Customer: Sopris Capital
Focus: Early-stage investing (tech-enabled services, software, AI)
Use case: Proprietary deal sourcing & automated founder outreach
Outcome: 25%+ reply rates, dramatically increased deal flow, and a one-person BD function operating at scale

About Sopris Capital

Sopris Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm investing primarily in tech-enabled services, software, and AI. Backed by a family office structure, they focus on companies with $1–5M in revenue that are growing quickly and seeking growth capital to scale.

Their edge? Proprietary deal flow. In a market where everyone sees the same opportunities, Sopris needed a way to find companies others weren't seeing and get in front of founders before the competition.

That's where Nick comes in.

As Vice President of Business Development and the firm's first BD hire, Nick was brought in to build Sopris's proprietary sourcing engine from the ground up. His mandate: develop new channels for deal flow through direct outreach, intermediaries, and conferences.

The challenge? Doing it efficiently enough to actually scale.

Before Raylu: Cobbling Together a Patchwork of Tools

Before joining Sopris, Nick spent time at Serent Capital, where he learned firsthand how painful manual outreach could be.

His previous workflow looked like this:

• Prospecting tools (SourceScrub, Grata, PitchBook) to find companies

• Sales automation tools (SalesLoft) to manage outreach sequences

• ChatGPT to write personalized, thoughtful notes to founders

Three separate systems. Constant context-switching. Hours spent just getting a single outreach campaign off the ground.

"I was cobbling together tools to do this. I was spending pretty much the same amount of money and wasting my time because I had to pull all these systems together manually."

When Nick joined Sopris, the firm was relying on SourceScrub and their network to source deals. Outbound was limited because no one had the bandwidth to do it manually at scale.

Nick knew there had to be a better way.

After Raylu: One Tool That Does It All

Nick discovered Raylu right as he was starting at Sopris and immediately saw the opportunity.

"Raylu takes what SourceScrub, Grata, and all the prospecting tools do, blends that with what SalesLoft does in sales automation, and then layers in ChatGPT-like functionality to write really thoughtful, tailored notes. It blends all three of those things together into one seamless product."

Instead of juggling multiple platforms, Nick now runs his entire sourcing and outreach operation through Raylu:

1. Build market maps in minutes
Drop in a thesis, and Raylu generates a comprehensive list of relevant companies, complete with the context needed to evaluate fit.

2. Automate personalized outreach at scale
Raylu's AI writes tailored outreach emails in Nick's voice, so every founder gets a thoughtful note, not a generic template.

3. Track and iterate
With everything in one system, Nick can see what's working and refine his approach without jumping between tools.

The Results: 25%+ Reply Rates and a Scalable BD Function

The impact was immediate.

"Once we got it all integrated and the workflow set up, it was pretty much immediate. I started getting a lot of conversations set up."

Key outcomes:

• Reply rates exceeding 25% (vs. the typical <10% most funds see in email outreach)

• Dramatically increased deal flow that leadership has noticed

• Time freed up to actually talk to founders and develop theses instead of doing grunt work

• A one-person BD function operating with the leverage of a much larger team

"The biggest thing is leverage. I get so much leverage on the system because it just makes outreach so much faster. I can spend my time doing research on companies, actually talking to companies, developing pieces of the markets that we're most excited about."

Why Nick Refers Raylu to Everyone He Knows

Nick has become one of Raylu's most active champions, consistently referring other funds to the platform. His reasoning is simple:

"If you're doing any sort of direct outreach to companies and you're not using Raylu or a tool like it, then you're just wasting time. You're spending way more time than you need to."

When peers ask him how he's generating so much proprietary deal flow, his answer is straightforward:

"I'm not really waiting for more introductions from people. I'm not sitting there trying to craft my own tailored notes to everybody. I'm just able to do it in a much faster manner by leveraging the platform."

And perhaps the strongest endorsement of all:

"If Raylu were to all of a sudden go under, it would definitely ruin my month. I'd be spending a long time trying to figure out how to cobble other systems together to replace it."

The Quiet Competitive Advantage

That's the point. Raylu doesn't make outreach feel automated. It makes it feel personal, thoughtful, and tailored, because it is. The AI does the heavy lifting so investors can focus on what actually matters: building relationships with founders.

"My passion is working with entrepreneurs, understanding their businesses, and understanding new markets. Raylu makes it so much easier to do that. It takes a lot of the grunt work off my plate so I can spend more time on those things."

If You're Still Sourcing the Old Way…

Nick's message to funds still cobbling together multiple tools is clear:

"Why would you waste your time putting all those things together when you can just work with a company that has purpose-built a solution for people doing proprietary sourcing?"

If your team is still:

• Stitching together prospecting tools, sales automation, and AI writing assistants

• Spending hours crafting individual outreach emails

• Getting reply rates below 10%

• Burning BD bandwidth on grunt work instead of founder conversations

…you're running the old playbook.

Firms like Sopris Capital are already on the new one.

Raylu is how they got there.