A Fund ERP for Private Markets

Unlike most industries, there is no Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for the private market today.

Instead, running a private market fund requires cobbling together four key components: accounting, treasury systems, investor management, and portfolio management. The work does not end after fund managers have pieced together their solution from a collection of software providers and manual workflows. Fund managers must then grapple with integrating with other service providers critical to a fund's day-to-day operations: fund administrators, law firms, accountants, fractional CFOs, tax professionals, and more.

Imagine maintaining a single source of truth across funds and your firm with that fragmented process.

We learned this first hand working closely with over 26K funds, 85K investors, and more than $124 billion in assets on the AngelList platform. Through the tremendous scope of the AngelList platform, we've experienced the nuances and intricacies of crucial workflows throughout a fund's lifecycle.

10 years ago, we brought software to emerging managers and later paired it with our native fund administrator, Belltower, to offer a full-service solution, allowing funds to manage everything from fund formation on Day 1 to distributions to investors in Year 10. As the needs of private markets expanded, we expanded our software offerings.

At the end of 2023, AngelList grew from serving only venture funds to delivering software solutions to the entire private fund space. We now support $124B in assets on the AngelList platform, with a customer base that includes venture funds, hedge funds, and private equity firms, like Galaxy, VanEck, ValueAct and Village Global. We also introduced a preferred partner program with fund administrators, including service providers like Belltower, Standish, 4Pines, and MG Stover.

Over the past year and through our relationship with funds of all sizes and focuses, we noticed that there was a key software missing from private markets: a single, comprehensive Fund ERP.

What is a Fund ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software isn’t a new idea. By definition, an ERP software system is a set of integrated applications or modules designed to manage a company's core business processes—such as finance and accounting, supply chain, HR, procurement, sales, and inventory management. Netsuite and SAP are great examples of ERP systems.

Many enterprise companies leverage a full ERP, or a solution set within an ERP, to ensure continuity of workflows across different teams within their organization. This allows for a single source of truth and creates a unified data layer, regardless of team.

But what’s missing from the existing ERP space, is an ERP solution designed for venture funds, hedge funds, and PE funds. Designed for private markets. Not only are there nuances to operating each type of fund, but there are numerous service providers integrated into their workflows that need to be considered.

Instead, funds find themselves relying on multiple providers, a mix of software and services that don’t communicate with each other and have different modes of operation. This creates friction between systems, causes headaches for LPs who need multiple logins—from data room documents to receiving tax information—and requires the manual execution of workflows, leading to data inconsistencies and operational drag.

A Fund ERP addresses these problems by bridging the gap between the four crucial components of operating a fund—accounting, treasury management, investor management, and portfolio management—within a single platform.

AngelList Fund ERP

For 2024 and beyond, AngelList is consolidating our current software offerings for funds into a unified Fund ERP platform designed for private markets. This ERP platform is designed for all key stakeholders of a fund, including a fund’s finance and investor relations team, fund administrators, lawyers and auditors. And, it seamlessly integrates with a fund’s existing systems (via user permissions or APIs) with a unified data layer connecting all workflows at its core.

We've already begun building this unified platform by rolling out our Investor Management, Portfolio Management, and Treasury Management solutions. These solutions are actively leveraged by industry leaders like Galaxy, VanEck, and ValueAct. This adoption across private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds, coupled with invaluable feedback from fund administration partners such as Standish, 4Pines, and Theorem, has helped ensure that our product roadmap comprehensively addresses the workflows of all key stakeholders.

Over the coming quarters, we’ll continue to advance each of these four core pillars within the Fund ERP platform, all connected by a single data layer, to bring a comprehensive Fund ERP software to firms within private markets. We encourage you to reach out with questions, ideas, or pain points you’ve experienced as we progress on this journey, taking into account the needs of firms of all size, scale, and service providers.

We’re excited to continue our mission on building the infrastructure that powers the startup economy.

To learn more about AngelList, connect with a member of our team.