Andrew Counter

Product @metrics_co

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

More investors are running portfolio analysis from a chat window. So we're trying something: five prompt templates, pre-loaded in @claudeai for firms with Standard Metrics (@metrics_co) MCP connected.

Give it a few inputs like company or fund name; the prompt does the rest:
- Waterfall analysis: model exit scenarios across your portfolio
- Tear sheet: one-page PDF, same layout for every company
- Board prep: position, performance, what's changed, questions to ask
- Valuation: low/base/high fair value estimate using your methodology
- Benchmarking: analyze top companies based on certain variables

This is a first cut. If you're connected, they're live now. Try one and tell us what works and what you'd change!

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

VC/PE firms trust Standard Metrics as their core system of record for portfolio data. This deep context gives us a special opportunity to provide agentic tooling to customers. As Josh Clift at @rtpvc says, context is everything.

We did a closed beta of our AI Analyst in December with a small number of customers including Josh before our broader launch this past Monday. It was super helpful to understand how firms would use our AI Analyst and which processes it would power. Examining multiple portfolio companies at scale to better understand portfolio-wide trends has proven to be one of the biggest unlocks for our customers.

Thank you to Josh for being such a great early adopter of our AI Analyst at @metrics_co. Learn more and check out what others are saying: https://t.co/dByYKsV8al

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

The private markets didn’t have a purpose-built AI agent for portfolio analysis, so we decided to build one. Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of Standard Metrics’ AI Analyst.

When we first launched a portfolio-company-specific agent last year, it was an experiment: would investors trust AI to answer questions and provide reporting and analytics for an individual portfolio company?

The answer turned out to be a resounding yes. The missing piece was portfolio-wide analysis to answer broader queries like “which of my companies have accelerating revenue growth?” or “create a report of our companies in Europe that are getting low on runway.”

These types of analyses are now possible in seconds with our new AI Analyst, which allows for multi-company, portfolio-wide questions across quantitative and qualitative data on Standard Metrics. It’s been incredibly rewarding working with a small set of Beta customers to hone the analyst before today’s release. Many use cases have already emerged, including monitoring risks, creating materials for follow-on investment decisions, and summarizing portfolio performance for LPs.

The AI Analyst was a labor of love across every department at @metrics_co. We’re just getting started and continuing to invest aggressively in new capabilities.

Check it out in action at the video below. More on the launch can be found at our blog in comments. 👇

[Standard Metrics @metrics_co]

Standard Metrics customers: you can connect @claudeai to your portfolio data on @metrics_co in less than 1 minute! 🏁

1. Navigate to ”Connectors” in Claude Admin Settings.
2. Click ”Add custom connector”.
3. Paste (https://t.co/N3Tc4wY9FJ) into ”Remote MCP server URL” and click ”Add**”.**
4. Navigate to ”Connectors**”** in Claude’s regular settings.
5. You should see the Standard Metrics connector with whatever name you gave it. Hit connect and log in!

Once a Custom Connector has been added from custom settings, anyone within the Enterprise/Team Claude organization can connect using their own Standard Metrics login. We recommend having an Owner add Standard Metrics MCP for their whole Claude org to use.

Read our full docs here to learn more: https://t.co/87WgkNUtQX

Our blog post: https://t.co/jcWDGa41Sm

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

The best part of getting the whole team together in person is celebrating the bright, mission-driven people who make Standard Metrics what it is.

Grateful for this amazing team of Metronauts. 👩‍🚀

@metrics_co

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

Audit season is often painful for VCs, their portfolio companies, and even auditors themselves, but Operator Collective (@OpCo_VC) is doing it differently.

I’m excited to share Standard Metrics’ latest case study, a look at how Operator Collective streamlined their annual audit process with us. We talked with Anna Jacobson, Operations & Data Partner at Operator Collective, about the audit process pre Standard Metrics (e.g. ”time consuming and tedious”) and post Standard Metrics (e.g. ”more efficient, less busy work”).

Essentially, Standard Metrics cuts the endless email back-and-forth with portfolio companies during an audit by aggregating the data they’ve already shared with your firm into a customized view for auditors. The benefit of this, as Anna put it: “The auditors were able to go in themselves and validate company data then come back to us with only one or two questions, as opposed to 100.”

For anyone looking into streamlining their portfolio data collection processes as we enter audit season, I’d love to connect. Full case study can be found here: https://t.co/uXX2cZmC1j

@metrics_co

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

50%+ of VC dollars are going to AI companies. But, as folks like @alexrkonrad have noted, AI tools are also rapidly changing how VC firms operate. We couldn’t find a comprehensive resource here, so we decided to write it. 📚

I’m excited to announce the launch of one of my favorite @metrics_co content pieces to-date: a white paper on how AI is transforming sourcing, diligence, portfolio management, and LP relations.

We interviewed a lot of VCs (as well as companies building AI-driven, VC-focused tooling) for quotes, case studies, and Q&As across the piece. A fun one was chatting with @WillC_5, co-founder/GP at Riot Ventures, about the intersection of AI and diligence at Riot.

Will regularly invests in highly-technical companies and a lot of his day-to-day consists of sourcing and diligence conversations with nuclear physicists, microbiologists, and robotics engineers. AI, explained Will, “has dramatically accelerated the speed of what we already do for diligence,” and has helped the firm check if underlying technological assumptions of potential investments are sound via “PhD-quality” summarization.

I think it’s a must-read for any VCs trying to figure out where AI might fit into their diligence process. Read it (and a lot more) at the link in comments. 👇

[Standard Metrics @metrics_co]

We have officially kicked off a closed beta for our new AI Analyst at Standard Metrics (@metrics_co)!

Back in June, we launched an early version of an AI-powered conversational interface for investors. We built quickly, shipped quickly, and watched closely for how customers would respond. That version focused on automating reporting and analytics for a single portfolio company at a time. But even with those constraints, the response from our VC/PE customers blew us away. One team asked over 100 questions of the tool in a single day. Across the board, customers folded the tool into their workflows, validating both the need for and the potential of something more robust.

Yesterday, we took the next step. Our portfolio-wide AI Analyst is now in the hands of a select group of customers as part of a closed beta. It’s faster, smarter, and capable of analyzing trends, outliers, and performance across the entire portfolio, all in natural language.

This is just the beginning, but we’re excited to see how customers will use this new feature.

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

When we think of VCs that are truly at the technological cutting edge, @Lux_Capital is at the top of the list. Today, we’re very proud to share that Lux is doubling down with Standard Metrics (@metrics_co). 🙌

We’re fortunate to have had Lux as a customer for about a year now, helping them to increase the volume of portfolio data they’re collecting & analyzing to streamlining how they produce company reports & tear sheets.

We’ve loved working with @Sego79, @brad_gritsch6, and Samantha Cho over the past year, which is why we’re so excited that they have decided to adopt our advanced analytics product to meet the portfolio analysis needs of their investment team.

We dive into how Lux has used Standard Metrics to streamline portfolio reporting in our latest case study. Link in comments. 👇

[Andrew Counter @AndrewCounterr]

@jmelaskyriazi @metrics_co Love this chart!

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

Does it feel like AI startups are growing way faster than SaaS or fintech companies? They are.

In the latest @metrics_co startup benchmarking report (built from our anonymized data set of 9,000+ VC-backed startups), we continue to observe upper quartile AI companies driving higher quarterly revenue growth than both fintech and SaaS companies quarter after quarter.

An upper quartile AI company at today’s rates grows from $1M to $100M in annualized revenue in 3.5 years, more than a year faster than fintech and nearly two years faster than SaaS peers.

I think this report is our best yet, diving deep into the scaling and efficiency dynamics of AI startups. Link in the comments.

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

Investors: imagine cutting board meeting prep from hours to minutes with one prompt.

Leveraging our MCP server, you can now unify information across Standard Metrics (@metrics_co), @NotionHQ, Google Calendar, and other tools with a simple prompt, reducing board meeting prep and other admin to minutes.

Watch the demo below to see how Claude (@AnthropicAI):

1) Knows to search Google Calendar based on the prompt, pulling a list of company names
2) Finds those companies in Standard Metrics, aggregating performance data
3) Writes a quick performance summary with that context, updating Notion when asked

This simple workflow delivers board-ready insights into how each is portfolio company is doing, minus the grunt work.

Check out the video below 👇

[Andrew Counter @AndrewCounterr]

@jmelaskyriazi @nylas @spang @metrics_co Great listen! Loved the "picks" section at the end.

[Standard Metrics @metrics_co]

We’re excited to launch our Q4 2024 Startup Benchmarking Report at Standard Metrics!

The last few years have been a whirlwind for startups, but our latest report reveals how late-stage companies flipped from hemorrhaging cash to turning a profit. https://t.co/KRhtzkJf8U

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

Q4 2024 was marked by late-stage companies getting their financials in order.

Median quarterly net burn was scratching at cash-flow-positive levels for late-stage companies ($100M+ revenue).

Big shift!

Our latest @metrics_co benchmarking report: https://t.co/EdsTEkxCSk

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

We have news! 🚀

Kineo Finance, a top international financing firm for early-stage hardware companies, chose @metrics_co to automate their portfolio monitoring.

Excited to support Kineo and their awesome portfolio. 🤖

Learn more about their decision: https://t.co/0kAn0RQPYZ

[John Melas-Kyriazi @jmelaskyriazi]

Want to see how dramatically startup burn rates changed post-ZIRP? 👀

Using aggregated+anonymized benchmarking data from @metrics_co (report in comments)...

Median co's with $100M+ revenue went from ~$11M/quarter burn in Q1 2022 to <$2M/quarter in Q3 2024.

Wild, wild swing!

[Lux Capital @Lux_Capital]

We're thrilled to work with @metrics_co to empower our portfolio companies with automated reporting, real-time benchmarking and data-driven insights to accelerate growth 🚀

[Andrew Counter @AndrewCounterr]

Made it in the @seattletimes this morning!

[Andrew Counter @AndrewCounterr]

Thank you so much to those in my network who have supported my writing, and to @seattletimes for the feature! I encourage you all to take a look at the article, and would love to have discussion about its contents.

[Andrew Counter @AndrewCounterr]

Excited to share that @seattletimes has published my most recent opinion piece!
https://t.co/ZYQFawLPhr

[Andrew Counter @AndrewCounterr]

The Seattle Times has decided to publish this written opinion piece! My Op-Ed article was posted online today, and will appear tomorrow in print.