Q&A with Drive Capital

Pawan Murthy of Aumni, visited with Christina Perry, CFO of Drive Capital to discuss how Aumni has become an invaluable platform for Drive and their rapidly growing firm.

Christina has been with Drive Capital since the beginning in 2013 and since then Drive has raised over 1.2 billion in capital. Drive is a Columbus, Ohio based venture Capital firm investing in the worlds next generation of companies and startups solving some of the worlds largest problems.

Pawan Murthy:

How has the investment landscape changed over the years as it pertains to data?

Christina Perry:

The need for data and analytics across my side of portfolio management and deal document functions with our investors has grown significantly over the years. Not only because that’s how the world is evolving but how Drive has grown. We went from having no investments to now over 47 investments in less than 7 years. Last year alone we closed 30 rounds of financing across all our clients and we expect 45-50 this year. The volume has grown so rapidly that we are closing a deal every week. When you only have 30 days to close multiple deals having access to our investment data is integral to executing quickly.

Pawan Murthy:

What were one or two challenges your team faced that made you consider Aumni as a solution?

Christina Perry:

There was a time last fall Drive had four deals closing in the same week and I felt like the bottleneck on all of them, I just needed a better solution. It was either we needed to hire in house counsel or I needed someone on my team to help me with portfolio management. After a massive google search looking for explication, Aumni was the perfect solution to my dilemma, Aumni helped free the extra time I needed for balancing multiple deals and portfolios.

Pawan Murthy:

What features do you and your team like the most about Aumni?

Christina Perry:

The features that stand out are first, we’re always interested in who our co-investors are and we try to build relationships across all other venture firms. Aumni’s co-investor report gives us the information we need to help companies during their fundraising and have contact with other investors. It’s also nice to see voting ownerships, a source of truth when you need a quick answer any time one of our other portfolio companies raises other rounds. Also, being able to research who is in what investments, it’s helpful to know who I can call from other firms and the point of reference is beneficial. Lastly, the preference stack information, having the ability to see the aggregate preference at a company as well as where we sit is really easy to see within the Aumni platform.
Pawan Murthy:

Would you recommend Aumni to other venture firms?

Christina Perry:

I absolutely would recommend Aumni to other venture firms. Aumni provides a way to look at all our deal documents for a quick summary of financial movement and have the accessibility to analyze them and see how terms have changed over time with different rounds of financing, all necessary information is at my fingertips through Aumni’s platform. I talk about Aumni to several other companies whether it’s lawyers, auditors or venture firms at conferences. I really think it’s going to change the way deals are managed and negotiated in the VC world going forward.

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