About Verdict Capital
Verdict Capital is a New York-based first-time venture capital fund focused on Seed and Series A investments. Spun out by Niko Bonatsos, former Managing Director at General Catalyst and early investor in Snap, Discord, and Cursor, and Michael Fertik, serial entrepreneur and first investor in Anysphere and SentinelOne, the fund targets a $200-250M raise. A team of four runs deal flow and LP fundraising simultaneously, reviewing 100 to 150 new inbound companies each month.
The Challenge
Verdict Capital was managing two active pipelines, deal flow and LP fundraising, out of separate Google Sheets with no CRM in place. On the deal side, inbound pitches arrived by email, forwarded manually by the investment partners to the head of operations, who then entered each company by hand. At 100 to 150 new companies per month, that was several hours of manual work each week. On the LP side, a first close had already completed and the fundraise was ongoing, with relationships across institutions, family offices, and individuals that needed structured follow-up and multi-contact tracking.
The team had already invested in 12 companies before the CRM was in place, meaning the operational overhead was absorbed entirely by people running the fund itself.
Our Approach
Novlini delivered the implementation over two weeks, covering data model design, migration, pipeline configuration, and a custom deal intake automation.
Data Model
Two pipelines built from scratch: a deal flow pipeline tracking companies from first inbound through diligence, term sheet, and investment, and an LP pipeline for the ongoing fundraise with stage logic, committed amounts, estimated check sizes, location, and relationship attribution. The LP object was structured to support both individual and institutional contacts with multi-contact records per LP. Portfolio tracking was added as a dedicated list with investment date, valuation, cost basis, sector, and geography.
Google Sheets Migration
Historical deal flow and LP data extracted from both spreadsheets and imported into Attio with association integrity preserved. All open deals and active LP relationships were migrated with their existing stage classifications.
Deal Intake Automation
The core workflow was built on N8N. The investment partners now forward any inbound pitch or founder intro to a dedicated fund email address. The automation parses the email and any attached documents, extracts company name, founder, sector, and stage, and creates or updates the corresponding deal and company records in Attio. No manual entry required from the operations side.
Technology Stack
Attio - CRM, dual pipeline (deal flow + LP), portfolio tracking (source of truth)
N8N - deal intake automation, email parsing
Gmail - email sync, interaction capture
The Results
Verdict Capital went from two Google Sheets and a manual data entry process to a dual-pipeline CRM with automated deal intake.
Manual entry eliminated - inbound pitches now flow directly into Attio via email forwarding, no action required from operations
Both pipelines live - deal flow and LP fundraising tracked in one system with full history and attribution
LP relationship management in place - follow-up reminders, commitment tracking, and location-based engagement planning all available in the CRM
Portfolio tracking configured - all 12 investments logged with valuation, cost basis, sector, and geography
Operational immediately - the fund had an active first close and live deals running when the setup was completed
"The Novlini team was fantastic to work with. Ibrahim and Maxime made our Attio setup completely seamless and built custom AI automations that have transformed how we use our CRM. Highly recommend their expertise!"
Sarah L. - Verdict Capital ★★★★★
Why It Matters
First-time funds move fast. At 100 to 150 new inbound pitches per month, manual data entry compounds quickly. Even five minutes per company adds up to hours each week, absorbed by a four-person team that is simultaneously running a fundraise and making investments. The deal intake automation removes that layer entirely, so the system scales with volume rather than against it.
For any emerging fund managing deal flow and LP relationships in parallel, getting both pipelines into a single CRM from the start, with automated deal capture, is the infrastructure that makes everything else manageable.