Introduction
Spreadsheet.com Deal Flow Template
As an investor, managing deal flow effectively is crucial for success in the competitive landscape of investment opportunities. While Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems designed for investors are usually idea for deal flow in Corporate Development, M&A, Private Equity and Venture Capital, small investment teams may elect to start with something more basic.
You can't get simpler than the deal flow templates we reviewed in this post. However, even the simplest deal flow templates are better than nothing, as they can help organize the investment process by creating a single, central version of all deal sourcing activities and companies.
The best of the templates we looked at can also be used as the starting point to build a deal flow database that can ultimately be imported into a full blown CRM system.
Let's dive into the best free deal flow templates for investors.
Airtable Deal Flow Template
This Spreadsheet Deal Flow Template is a simple, yet effective tool for investors who prefer a familiar spreadsheet format. It is a cloud-based product that allows you to track potential deals, capture key information, and monitor the progress of each opportunity. With customizable fields, you can adapt the template to match your specific investment criteria.
Notion Deal Flow Template
The nice part about this template is that it's not just a generic sales and marketing deal flow template adapted for venture capital. They actually put some thought into the types of data and pipelines needed in the industry. For example, the template includes deal tracking by round and stage.
Unfortunately, this template is quite tailored to venture capital use cases, as opposed to corporate development or M&A (where acquisitions are usually the primary goal). However, if you're willing to put in the work, we found that it is possible to edit and customize the fields in this template to make it more applicable for non-VC use cases.
As you'll find with most deal flow templates, they are generally quite limited when it comes to document storage and built-in automation (although some enable you to create your own automations). Spreadsheet.com is no different in this respect.
Overall, for those who love spreadsheets and work in venture capital, this is a solid choice for a deal flow template. At the time of writing this, Spreadsheet.com is free for teams of up to 5 people, including 1,500 rows per workbook (think 1,500 leads to track). For $7 USD per month, you get an unlimited number of users and 10,000 rows per workbook.
Folk Deal Flow Template
Airtable's Deal Flow Template offers a flexible and customizable solution for investors. With its spreadsheet-database hybrid format, you can capture deal details, track progress, and collaborate with team members. The template allows you to create custom views, apply filters and visualize your deal flow in a variety of formats.
We know of several deal teams that use Airtable as a CRM and we did a detailed analysis of Airtable as a CRM (or rather, why you shouldn't try to use it as a full-blown CRM) in a previous post.
There were two free Airtable deal flow templates that we particularly liked:
Deal Flow CRM by Weekend Fund
Deal Flow CRM by Altvia
Again, both templates were designed specifically for venture capital use cases. Unfortunately we couldn't find any free templates that stood out for corporate development or M&A.
Both templates are designed to help you track investment opportunities, contacts, meeting interactions, company information and introductions. They are also both entirely free.
Trello Deal Flow Template
Notion provides a versatile platform for investors to manage their deal pipeline. With Notion's customizable templates, you can track deal status, attach documents, collaborate with team members, and integrate other tools.
We found two Notion templates that were suitable for tracking investor deal flow. Both were designed for venture capital. These templates could be modified to work for corporate development or M&A, but having to do so was less than ideal. Most of the UI's were quite tailored to the language of a VC.
The first template, Angel Investor OS, was developed by an angel investor and includes a basic deal flow CRM, a place to track activities and companies, co-investors, founders, and some built in KPIs.
Overall, this Notion template was similar to Airtable but in our opinion, the UI was not as good. It was, however, a nice tough that they included several email templates written specifically for communicating with start-ups in various scenarios (i.e. rejection, first call, follow-up, etc.). The Angel Investor OS template is complete free and Notion is available for free up to 10 people per collaborative workspace.
Conclusion
The second solid Notion template we test is called FundMate. It is a deal flow template designed for micro VCs, solo GPs and angels.
Overall, the UI was better than Angel Investor OS but still not as good as Airtable. One feature we did particularly like is the built-in calendar to track follow-up activities (or 'loop backs', as the developer calls it).
The cost to use this Notion template is a one-time $9 USD fee.
Folk is a lightweight CRM app that is customizable and includes a considerable amount of built-in automation.
Folk templates are like a cloud-based mini-CRM solution that offers excellent collaboration features. These templates enable you to track and evaluate investment opportunities, calculate financial metrics, and share data with team members. The templates are also accessible from anywhere, ensuring seamless collaboration and real-time updates.
There are many free Folk CRM templates but most are designed for sales and marketing teams. However, we found their Deal Flow CRM to be pretty good for managing deal flow in venture capital.
We couldn't find anything off-the-shelf for folk that we liked for corporate development or M&A but again, if you're willing to put in the work, you can customize the template we found to work for non-venture capital activities.
It's easy to integrate this deal flow template with Gmail and Google Calendar so that you can track activities and meetings in a single place.
Keep in mind that this is a very basic CRM template and so you will need to setup your own pipeline stages (which is relatively easy to do).
Unfortunately, while there is a free version of the template, the free version only supports up to 100 contacts. Practically speaking, most investors are going to need to purchase folk's Standard plan for $19 USD per month to get more contacts.
Trello's deal flow template is a visually appealing and user-friendly tool for managing the investment process. This is a Kanban-style activity tracking tool that was originally designed for engineering activities. However, it can easily be applied to investment deal flow (we know several investors who have done this).
With Trello's drag-and-drop interface, you can create boards for each deal, add cards with relevant information, and track progress through different stages. Trello's template promotes transparency and collaboration within your investment team.
While we couldn't find a Trello template that had been designed specifically for investors, this generic CRM pipeline template is a good start.
One of the challenges we faced with Trello was that it lacked a central place to organize and store companies and contacts. There are work-arounds but they are not ideal.
Overall, the UI is great for managing deal pipelines but we wouldn't recommend it as the only tool you use for deal sourcing activities. It is far from a full CRM. Most small investment teams can use Trello for free (up to 10 deal flow boards). Unlimited deal flow boards cost $5 USD per user per month.
While the functionality available within the free deal flow templates we found was quite limited compared to a CRM system, we did find a few templates that could be a good starting point for small investment teams (or single investors). Most CRM systems would enable you to import the data stored in deal flow templates when you migrate.
Unfortunately, there appear to be few free deal flow templates for investors doing acquisitions (i.e. in corporate development, family offices, PE, etc.). The vast majority of templates we found were designed for venture capital.
Compared to a CRM system designed for investors, most of these templates would require considerable customization and maintenance. This is one of the reasons why we created Galaxy. We believe there should be a low-cost, purpose built CRM product designed specifically for investors, including those in corporate development or M&A.
If you are looking to start with a free deal flow template, our recommendation would be to try either Spreadsheet.com or Airtable. We know of investment teams that have found success with these templates, particularly as a starting point.
Galaxy helps private capital investors in search funds, family offices, corporate development, M&A and venture capital find, manage and close more deals.
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