Background
A NYC growth-stage software fund had a problem most investors would recognize: their diligence was excellent, and it was costing them deals.
Each time a company cleared screening, three people went heads-down for two weeks: intro memos, market data, prep for the management meeting. Rigorous work, done well.
But while they were being thorough, faster funds were getting to the table. The bottleneck wasn't judgment. It was everything that came before judgment.
The mandate was clear:
Reach conviction in half the time, at the same quality bar
Point associate and partner hours at the deals most likely to close
Never again lose a winnable deal to a slow decision
The Challenge
Every screened deal cost two weeks and a three-person team, with analysts buried in collection work instead of evaluation. The price showed up on both sides of the decision: slow yeses lost competitive deals, and slow nos buried the pipeline.
The Solution
The firm handed Raylu the pre-LOI workload that consumed those two weeks. Not a generic AI bolted onto the process, but one trained to run their process:
Accuracy a partnership can underwrite against. Raylu captures operating metrics and company data at 99% accuracy and 96% recall, meeting the standard the firm already held its analysts to.
Two-thirds of the manual work, gone. Data gathering and structuring collapsed from days to hours, putting decision-ready material in front of partners while the deal was still warm.
Their playbook, encoded. Trained on the firm's own associate onboarding materials, Raylu evaluates deals against their criteria, in their voice, the way their best analysts would.
We can now move on deals so much faster. When we want to win, we can be the fund in pole position. And when we don't, we pass faster and move on to the next thing that matters.
- Principal, NYC Growth-Stage Software Fund
The Results
Faster time to conviction
Less diligence work
Data accuracy
Conviction in half the time
Two-week cycles became one. The partnership now makes its go/no-go call while the deal is still in play, at full depth and rigor.
Pole position on competitive deals
The firm shows up to management meetings first and already fluent in the business. Founders notice.
Analysis that sounds like them
Not a generic score. Human-quality output tuned to the firm's thesis and standards, because it was trained on them.
Net effect: 3x less diligence work, more deals won, and a team that spends its time deciding instead of collecting.