Zapflow's Blog

We all know data entry sucks even when there’s so much to gain by meticulous data collection from multiple sources followed by thoughtful analysis. But let’s face it – it’s boring as hell and usually gets done only for those cases that you want to take a deeper look into.

Zapflow, a developer of deal flow management tools for professional investors, today announced the closing of 700,000 USD in funding to accelerate the company’s growth. The funding package includes new investors such as Gorilla Ventures, which is a leading early stage investor in Finland.

When one analyzes tens or hundreds of potential deals per year finding the one you are looking for can be hard work. There's nothing wrong with working hard, but when it comes to finding the information I think we all have other things we would like to work hard instead of finding the cases. In the video below we show you can easily categorize and find cases in Zapflow.

Let’s face it: You want to see many cases to gain insight and to not miss any opportunities. You also want to zap (/zap/, informal, to destroy or to obliterate) almost all of them instantly since

As a finance pro, you are used to working with numbers and always tell the CEOs to have their numbers right. You understand that what can be quantified and measured can also be managed and improved. When did you last take a 360-view on your own numbers? You certainly know the latest IRR and deal multiples but how about metrics on your lifeblood – deal flow and its metrics?

When was the last time you met a sales man who liked to spend his time by archiving information or a professional investor who enjoyed to manually manage his deal flow files? It has been a while, right?

If the worldwide business ecosystem was an ocean, then startups could be oysters. Oysters, that are trying to attract with their shell, while protecting the soft and vulnerable inside. If that was the case, then investors - venture capitalists, private equity companies, angels and such - would be pearl divers. Searching for the treasures of the ocean, natural pearls. Or perhaps some of them would be hunting for oysters with just a little grain of sand inside, to be farmed and grown to pearl oysters.

When was the last time you met a sales man who liked to spend his time by archiving information or a professional investor who enjoyed to manually manage his deal flow files? It has been a while, right?

When the pain and annoyance related to deal flow management was just too much, I started to look for a tool which would work for me every day in M&A operations. A tool that would keep deal data up-to-date, do stuff for me on its own, do reports for me and facilitate communication with various stakeholders. And all of this at a price I could tell my boss face-to-face.

How did the story of Zapflow begin? It all started when I ran the M&A and equity investments of a firm with 80+ transactions under its belt and so many evaluated investment opportunities. I felt all the pains personally and wanted to, not only solve my own problems, but also other professional investors working with their deal flow: insane amount of data, too much things to do and, to put it nicely, less than perfect tools to manage your deal flow.