Case study
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Nov 11, 2025
How Avenir competes with firms 10x its size
About Avenir
Avenir is a US-based growth investor headquartered in New York that backs category-defining technology and consumer companies at the inflection-to-scale stage. Their portfolio includes the likes of Databricks, Zepto, Klaviyo, Ramp and Sigma.
Jared Sleeper, Partner and Head of Software, leverages his background in investment analysis and data science to drive Avenir’s data-driven investment strategy.
The Challenge: Noticing signs of breakout at companies before anyone else
For lean firms, the problem statement goes beyond discovering interesting companies. Tracking companies over time and at scale, and reacting fast to signs of breakout is the biggest challenge.
"Hearing about a company and realizing it's interesting as a small team is just not enough," Jared explained. "We need enough signal to be able to prioritize the right companies at the right time. That is the real struggle"
Avenir’s priorities: Use data-driven insights to compete with much larger funds, with a small team
Build a data stack to generate high-quality signals, at the right time
Develop proprietary scores aligned with their investment thesis
Equip portfolio companies with data-driven insights
Use cases: Synaptic at the core of Avenir’s data stack
“Synaptic is the core of our data architecture here. It is the beating heart of the rest of what we built.”
1. Back every investment decision with data
Synaptic data is a staple part of Avenir’s IC decks. For example, the employee flow visualization that maps where company teams come from and where they go next.
"We include this graphic in every IC deck because it's helpful to know what is the culture of this company, and the former employers of the company are often a very helpful framing for that."
2. Proprietary scoring to prioritize the right companies
Synaptic’s data powers Avenir’s proprietary scores. One of them, the “grind score”, identifies companies where low work-life balance and high belief in the mission signal exceptional momentum.
"That grind score post was a great branding moment for us and it took me three minutes to build. Synaptic data plus Sigma made it trivial."
3. Powering "Savoir": Avenir's internal analytics platform
Built on Synaptic’s data foundation, Avenir’s proprietary platform Savoir brings together information from their CRM, Synaptic, and other sources into a single view.
Before investor meetings, the team can simply type a fund’s name to see which portfolio companies matter most to Avenir, who manages each relationship, their CRM status, and data signals.
What used to require manual research across multiple systems now happens instantly in a single view.
4. Supporting portfolio companies with data
The partnership's value extends beyond Avenir's internal operations.
"We have helped portfolio companies by finding them lists of potential customers through Synaptic"
The team surfaces potential customers, partners, and competitors for portfolio companies, turning their investor research into strategic support. The same data that drives Avenir’s investment decisions becomes a practical resource for founders.
The Synaptic Advantage: Scaling analytical firepower without scaling the team
Synaptic’s metadata and entity mappings form the backbone of Avenir’s data platform. These mappings connect disparate datasets and ensure each company / entity is correctly identified across sources.
"For a firm our size, building and refining our own data applications and workflows wouldn’t be possible without Synaptic. I'm sure there are firms that are bigger than us that have full teams doing this that are on our level, but it's pretty remarkable what we're able to achieve with a very lean focused team here."
The result: A genuine competitive advantage
When asked to rate their experience with Synaptic, Jared didn’t hesitate: “We’re at 10, we’re doing great.”
That reflects how Synaptic has strengthened every layer of Avenir’s process - powering their analytics platform, enabling proprietary scoring, adding more weight to their IC decks, and extending data-driven support to portfolio companies.
"There's no real substitute for Synaptic in our stack."
Synaptic has not received any compensation for this feedback and does not use Avenir’s advisory services or invest in funds managed by Avenir. Synaptic does receive compensation for its technology services.