Why I joined DiligenceVault
Let’s start with a little background on me. Having spent over 10 years in the investment management world learning about hedge fund, private equity and real estate investing, I met many amazing colleagues and had a bunch of achievements, both big and small. At some point during everyone’s career, there comes a time to step back, evaluate where you are and determine where you want to be. To answer the age-old question: what am I doing with my life?
You look back on the hike up the mountain…at all the ups and downs, foothills, peaks and valleys. You look at all the promotions you’ve earned, the knowledge you’ve amassed and the exams you’ve passed! But some part of you begins to wonder: what if is this as good as it gets? You start to get the sneaking suspicion that there’s more out there to explore. Could it be that there is more to life than climbing “Mount Corporate Ladder”?
You tell me it’s the institution, well, you know, you better free your mind instead…
Finally, these sneaking suspicions become too loud to ignore. Snapping out of the fog of routine and security, you take a good, hard long look at your achievements. You realize you are ambitious, entrepreneurial, creative, passionate (about doing something innovative) and just crazy enough to jump ship to swim to join the world of startups. Build something with your own two hands. Build your OWN mountain. Time to revolutionize your life.
You say you want a revolution…
Post self revelation (and revolution), I embarked on an amazing journey into the world of UX design…fraught with perils unforeseen (learning the Adobe Creative suite?!??) but ripe with creative problem solving and mastering the art of human centered design. What does that even mean? UX design’s goal is to minimize confusion and frustration by designing intuitive, delightful experiences for web technology.
As luck would have it, my path crossed with DiligenceVault, who was searching for a UX designer. A happy coincidence that my prior background was directly applicable to the platform being built, I was able to marry my prior experience with newfound UX skills in a fast paced, startup environment. Win-win-win! Not to mention the shared vision of streamlining the I-can’t-believe-we-did-things-that-way methodology using technology to make the industry’s collective life easier.
We all want to change the world.
So what’s working life like now, you ask? Fantastic! As a team, we are engaging with users, learning from the “No’s”, iterating on functionality and designs and truly building something that will not only revolutionize an entire industry, but also transform my career. Changing the world, one RFP at a time.
You tell me that it’s evolution…
But enough about me. The investment industry is evolving. For the better. And it’s exciting that we at DiligenceVault are helping to bring this evolution about. A whitepaper that I happened across while writing this post, DoDiligence, lays out nicely the changes taking place in the industry.
Specifically, DoDiligence:
- Encourages use of qualitative information. Prompting a shift from return based analysis to more forward-looking qualitative analysis. (Guess who’s building a platform to do just that? WE are. Please pardon the shameless plugs that are about to ensue)
- Emphasizes collaboration. Investors need to be more forthcoming with investment managers, and to be respectful of their time and resources. (Oh SNAP! Second shameless plug comin’ at ya) We are designing DiligenceVault to improve communication between investors and managers and everyone in between. (BOOM!)
- Recommends customization. In collecting huge quantities of data, one forgets to ask if it is relevant. Does it make sense to ask the same 500 questions of all managers? Not so much. Targeting questions based on investment style makes a whole lot more sense. (Aaaaannnd your last shameless plug about to commence in 3…2…1) We are working hard to address this issue and allow investors to customize questionnaire templates for each investment strategy.
The industry has a ways to go in terms of leveraging data and technology while balancing the risks presented by the digital revolution in terms of cyber and information security risks. We are excited to be a part of it. Overall, what’s MORE inspiring than an industry open to transformational change? (Well, I can think of a few things but this is still pretty damn exciting!)
You say you got a real solution…Well, you know, we’d all love to see the plan.
We plan to get due diligence moving to a new beat. We are harmonizing data, analytics and workflow while standardizing the way investors collect and analyze information.
Don’t you know it’s gonna be…all right?
We hope that you’ll join us in our due diligence revolution, and while we’re not curing cancer, we ARE saving the environment, one 100 page RFP document at a time. Imagine all the trees saved, printing gone the way of the dodo.
And to THAT, we say:
All right! All Right!
All right! All Right!
(The Beatles may very well agree ☺)
