Munich Re Ventures is the strategic venture capital arm of Munich Re, a global re-insurance and primary insurance provider. With three separate funds each with their own investment thesis and over $500M in available capital, Munich Re Ventures invests across industries including mobility, cybersecurity and IoT with a preference for series A and B. Their goal is not only to finance industry-changing startups, but to create synergies and strategic partnerships that allow both them and their portfolio companies to grow at scale, whether that means providing de-risking strategies or insurance capacity for startups.
Problem
For almost five years, Munich Re Ventures used a legacy solution for fund and portfolio management. While that tool offered basic portfolio monitoring capabilities, it did not provide the level of automation and real-time insight that Munich Re Ventures desired. As the firm grew its number of investments and multiplied its fund size tenfold, it needed a scalable platform that could not only support streamlined data collection but also provide actionable insights and tools for analysis.
Manual data collection
Munich Re collects different data points across its portfolio companies and sometimes across time periods as well. As a result, the firm resorted to collecting and aggregating this data by hand in Excel, which lead to inconsistencies in company reporting and a lack of standardization across the portfolio. The team wanted to find a way to increase compliance and gather data more consistently from their portfolio companies.
Limited analytics
Because of a lack of data, Munich Re Ventures had a difficult time tracking company performance. They had limited insight into key OKR’s and company metrics such as revenue, runway and burn rate. With over 30 investments to track, Munich Re Ventures needed a better way to visualize these metrics in real time to get a better understanding of company health.
Inefficient workflows
Given its portfolio complexity, MRV needed a tool that was self-service, so the team could quickly process data requests, add new portfolio companies, change inaccurate data points, and create custom reports on the fly. The firm wanted a platform that would enable them to take control of their data.
Solution
Munich Re Ventures transitioned to Standard Metrics when one of their portfolio companies expressed interest in switching over for reporting. The firm chose Standard Metrics to power their middle office workflows so they could focus on helping and building relationships with their portfolio companies. The centralized platform simplified and standardized reporting across Munich Re Ventures’ portfolio and allowed the firm to track and store company data all in one place.
Founder-friendly interface
Standard Metrics automated the company reporting process through the use of custom templates and integrations. Startups no longer needed to sift through spreadsheets, find the right metrics and share information over long email chains. Instead, they could quickly link their banking, accounting and HR metrics directly to Standard Metrics, saving them time and resources. On the firm side, Munich Re Ventures no longer needed to manually create a form each time they sent out a request and could store and manage all of their company data in one place. Standard Metrics eliminated the need to manually follow up with companies for missing information and would automatically update portfolio companies that had outstanding requests and inform firms when they were complete.
Smart portfolio insights
Munich Re Ventures centralized their portfolio and investment data across three different funds using Standard Metrics’s powerful portfolio analytics tool. This gave the firm the ability to look at fund performance over time and across sectors with simple and comprehensive data visualizations. Along with Standard Metrics’ unique portfolio insights, this gave the firm the ability to visualize company runway, revenue and burn rates all on one page. With the power of portfolio insights, Munich Re Ventures is able to analyze their portfolio with much more detail and granularity, helping them make more informed decisions on where, when and how to allocate capital.
Intuitive design
Standard Metrics eliminated the need for Munich Re Ventures to outsource simple requests, giving the firm full control of the platform’s functionality and data. The platform’s intuitive user interface made it easy to onboard Munich Re Ventures’ team and offered users the ability to create custom dashboards, run calculations and quickly edit metrics all by themselves.
Results
Munich Re Ventures transitioned to Standard Metrics in less than a month while Standard Metrics handled the entirety of the firms first quarter information requests with a 100% response rate from portfolio companies. Standard Metrics also onboarded 35 of Munich Re Venture’s portfolio companies onto the platform, parsing through over 1,000 documents and extracting five years of past company data. Since onboarding, Munich Re Ventures has been a key design and thought partner for Standard Metrics, working to solve more problems such as budgets vs. actuals. With Standard Metrics in place, Munich Re Ventures can operate with ease and efficiency and focus on building strategic partnerships with their portfolio companies.