Getting Investor Onboarding Right

LPs deserve a white-glove onboarding experience, ensuring a strong first impression for a firm and creating the base for a positive experience from initial interest to first close.

I recently sat down with Garima Grover, VP of Client Services at Galaxy ($6.2B AUM as of 5/31/24), for a virtual conversation. Galaxy is a digital asset and blockchain leader providing access to the growing digital economy. Founded in 2018, Galaxy supports clients in three complementary businesses: Global Markets, Asset Management, and Digital Infrastructure Solutions.

Throughout our conversation, Garima shared her insights around modernizing the investor experience, best practices for offering LPs frictionless onboarding, and how to reduce manual tasks from initial interest to wired funds.

Responses have been edited for clarity and length, full conversation can be found here.

How crucial would you say is the onboarding process and establishing trust and confidence with potential investors?

Garima: A well executed onboarding process is fundamental in establishing that trust and confidence with potential investors, especially ones that are new or unfamiliar with your firm. It’s like a first impression. You're serving as the first detailed interaction that the investor will have with the company. So yes, the investor or prospective investor will have their chats with the sales team, but the sales team is mostly selling the products, right? That's their forte.

Where we get to show off our skillset is when we're selling the firm through the onboarding process. It can signal how organized, transparent, and competent your firm is. Additionally, it's crucial to ensure that you are meeting all of the regulatory and legal requirements that are being asked of you. You need to be sure you’re reducing the risk of any missteps during onboarding.

It's a journey from beginning to end.

In your mind, what does a great investor experience look like?

Garima: This one's simple. A great investor experience is one where the client has limited questions–not because I don't want to answer questions, but because that means that the process worked.

When you have an onboarding where there's very limited back and forth between yourself and the client and the fund administrator, the client is able to just get through the process and sign the docs. That means that the process worked and it worked well.

What strategies do you employ to ensure that the onboarding process is not only efficient, but also provides a positive experience for investors?

Garima: When a client or a prospective investor is interested in subscribing, I'll send them an initial email welcoming them to our investor platform, AngelList, to work through the necessary documents but it doesn’t stop there.

The client is going to go through the digital subscription process, but you still need to provide that human element because, at the end of the day, it's still paperwork. Who really wants to get through paperwork? It can be mundane. You need to keep the investor excited and the only way to do that is by providing that human element and letting them know that you're there for them at any point via phone, zoom, email, etc.

How have you seen technology evolve to help LPs during the onboarding process?

Garima: I would say via automation and workflow management in general–the way we can collect exactly what we need with minimal errors. Overall, technology is helping speed up the process.

Having the ability to connect clients, fund managers, and fund admins through a single platform with AngelList is so key because, as soon as a client submits their documentation via Transact, we as the fund manager get the notification, but so will the fund administrator meaning that review can almost start instantaneously without any sort of delay.

How has AngelList Transact changed the onboarding experience for your investors and internally for your team?

Garima: It's been a game changer. We went from a completely archaic method of collecting documentation to something that is incredibly streamlined for the three parties involved–the client, the fund administrator, and the fund manager–without having to solely rely on an email inbox.

We're in fundraising mode right now and it would've been impossible for me and my team to get through all of our investors with ease without AngelList. I also love the fact that it has such filterable features. We can print out reports and download different data sets of information that just make the onboarding process so much more streamlined, not only for us, but also for the client.

Was there any specific “wow moment” while using AngelList Transact that surprised you the most?

Garima: The fact that you can see where a client is in their subscription process is so vital because, before this, you’d have to pick up the phone and ask, “Hey, client A. How far along did you get in the documents? Where can we assist you?”

It can get to a point where you're constantly bothering the client to try to get the documentation, whereas now I can go onto my fund manager portal and look at exactly where a client is, where they might be struggling, where I'm foreseeing some sort of issue occurring. That's, I think, the wow factor. The transparency that AngelList provides is what really makes this process so much easier for us.

Conclusion

For additional insights or to share the conversation with others, you can find the full conversation with Garima, including a live Q&A from the audience, below.

Curious to learn more about how Galaxy and other firms are leveraging AngelList’s Investor Management Suite to:

• Simplify investor onboarding and communication
• Automate routine tasks to save you time
• Provide secure and compliant document distribution for investors
• Provide a branded, seamless experience for both you and your investors

Connect with a member of the AngelList team to learn how you can modernize your investor experience at angellist.com/contact/private-markets.