Dex for Investors
How to track founders, LPs, co-investors and dealflow sources in Dex, so a warm network stays warm between deals.
An investor's edge often comes down to who picks up the phone. The founder you passed on two years ago may be raising again. The LP you met at an annual meeting may be writing a new fund commitment. A scout who sent you one good deal will send another if you stay in touch.
Dex keeps those relationships in one place and tells you when each one needs attention. This guide walks through the setup, the groups that suit a fund or angel practice, and how to use Dex around sourcing, LP relationships and portfolio support.
Where Dex fits next to your deal tools
Dex isn't a deal pipeline. If your firm tracks stages, memos and IC decisions in Affinity, Attio or a spreadsheet, keep them there. Dex holds your own history with each person: what you discussed, who introduced you and when you last spoke. That history stays with you if you move firms, because Dex is your account and you can export your contacts as a CSV at any time.
Bring your network in
Connect Google under Settings → Workflow → Sync & Import/Export so Gmail and Google Calendar build each timeline. Outlook requires Professional, which also syncs multiple email accounts.
Connect LinkedIn sync from the Dex mobile or desktop app. Most investors will want Professional here, since it covers up to 9,000 connections against 2,500 on Premium.
Connect WhatsApp, and on a Mac use the desktop app for iMessage and phone calls. A lot of founder conversations happen in those threads.
Import a CSV of anything else, such as a past LP list or a conference attendee sheet. CSV import runs in the web app only.
Set up groups and tags for a fund
Keep groups broad and let tags carry the detail:
Portfolio founders
Prospective founders
LPs and prospective LPs
Co-investors and other GPs
Scouts and dealflow sources
Operators and portfolio-support experts
Tags then record sector, stage and geography, such as "climate", "pre-seed" or "London". The Groups filter supports "is all of", while the Tags filter matches any of the tags you pick. So if you need people who sit in two categories at once, make both categories groups.
Save views for the lists you return to. "Prospective founders, tagged climate, no interaction in 90 days" is a sourcing list you can open before any conference. Favorite it to pin it to your sidebar.
Custom fields hold the details tags can't, like stage, sector, your decision and who referred the founder. A filter on a Decision field then returns every founder you marked too early, which is a ready list when they raise again.
The map view, included on Premium, helps when you travel. Before a trip to New York, you can see who's there and fill the spare hour between meetings.
Keep the right relationships warm
Give each group a keep-in-touch frequency. Dex works out the next due date from the last interaction, so a call resets the clock by itself.
Portfolio founders: every month, on top of board meetings
LPs: every 3 months
Co-investors: every 3 months
Scouts: every 3 months
Founders you passed on: every 6 months
That last group pays off over time. A short note after a launch or a raise keeps the door open for the next company.
Use reminders for dated commitments, like "check back after their Series A closes in March". One-off and recurring reminders both appear on the contact's timeline.
Catch job changes and founder moves
With LinkedIn connected, Dex flags the title changes that matter: a new employer, a promotion, or someone starting or leaving a company. They show on Home and in your network update email. For an investor these are sourcing signals. A senior engineer leaving a portfolio company may be about to start something, and you want to hear about it first.
The Resurface section on Home also suggests past contacts worth reconnecting with, chosen by relevance. It skips anyone who already has a keep-in-touch frequency, so it tends to bring back people you'd otherwise have lost.
Prepare, take notes, follow up
Pre-meeting briefs arrive by email about 10 minutes before a meeting with up to four people, as long as Google is connected. They include attendees, recent email subjects, past meetings and your notes. Briefs are in beta and depend on Dex matching attendee emails to your contacts.
For a founder you've never met, run Dex Research on the contact to get a briefing on their background and current role. Premium includes 10 credits a month and Professional includes 20.
After the meeting, write the note while it's fresh: what they're building, what they asked for, what you promised. Notes are searchable, and Copilot reads them when you ask a question later. Conversation Memory adds to that by writing a short nightly note from WhatsApp, iMessage, LinkedIn and Instagram conversations.
Find people with Copilot
Copilot is at its best when you can't remember exactly who you're looking for:
"Who do I know at Stripe?"
"Which LPs haven't I spoken to this quarter?"
"Summarize my history with Elena."
"Draft an intro between Jordan and our portfolio founder Ana."
Copilot drafts and you send. It sees email metadata such as sender, subject and date, and never full bodies. It also can't search the content of your text messages, so look at the contact's timeline for that.
To send a personal note to a large group, like an LP update or a holiday message, use Mail Merge on Professional. It handles up to 200 contacts per campaign and sends from your own email account.
A weekly routine for investors
Clear the keep-in-touch contacts due on Home.
Read the title changes and send a congratulations or two.
Log any intros you made, and set a reminder to check how they went.
Open your sourcing view and pick two people to catch up with.
Frequently asked questions
Is Dex a replacement for Affinity or another deal CRM?
For most firms, no. Use a deal CRM for pipeline stages and firm-wide reporting, and Dex for your own relationships. Solo GPs and angels with a light pipeline often run on Dex alone, with a group or custom field for deal stage.
Can my partners see my contacts?
Your personal Dex is private. If your firm joins Dex for Teams, which is in early testing, each person chooses which contacts and accounts go into the shared workspace. That workspace can then show who on the team knows a given person.
How does Dex handle LP confidentiality?
Notes stay in your account. Dex for Teams lets each person decide whether the workspace sees email subjects and metadata only or the full content, and whether each note is shared. See the security page for how data is handled.
Can I track founder referrals in Dex?
Yes. Tag the source, or type @ in a contact's description to link the two people as related contacts. For more on working with investors from the other side of the table, read how founders connect with investors.
Get started
To run your network in Dex, connect your accounts, group founders, LPs and co-investors, give each group a cadence, and check job changes every week. Start with your LPs and portfolio founders, because those relationships are already live.
Start your free 6-day trial of Dex, or read more on the Dex for investors page. A card is required to start the trial, and you won't be charged until it ends.
Related guides
