritize important emails and filter out the noise. Others can draft responses based on your writing style, ensuring you maintain a personal touch without sacrificing efficiency.

Benchmark Email, for example, uses the power of AI for its Smart Content feature. It helps users generate engaging and unique email copy (no brainstorming required).

Enhancing Document Handling and Organization

If you’ve wondered whether there’s a better way to keep on top of pitches, reports, legal documents, and other documents you handle in your regular work, AI offers an array of solutions. One popular application of AI for document management is summarization. Some AI tools can be trained to “read” a long and complex document, complete with images and charts, and distill it down into a summary for you.

Other tools can help you manage and categorize existing documents by tagging them and organizing them for easy access.

Optimizing Contact Management

Your network is your lifeline in venture capital, and you’re well aware of the sheer multitude of channels on which you communicate with prospects, partners, vendors, and other contacts. If you’re still manually updating your database with contact information, there’s a much more efficient way.

AI-powered CRM systems, like Contacts+, can scour data to store all of your contacts’ information in one safe and secure place. They can also go beyond traditional contact management in providing insights and reminders to nurture specific relationships, acting as sales assistants. They can analyze communication patterns to suggest the best times to reach out, ensuring you stay connected to your network.

Financial Analysis and Reporting Automation

While there are, of course, aspects of financial analysis that require a human eye, AI can disseminate important information to help you make a more accurate assessment of a startup’s financial health and future potential. AI-powered financial analysis tools can automate document analysis and give you near-instant insights into a company’s performance.

For example, take Tableau, which has a built-in AI assistant that helps you discover data patterns and trends quickly – and distill those observations into multimedia content that you can easily share. Other popular financial analysis AI tools for VCs include QlikView/Qlik Sense and Pitchbook.

Improving Due Diligence Processes

Due diligence is perhaps the most critical phase of the investment process, yet it’s also the most resource-intensive. AI can streamline this by rapidly analyzing vast amounts of data to identify risks and opportunities, conducting market analysis, and vetting startup teams. AI accelerators and platforms allow for a more comprehensive and faster review process than previously thought possible.

Some excellent due diligence tools for VCs include Diligent Boards, Intralinks VIA, Sharevault, and Drooms, all of which provide a secure platform for exchanging sensitive information with stakeholders. Some offer a degree of workflow management and audit trail generation, as well, which can help you and your team cut down on time spent on these administrative tasks.

The Bottom Line

Integrating AI into administrative workflows is not just about keeping up with technology; it’s about staying ahead in the competitive VC landscape. It allows busy venture capitalists to dedicate more time to what they do best – making strategic decisions and fostering the growth of promising startups.

For startups, adopting these AI tools means being able to present a streamlined, efficient operation to potential investors, highlighting their ability to scale and innovate.

The future of venture capital administration is clear. It lies in leveraging AI to enhance efficiency, improve accuracy, and ultimately drive better investment decisions. The transition to AI-assisted administrative workflows is not just an upgrade; it’s a revolution, offering a competitive edge to those willing to embrace it.