"90% of our inbound was noise. Now, we instantly know which deals deserve our attention and why. Kruncher automates screening, surfaces hidden insights, and delivers investment-ready reports before our IC meetings." — Sandro Moretti, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Blacksheep Ventures
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Since using Kruncher, Blacksheep Ventures has seen key improvements in:
Blacksheep Ventures operates in one of the most exciting yet cluttered sectors in venture capital: marketing and advertising technology.
Fund Profile:
MADtech (Marketing and advertising technology) represents one of venture capital's most dynamic sectors. The challenge is that "marketing tech" has become a catch-all term that attracts companies from completely unrelated sectors hoping to capitalize on the buzz.
90% of Blacksheep's inbound deals are completely irrelevant to their mandate. General SaaS startups, brick-and-mortar marketing agencies, and even restaurants would pitch their fund, crowding for Blacksheep’s Partners' limited attention.
The team was spending 2-3 hours daily just on initial screening, manually reviewing pitch decks and websites to determine basic relevance. Separating genuine innovation from opportunistic positioning became an unexpected full-time job for Blacksheep's team.
"It was really tough at first. Anything can be linked to marketing and advertising, people will say anything. That’s not what we want. We want hyper-specific solutions, something from brilliant people who genuinely understands the MAD space.”
Blacksheep finds Kruncher to be the ideal platform for their collaboration-heavy approach. The intuitive kanban layout and collaborative features provides clear visibility into their deal pipeline and allowing multiple fund partners to track company progress through different evaluation stages without confusion or overlap.
Kruncher also developed a completely new feature based on Blacksheep’s needs: An automatic email integration to streamline inbound deal flow to eliminate manual uploading.
Kruncher's roadmap is a joint effort where client feedback is taken seriously and they shape Kruncher to become even more effective and intuitive.
Instead of scouring pitch decks across emails, research notes in various documents, and company data spread across different Google Sheets, everything now lives in one centralized system.
Every interaction with a company gets automatically captured and organized within each company's profile. This creates a comprehensive, dynamic knowledge base that the entire team can access and contribute to seamlessly.
Blacksheep configured Kruncher to match their specific investment criteria and focus areas within MADtech. Kruncher then scores companies with Blacksheep’s preferences for specific business models, revenue stages, geographic focus, and technology approaches.
This customization means every company that reaches their attention has already been validated against their own investment thesis, creating a consistent deal flow pipeline.
Rather than manually checking hundreds of companies for updates, Kruncher gives Blacksheep intelligent notifications only when something significant happens, like funding announcements, key executive hires, major product launches, or big partnership announcements.
This proactive monitoring ensures they never miss important developments in their portfolio companies or watchlist opportunities, while avoiding notification fatigue from irrelevant updates.
Perhaps most importantly, Kruncher’s generated investment memos feel specifically designed for MADtech analysis. The memos are relevant, thoughtful, and easily customizable to match Blacksheep's investment committee requirements.
"We were fully expecting generic memos that don’t tell you anything, and we were surprised… The memos actually understand MADtech business models and highlight metrics that matter for our sector. We can edit them to match our style, but the foundation is already there."
After more than a year of daily use, Kruncher has become Blacksheep's primary place of work for investment operations. The platform handles deal screening, company research, portfolio monitoring, and investment memo generation in a workflow that feels specifically designed for their needs, all in one place.
"It's intuitive in a way that other CRM systems never were. Every feature seems designed around how VCs actually work, not how software companies think we should work."
Blacksheep Ventures represents the evolution of venture capital toward deeper specialization. As markets become more complex and competitive, funds that can combine sector expertise with sophisticated deal flow management will capture the best opportunities.