🔥VC Co-Pilot for Dealsourcing, AI for VC, Portfolio Intelligence & More
Takeaways from Venture Intelligence Day NYC 2025
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At the end of Q2, we were happy to support the Venture Intelligence Day hosted by our partner Vestberry in NYC. They brought together over 200 VC professionals to share and discuss the latest insights and trends shaping data-driven investing and AI for VC. The agenda covered:
The Future of AI for VC
VC Co-Pilot for Dealsourcing
Portfolio Intelligence as a Missed Opportunity
Supercharging Your Portfolio Value Creation
…
Missed out? Access the full recordings via The Lab and make sure to join Venture Intelligence Day in Prague on October 30th. The first 10 DDVC subscribers get a free ticket with the code "DDVCFIRST" at checkout.
Here are the key highlights and takeaways you don’t want to miss👇
The Future of AI for VC
What happens when AI makes every investment decision? See Fred Cambells journey behind building a fully automated VC fund with TRAC AI/VC:
Super Forecasters Are Rare: Only 0.1% of VCs consistently predict the future and find unicorns, and even then, just 20% of their investments deliver 10x returns.
Using AI to gain the edge: If you are not a “superforcaster” you can train AI with the ocean of private market data to spot patterns, trends and investment opportunities.
Eight Key AI Focus Areas: AI models can be trained to evaluate Market dynamics, Competitors, Smart Money movements, Media sentiment, Customer behavior, Website & App data, Founders & Teams, and the Idea & Product itself.
Reaping the AI fruits: Using LLMs, Fred's fund has invested over $27 million into 46 companies, currently holding a 1.33x MOIC and a projected 4x TVPI.
The VC Co-Pilot for Dealsourcing
AI is reshaping how deals are found and decisions are made — but the best results still come from a human–machine partnership.
Faster, Fairer Decisions: AI accelerates due diligence and helps counter unconscious bias — leading to more equitable outcomes, including increased backing of underrepresented founders.
Humans Still Hold the Edge: Founder charisma, grit, and relationship dynamics remain out of AI’s reach — and critical in investment calls.
Adoption Isn’t Plug-and-Play: Full AI integration is slowed by messy qualitative data, firm-wide trust hurdles, and high implementation costs — giving AI-native funds a potential first-mover advantage.
Beyond Gut Feel – Portfolio Intelligence as a Missed Opportunity
Portfolio management is evolving. Leading funds are automating manual work and supplementing gut instinct with data.
Post-Investment Blind Spot: Portfolio data remains a hugely missed opportunity, as most VCs focus more on deal sourcing and less on the critical 4 to 10 year post-investment period when portfolio companies actually develop.
Impact of Knowing More: Portfolio intelligence is essential for making informed decisions on follow-on investments, resource allocation, and ultimately increasing fund value, especially to mitigate the high cost of missed opportunities.
Analytics That Guide Value Creation: Modern portfolio tools provide signals and benchmarks that help VCs assess performance and act early to reduce risk.
Once You Know What’s Going On, This Is How You Supercharge Your Portfolio Value-Add
Modern VC support evolves beyond well-meaning check-ins. The new approach to value-add is structured, stage-sensitive, and data-driven.
Support Is Contextual: VC help should match company stage, ownership level, and founder openness. Quarterly planning of supporting activities and goals is one smart tactic to stay aligned.
Talent Reigns Supreme: Hiring is the most frequent founder ask. Branding and targeted intros are now part of every platform team's playbook.
Knowledge Must Flow: Curated, in-person events are the most effective means for VCs to educate PortCos and expand everyone's network.
Content Is Currency: Creating playbooks or tech stack reports out of PorCos success stories is an excellent way to create benchmarks and share experiences across founders.
Impact Needs Metrics: KPIs like successful intros, CEO NPS, and cross-founder referrals help VCs track their value-added and refine their strategy.
The State of European Tech
Data-driven Insights? Here we go! The highlights from Hanna-Stina Sonts' talk about Atomico's definitive "State of European Tech Report":
Europe's tech ecosystem demonstrates a powerful "flywheel" effect, attracting talent (3.5M+, 24% CAGR) and capital (10x increase in a decade), driving continuous growth.
Despite being as efficient as the US in creating unicorns (normalized for capital), European companies often face valuation discounts and a smaller scale of follow-on investment.
While recent years posed exit challenges, positive market momentum is returning, fueled by increasing secondary volumes and significant transactions, which are vital for reinvesting capital.
Europe is rapidly increasing its share of global tech value creation, with a strong focus on AI innovations and deep tech solutions, particularly in sustainability.
The industry doesn't wait for anyone.
Now is the time to adopt new tools and AI, to automate redundant workflows, and free up capacity for what actually matters.
How?
Access 50+ masterclasses, 300+ deep dives, automation templates, and various other resources via The Lab.
Stay driven,
Andre
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We launched an email sourcing agent (send email to agent, get a list of pre-seed to Series A companies ranked by talent score with founder emails).
Let me know if you'd like to test it.
Great article, and thanks for sharing the conversations from the Venture Intelligence event. We're right there with you, building and learning from AI integration into our Investment Team efforts. (I published some of these uses today - https://markbuffington.substack.com/p/ai-in-venture-capital-from-efficiency?r=4frahp