Venture Community saves 40%+ of its administrative time with Equisy

The Challenge

As Venture Community’s founder programmes grew, so did the administrative workload behind every application. Founders applied through a long Google Form with tick-box questions, written responses and links to pitch decks, cap tables and financial plans. For every applicant, Nick Dytczak Midworth, Head of Founder Programmes, had to export application forms as PDFs, download supporting documents, create individual Google Drive folders, review applications manually, hold 1-to-1 calls, determine shortlist eligibility, coordinate introductions to lead fellows, follow up with fellows, and maintain shared folders for fellows to browse for potential matches. With more than three applications arriving every day, and Nick managing the process alongside several other responsibilities within a small team, administration had become a significant bottleneck.

Our Solution

With Equisy, Venture Community redesigned its application process into a structured, two-stage journey.

1. A smarter first-stage assessment: a short, approximately 15-minute assessment captures the critical information needed to determine eligibility. An AI-powered scoring system helps identify applications that don’t meet key criteria (non-venture businesses, companies that are too early for the programme, and companies without a UK base or ambitions to establish one), which can be filtered out automatically.

2. More detailed applications for qualified founders: founders who pass the first stage are automatically invited to complete a more detailed second application, including documents, videos and more sophisticated conditional questions, giving the team a richer dataset without manually gathering and organising information.

3. One system for the founder pipeline: applications and supporting information are stored within Equisy, so the team manages founders through screening and the programme pipeline from one place instead of switching between forms, PDFs, downloaded files, Google Drive folders, email threads and spreadsheets.

4. AI-assisted matchmaking: founder and fellow information is brought together so Equisy can recommend potential matches. Nick maintains a human-in-the-loop approach, but the platform reduces the need to manually search for matches, chase fellows and coordinate introductions.

The Results

Equisy has already reduced Nick’s administrative workload by more than 40%, despite the platform not yet being fully configured with all of the integrations Venture Community plans to introduce.

– 40%+ time saved on administrative onboarding and matching tasks
– 3+ applications per day handled in one system for applications, screening and matching
– AI-assisted application scoring and matchmaking, with humans kept in control

Beyond efficiency, the team now screens more efficiently, captures better information from candidates who progress, minimises manual coordination, and has a scalable foundation for smarter matchmaking. Equisy has become part of Venture Community’s core software stack, and current and alumni founders from the community have gone on to purchase their own Equisy licences.