Private equity has operating playbooks. It now needs a relationship playbook.
Across your firm and portfolio companies, thousands of executives, board members, advisors, and operators have built powerful networks over decades. Yet those relationships remain fragmented, invisible, and under-leveraged.
Connect The Dots creates a secure, permissioned Portfolio Network Layer — making your fund's collective relationships visible, governed, and revenue-generating.
The Problem
Private equity firms have operating playbooks, deal playbooks, and integration playbooks. But the most valuable asset in the firm — the collective relationships of every partner, operating executive, sector specialist, and portfolio leader — has no playbook at all. It’s fragmented across inboxes, phones, and memories.
“The relationships exist. The firm just can’t see them.”
portfolio companies
employees across the portfolio
first-degree connections
Every PE firm has a CRM for direct contacts and individual LinkedIn accounts for second-degree connections. CTD gives you five capabilities neither tool can.
01
Your CRM shows your firm’s direct contacts
CTD shows second-degree connections across your entire firm — not just one person’s network, but the combined extended network of every partner, executive, and team member
02
LinkedIn only maps connections made on LinkedIn
CTD maps LinkedIn plus email and calendar — surfacing thousands of relationships per person that don’t exist on LinkedIn at all
03
LinkedIn can’t show your external network’s connections
When founders and connectors join as external members, their first-degree relationships become visible warm paths for the whole firm
04
LinkedIn doesn’t infer relationships
CTD detects relationships from overlapping employment history, shared board seats, and career signals — even when no direct email or LinkedIn connection exists
05
LinkedIn treats all connections the same
CTD scores every relationship using email interaction patterns, recency, career overlaps, and multiple signals — so you know who actually has a strong relationship, not just a connection
5x more relationships visible. CTD maps connections from email and calendar — not just LinkedIn — surfacing tens of thousands of contacts per person that would otherwise be completely invisible.
How CTD Scores Relationships
Explicit Signals
Email frequency and volume between two people
Email recency — how recently they last communicated
LinkedIn connection status
Calendar meetings — shared meetings and frequency
Implicit Signals
Career overlaps — worked at the same company during the same period
Shared board seats or advisory roles
Co-invested deals or shared portfolio involvement
Alumni networks — same university, program, or cohort
LinkedIn tells you two people are connected. CTD tells you how well — with full context on how the relationship started, what was discussed, and how recently they interacted. That’s what makes millions of connections actually leverageable.
Maria K.
VP Sales · GrowthCo
Strong relationship
Sara V.
CMO · Nexora
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Active email exchange — frequent, recent communication
Worked together at Acme Corp for 2 years — both VP-level
Lived in the same city during their time at Acme Corp
How It Works
01 Onboard your firm’s network
Partners, operating executives, and sector specialists sync their contacts. CTD deduplicates and enriches everything automatically.
02 Build the firm’s Supergraph
Every relationship across the firm is mapped, ranked by strength, and made searchable — including portfolio company leadership teams.
03 Search any target
Deal teams and portco executives search acquisition targets, enterprise prospects, or executive candidates and instantly see warm paths through the firm’s collective network.
04 Request warm, coordinated introductions
One-click intro requests go to the best-positioned connector, with timing managed to prevent overlap and connector fatigue.
05 Measure what matters
Track intro volume, meeting conversion, deals influenced, and revenue generated — turning relationship capital into a reportable, accountable asset.
From recruiting to events, see how firms activate their network to create value across the portfolio.
Your portfolio companies have target accounts they’re trying to break into. Your firm’s network already has paths to the decision-makers at those companies. CTD makes those paths visible.
See which executives at a portco’s target accounts are connected to your firm’s network
Filter by persona and seniority (VP, C-level, CXO)
View scored connection paths showing who in your network has the strongest relationship
Facilitate warm introductions on behalf of your portfolio companies
Share curated contact lists directly with portco sales teams
See which executives at a portco’s target accounts are connected to your firm’s network
Filter by persona and seniority (VP, C-level, CXO)
View scored connection paths showing who in your network has the strongest relationship
Facilitate warm introductions on behalf of your portfolio companies
Share curated contact lists directly with portco sales teams
Hosting a Marketing Leaders Dinner or industry gathering? Search your extended network for the right attendees — CMOs, VPs of Marketing, Growth Leaders — and coordinate warm introductions through the best-connected person.
Search across internal team, partners, founders, and extended network
Create dedicated event lists (e.g., “Marketing Event – May 2026”)
View strongest connection paths to each target attendee
Manage outreach in Kanban: Target → Intro Requested → Invite Sent → RSVP Confirmed
Higher response rates, stronger attendance quality, and clear outreach visibility
Surface proprietary deal flow by searching your extended network for connections to target companies, founders, and industries. When evaluating a potential investment, instantly see who in your firm’s network — partners, portfolio founders, advisors — has a relationship path into the company or knows the founding team.
Search for companies by industry, stage, size, or geography across your full network
See scored relationship paths to founders, executives, and board members
Run due diligence checks — find who in your network has worked with or invested alongside the target team
Save deal targets into lists and track through stages (Identified → First Meeting → DD → Term Sheet)
Share deal lists with partners for collaborative evaluation
Leverage portfolio founders’ networks to uncover warm paths you wouldn’t see internally
Invite portfolio founders as external members to create a network multiplier effect. Founders help founders, investors help portfolio companies, and the entire ecosystem becomes more connected and effective.
Expand visibility by inviting founders as external members (unlimited)
Expand visibility by inviting founders as external members (unlimited)
Founders gain access to the broader VC/PE ecosystem
Identify shared connections and strong paths across the full network
Portfolio companies can reciprocate by adding investors as external members
Creates a win-win: investors increase value, founders gain broader access
Use natural language search to find candidates (e.g., CROs or VPs of Sales in healthcare) across your firm’s entire network — partners, employees, and founders. CTD surfaces the strongest connection paths to each person.
Search by role, seniority, function, industry, location, and company size
Save candidates to lists and share with colleagues or portfolio companies
Manage candidates in Kanban view (Good Fit → Interview Scheduled → Hired)
Add notes and collaborate directly in-platform
Before conferences or LP meetings, CTD shows which attendees are connected to your firm’s network, so every conversation is warm and every meeting is intentional.
Help portfolio companies accelerate sales and build stronger pipelines
Source deals and expand your ecosystem through warm paths
Find and place top talent across your portfolio companies
"We sourced three add-on acquisitions last year through warm paths CTD surfaced. That's relationship capital finally doing real work."
"Our portcos now start with executive relationships on day one. CTD turned our operating partners' Rolodexes into a shared firm asset."
"The deal we closed through CTD's network — seven figures in net new revenue — paid for three years of the platform in one quarter."
FAQ
Everything you need to know about implementing CTD at your PE firm.
Your CRM tracks companies and deals. CTD maps the people — and more importantly, who across your entire firm already knows them. It's the layer between your firm's collective relationships and the deals you want to make.
CTD is designed for low-friction adoption. Partners sync contacts from existing tools (email, LinkedIn, etc.) in minutes. There's no manual data entry, and they can see immediate value in what the firm's collective network looks like.
CTD gives individuals control over what they share. Relationship paths are surfaced without exposing raw personal contact data — so it respects confidentiality while still enabling warm introductions.
Yes — on a controlled basis. The PE firm decides which portfolio companies have access, to what parts of the network, and for which use cases. All intro requests are coordinated and visible to firm leadership.
CTD manages this explicitly — prioritizing requests, tracking who has been asked for what, and preventing awkward overlap between companies in the same sector.
What CTD Does
Aggregates your entire firm’s network
Contacts from partners, operating executives, sector specialists, and portfolio leadership unified into one Relationship Supergraph.
Surfaces warm paths to acquisition targets
Instantly shows which firm members have relationships inside target companies for proprietary deal sourcing.
Accelerates portfolio company GTM
Portcos see exactly who in the firm network knows their target buyers — and request warm intros to start deals at the executive level.
Powers add-on M&A sourcing
Operating execs activate relationships to surface and engage add-on targets ahead of competitive processes.
Supports C-suite recruiting
Map firm-wide relationships to find trusted paths to executive candidates for portfolio company leadership needs.
Tracks relationship-driven outcomes
See which introductions converted to meetings, deals, and revenue — so the network is a measurable asset, not a soft benefit.
Time to make it work.
Connect The Dots. Inc.
548 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94104
