While we’ve recently talked about the importance of sending out regular investor updates for your fund (and we even took you step-by-step on how we use DocSend to send our investor updates), we haven’t talked about annual meetings with your LPs.
For many funds, an annual LP (Limited Partner) meeting will be one of the few times everyone is all together and you’re presenting information face-to-face. Due to the amount and sensitivity of the information typically shared at these meetings, it can be a challenge to get the most up-to-date information in each LP’s hands. This rang true for Kyle Lui, a partner at the venture capital firm DCM.
“Our presentation to all of our LPs is probably a 300-slide deck. We go through all of our funds, industry trends, investment themes and even team changes,” said Kyle. “We used to set a cut off time of three days before the event. The deck had to be locked. Then we would print out a large booklet for each LP,” Kyle said.
But most often, some of the content being shared changes right up until the meeting. Locking themselves into a printed copy wasn’t working — not to mention the major problems it caused for the security of their presentation.
“Having physical copies in the room didn’t give us any control over our materials. People could take multiple copies, or just copy their version of the presentation. We were essentially allowing sensitive slides to walk out the door,” Kyle said.
DCM was looking for a method to offer more security and control for their presentation materials, and they were also looking to reduce their environmental impact.
“We wanted to reduce the amount of paper we were using and to have better control of our presentation. Plus, we needed more flexibility to make changes to the presentation, as some of our content changes right up to when the meeting starts,” Kyle said.
By switching to DocSend, DCM was now able to allow deck changes right up until the presentation started. Any changes were reflected immediately for whoever accessed the link to the presentation. DocSend also gave them far more control over who could access their presentation and when.
“We would share a DocSend link at the beginning of the meeting. And we would use email verification and a passcode to ensure only the people present could access it. We even rented iPads for people who didn’t bring a laptop so they could follow along,” Kyle said.
DCM was also able to save thousands of pieces of paper by no longer printing booklets for each of their LPs. And unlike those booklets, none of their sensitive slides could walk out the door.
“Immediately after the presentation is done, we shut off the DocSend link. There are slides in our deck that are really only meant to be viewed in the room. Then we follow up a week later with a shareable version in a DocSend link so people can download a copy,” Kyle said.
