Relationship intelligence for venture capital & private equity
The compounding advantage of combining your firm's network with the networks of every portfolio company - built on relationship intelligence that turns into warm intros.
Your network plus your portfolio's network
A relationship intelligence platform for VC and PE maps and scores your firm's collective network - partners, operating teams, advisors and LPs - and then pools it with the networks of every portfolio company into one searchable relationship graph.
Your firm's own network is powerful but finite. Each portfolio company, though, brings its own founders, executives, employees, customers and investors. Combine them and the number of people you can reach warmly grows multiplicatively, not additively. That is the portfolio network effect - and it is the single biggest relationship asset an investment firm owns but rarely activates.
Why it matters now: the best deals and the best hires still move through trusted introductions, not cold outreach. Relationship intelligence makes those paths visible and actionable across your whole portfolio at once.
Why a combined graph compounds
One firm's relationships are a rolodex. Every portfolio company's relationships, pooled together, are an unfair advantage.
Your firm's network
Partners, operating team, advisors and LPs - strong, but bounded by headcount.
Every portfolio company
Each founder, exec, employee, customer and investor adds thousands of relationships.
One compounding graph
A reachable network that grows - and gets more valuable - with every new investment.
Every new portfolio company strengthens the graph for the whole portfolio - better sourcing, better support, better returns, which in turn attracts better companies. A flywheel competitors can't copy by buying a data list.
A proven motion, not an idea
This isn't a thought experiment. Investment firms are already running this playbook on CTD today - successfully onboarding the majority of their founders and portfolio companies into one shared graph, then activating it for sourcing and portfolio support. We've seen first-hand what makes a rollout succeed.
When you start, we share all of it - how to drive founder adoption across your portfolio, set the right privacy defaults, and turn the combined network into real pipeline and warm intros.
"Warm introductions are like gold. Connect The Dots is how you mine the gold."
What a combined graph unlocks
The same relationship graph drives sourcing, supports founders, and powers the rest of the firm.
Deal sourcing
See which of your founders, operating partners or LPs already know a target founder, and reach them through a trusted path - before a process starts. Proprietary flow, earlier and warmer.
Portfolio support
Answer founders' real asks - customers and pipeline, executive and board hires, partners and advisors - by finding the warm path inside your wider portfolio graph. Be a value-add, not a passive check.
Downstream fundraising
Map the fastest warm path from a portfolio company to the right Series B/C or growth investor - through your network and your portfolio's, not a cold deck.
Executive & board recruiting
Reach passive senior candidates for portfolio roles through people who already know them - higher response rates and better-fit hires for both the firm and its companies.
Diligence & references
Instantly find people in your collective network who actually know a founder, market or target - for candid, off-list reference checks before you wire.
LP & co-investor relations
Surface warm paths to prospective LPs and syndicate partners, and keep institutional relationships from going stale as people change roles.
Reachable - with full privacy control
Beyond your firm and portfolio, every CTD user strengthens the graph for everyone. Each participant stays in control of exactly what they share.
Start closed, open selectively
Keep your network private by default and whitelist the specific people or firms it chooses to share with - tight control before expanding access.
Start open, block selectively
Make a network available to the full graph by default and block specific people or companies - maximize reach while protecting sensitive relationships.
No one ever shares the content of their communications - only the signal that a relationship exists and how strong it is.
What separates a platform from a contact list
Relationship scoring
A real relationship - built on email history, meeting frequency and tenure overlap - is worth far more than a stale LinkedIn connection. CTD tells them apart, so you act on paths that will actually convert.
Collective portfolio network
Pool the networks of the firm and every portfolio company into one searchable graph - so a founder's customer can open a door for another founder's deal.
Ghostwriting & orchestration
Reduce every intro to review-and-click: the email is pre-written, the context baked in, and the connector just approves.
CRM integration
Connect warm paths to your pipeline - sync with your Salesforce or HubSpot deal records and track introduction outcomes end to end.
Everything via API & MCP
Every relationship and action is exposed via API and MCP. Ask Claude to find the warmest path into a target, draft the intro and send it - without leaving your workflow.
Job-change alerts
Know the moment a contact moves - a former colleague becoming a CFO is a new door into a deal, a hire or a customer.
Relationship intelligence for investors, explained
What is a relationship intelligence platform for VC and PE?
It's software that maps and scores the collective network of an investment firm - partners, operating teams, advisors, LPs and, crucially, every portfolio company - into a single searchable relationship graph. It uses the signals around communications (email metadata, meeting frequency, LinkedIn connections and career-history overlaps) to reveal who knows whom and how strongly, then surfaces the warmest path to any founder, executive, customer or co-investor you want to reach.
How does combining portfolio networks create a network effect?
A firm's own network is finite, but each portfolio company brings its own founders, executives, employees, customers and investors. When those networks are pooled into one graph, the number of reachable people grows multiplicatively rather than additively. Every new portfolio company makes the whole graph more valuable for sourcing and for supporting the rest of the portfolio - a compounding flywheel that's very hard for competitors to replicate.
How does relationship intelligence help with deal sourcing?
Most of the best deals are won through trusted introductions before a process ever starts. Relationship intelligence shows which of your founders, operating partners or LPs already know a target founder, and surfaces the shortest warm path in. Instead of cold outreach, you reach out through someone the founder trusts - getting to proprietary deals earlier and converting at a higher rate.
How does it help with portfolio support and value creation?
The same graph lets you deliver introductions your portfolio companies actually need: customers and pipeline, executive and board candidates, downstream investors, partners and advisors. Because the graph spans every portfolio company, a founder's biggest ask can often be answered by a relationship sitting inside another portfolio company - turning your firm into a genuine, measurable value-add rather than a passive check.
Is our portfolio's relationship data kept private?
Yes. Every participant controls exactly what they share. They can start closed and whitelist specific people or companies, or start open and block sensitive relationships. Critically, no one ever shares the content of their communications - only the signal that a relationship exists and how strong it is.
How is this different from a relationship CRM like Affinity or DealCloud?
Deal CRMs are excellent at storing and managing your firm's own deals, contacts and pipeline. Relationship intelligence built on a shared graph goes further: it extends beyond your firm's internal network to the pooled networks of your entire portfolio and the wider Connect The Dots graph, scores each relationship on real interaction signals, and orchestrates the introduction itself. The two are complementary - CTD syncs with your CRM rather than replacing it, and exposes everything via API and MCP.
See how CTD does it
CTD is the relationship intelligence platform behind the portfolio network effect - pick the path that fits your firm, and plug it into the tools you already use.
Solutions
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Activate your whole portfolio's network.
Connect The Dots combines your firm's network with every portfolio company's - and surfaces the warmest path to any founder, customer or co-investor.