Cloze Is a ‘Must Have’ for Me

We are founding investors in Cloze. But, I’m writing this because Cloze is an app I use every day, multiple times a day. I can access it on my laptop or my mobile devices. A game-changer for me.

Along with email, calendar and weather, Cloze has become a “must have” in my life.

I think of Cloze as an “automated and personal CRM system.” It organizes and prioritizes the following by person and by company: emails, social media links, phone calls, meetings, and Evernotes.

Here are my use cases:

Track other VCs. Cloze easily lets me track their blog posts and speaking events. Also, I can see with which entrepreneurs they are meeting. I also can guess as to who is fundraising, when I see a rise in LinkedIn connections with LPs. It’s an open secret that some of the big firms have invested in web crawlers to do all this. At Kepha, we just use Cloze.

Prioritize social media. Cloze automatically calculates who are my “closest” contacts. It then serves up, by person, all of that person’s social media activity since I last used Cloze. I can retweet, give a like, comment, etc., within Cloze. And, I can schedule those responses, à la Hootsuite and Buffer. So, one panel does it all for me. I also can set up lists, such as all of our portfolio companies, our investors, and other VCs. So, I can focus on the right people in an organized way vs. the constant and fairly random Twitter-LinkedIn-Facebook newsfeeds. No more jump ball.

Prioritize my email. I’m on vacation. I check email a few times a day. Do I really want to go through all 100? Well, Cloze can filter my emails to show those from my closest contacts, and, show me emails from the most important folks in my life. So, I have a list called “Top Peeps,” and included in it are: family, Eric and Ed, our CEOs, and our investors. So, this feature in Cloze lets me stay connected in a low-stress way while on vacation. I can look at everyone else’s emails/social media when I get back to the office.

Efficiently lets me look up people. I often get this email: “Hey Jo, been a while, hope all is well. Wanted to tell you about our recent pivot.” I can look up that person and then see: every single email exchange I’ve ever had with that person, all of his/her activity on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and, also, when my last phone call with that person was. I also can easily look up his/her LinkedIn profile. Quick and easy.

Helps me prep for a meeting. Cloze knows my calendar. I have a 2 pm meeting with Mr. X. I can click on that calendar item and again see all of my prior emails with that person, his/her social media activity, etc. No more bouncing around from calendar to email to Twitter-LinkedIn-Facebook. One and done.

Organizes my notes. Let’s say I hear a name and am pretty certain I saw his/her last company. I take a lot of notes, as I meet with a lot of people and companies. Cloze is now integrated with Evernote. Cloze will scan my notes for people’s names and company names. So, I can easily see what I’ve written about that person/company in the past. No more hunting around feebly in various notebooks, both online and offline.

Automatically updates my contacts. Cloze scans people’s email footers, sees if there’s a new phone number, and will then ask me if I want to add that new number to my Rolodex. So easy.

Helps me ping people. I meet a promising entrepreneur. Later, Cloze will prompt me to reach out to him/her: “You usually connect with that person every 60 days, and you’re overdue now.”

Track who opens my emails. I can send email through Cloze (it’s not a separate system but instead interacts with Google Apps) and turn on a feature to see when that person opens my email. And, Cloze will let me set an auto reminder if that person doesn’t reply to me. Sneaky, I know, but effective.

Handy email templates. Cloze has some there and lets me easily add my own. Example: “Hey, great to hear from you. Yes, would love to meet. What works for you?” Click, boom, done.

I can see who is looking for a new job. A sudden LinkedIn profile update usually means something is up. That person could be a great fit for our portfolio. And, if someone already in our portfolio is dramatically increasing his/her LinkedIn activity, I’m going to assume that person is thinking of interviewing for a new job. I will want our CEO to intervene and make “a save.”

Cloze lets me do other things, but I’ll stop there.

Incredible efficiency and true market intelligence. I love Cloze.

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