By
Contributed by Andrew Yang, Senior Director at Darwin Ventures
Introduction
In the fast-paced world of venture capital, time is a precious commodity. Manual and repetitive tasks can consume valuable resources, hindering productivity and focus on strategic initiatives. Andrew faced similar challenges before discovering Lutra. In this case study, we'll explore how Lutra transformed Andrew's daily operations and the impact it had on his team's efficiency.
Andrew Yang - Senior Director at Darwin Ventures
The Challenge
Before using Lutra, Andrew and his team were overwhelmed with manual and repetitive tasks. Company research involved browsing countless websites, founding teams, news coverage, and traction data. Keeping up with recent news for portfolio companies required constant manual searches and updates. Data transfer between spreadsheets, software, and websites was constant manual work.
Automating Manual Processes
Handling these tasks was a tedious and time-consuming process – many of these were entirely manual - either done in-house or by outside contractors. Company research often involved finding and reading many company websites, and google searching results one by one, followed by researching news coverage, and reviews like Product Hunt pages, Crunchbase profile, etc. – and finally hand-typing all that into spreadsheets. For news updates, their senior partner would literally copy and paste news story links into an email and send it to the company that updates Darwin’s website, every month.
"I still have to read and think about every company myself. This will never change, and my brain needs the reps. But Lutra can find the relevant information and put them in front of me, in an organized way, like a literal assistant"
With Lutra, Andrew and his team were able to automate several key tasks. Lutra assists with extracting company names, finding websites, summarizing company information, finding news coverage and funding history, and organizing all this data into a spreadsheet.
Even manual copy-paste jobs are easy now - most recently Andrew has asked Lutra to read their portfolio list, extract every company’s description, translate them into Japanese, then put them into a different column in the sheet - and now, they’re ready for human editors to tweak for their upcoming Japan website. He has asked Lutra to intelligently identify all the elements on their current website, and intelligently extract all the key elements, putting that into a Google sheet.
Productivity Impact
The impact of Lutra on Andrew's operations is significant. While the quantitative time savings were impressive - hours saved on manual data work across researching many companies, Andrew emphasized the qualitative impact.
"When AI can do all the manual repetitive tasks for you so you can focus on truly meaningful and interesting work, it upgrades your entire work week!"
These tasks are "extremely manual, robotic labor that no one likes doing", and by automating these tasks, Lutra allows Andrew and his team to focus on truly meaningful and interesting work.
Lutra vs Other AI Tools
Compared to other AI tools Andrew had tried, Lutra stood out for its intelligence in handling complex tasks. While existing tools required extensive learning and setup, Lutra adapted to different formats and delivered results without the need for constant adjustments.
"Existing tools - be they robotic process automation, browser automation, or data extraction tools, just aren't smart enough. First you gotta learn their interface (visual programming is NOT easy to learn), then you gotta tell the software exactly where to find every piece of info, and when they encounter different formats, things just break"
Conclusion
Lutra has transformed the way Andrew and his venture capital firm operate, freeing them from the burden of manual and repetitive tasks. By automating company research, news updates, and data transfer, Lutra has saved the team valuable time and allowed them to focus on strategic initiatives.
