Q2 AI Survey · Internal

How the team is using
Claude at Stripes

Adoption, value, and sentiment across 16 respondents. Skills and connectors were both two-box (“Have Used” and “Most Valuable”) — shown side by side.

n = 16
Stripes vs Other Firms
4.7
1 = behind, 5 = far ahead
1
2
3
4
5
Claude Effectiveness
3.7
How well Claude finds answers
1
2
3
4
5
Understanding of Skills
3.4
Self-rated familiarity
1
2
3
4
5
Detail

Skills & connectors, two-box view

Side-by-side bars for the two checkboxes on the survey: who used it, and who marked it most valuable.

Sourcing & Research

10 items · n=16
Skill
UsedMost Valuable
Deals SharePoint
Search evaluated deal documents
5
1
Enterprise Dream List
Enterprise pipeline from Notion
4
2
Pipeline Tracker
Weekly deal flow and active deals
3
0
Connection Hunt
Find warm intro paths via LinkedIn
2
1
Signal Scan
scan companies for catalyst events
2
0
Owned Companies
News and changes on your company board
2
0
SONAR Signals
company signal reports and scores
1
1
Network Intel
Who do we know at a company
0
1
PitchBook Network Map
Shared investors, board members, deal overlaps
0
0
Signal Draft
Draft outreach from signal catalysts
0
0

Meeting Prep & Outreach

7 items · n=16
Skill
UsedMost Valuable
Consumer Meeting Prep
Briefing for consumer company meetings
4
1
Outreach Email
Cold outreach, follow-ups, pass notes
4
1
Enterprise Meeting Prep
Briefing for enterprise company meetings
3
4
Investor Meeting Prep
Briefing for meetings with other VCs/PE firms
2
0
Executive Intro Email
Double-sided intro between two parties
1
1
Schedule Outreach
Set follow-up dates on your Monday board
1
0
Meeting Scheduler
Find open time and book meetings
0
0

Diligence & Analysis

10 items · n=16
Skill
UsedMost Valuable
IC Contrarian
Stress-test IC memos, devil's advocate
4
2
Board Meetings
Summarize board decks, track against base case
4
1
Earnest Analytics
Cohort retention, cross-shop, spend trends
3
1
Google Trends
Search interest and trending queries
3
0
Public Comp
Public company comparable data and trading comps
3
0
Research Hub
Multi-source research across FRED, BLS, IMF, SEC, etc.
3
0
US Census Data
Demographics, income, population by geography
3
0
Expert Transcript Lookup
Find Tegus/AlphaSights calls in Notion
2
1
Glassdoor
Employee sentiment and culture intel
2
0
HCUP Data
US hospital procedure costs, volumes, utilization
0
0

Operations & Portfolio

13 items · n=16
Skill
UsedMost Valuable
Advisor Directory
Look up Tech Council, CISO Council, and executive advisors
4
1
Advisor Intelligence
Deep intel on advisor POVs, themes, and meeting history
3
1
Network Intros
Track intro counts and high priority deal board
3
1
DocSend Capture
Capture DocSend slides to PDF and file to SharePoint
3
0
Quarterly LP Update
Draft LP portfolio update bullets from board decks
3
0
NDA Reviewer
Redline NDAs against the Stripes Ontra playbook
2
0
Portfolio Company Lookup
Portco financials, ARR, margins, thesis, competitors
2
0
Connectors Router
Route to social media, PitchBook, GWI, Similarweb, Harmonic
1
0
Newsletter Scanner
Scan email newsletters for company mentions and signals
1
0
SONAR Notes
Add notes about companies and track them in SONAR
1
0
Validate Data
Source check, fact-check, and export data provenance
1
0
Watermark
Stamp LP decks with watermarks and save to SharePoint
1
0
Signal Followup
Track outreach sequences and draft follow-up emails
0
0
In their words

Open-ended responses

Verbatim from the survey — pulled from the source spreadsheet.

What's working

15 responses
Sarah
Automating repetitive, tedious tasks in Excel with Claude
Danielle
claude is helpful in streamlining reviews of quarterly reporting deliverables (i.e. PCAP statements, investment one-pagers, excel workbooks). Having office hours has also been very helpful.
Ryan
The availability of the data team to answer any questions and provide guidance on new updates in Claude has been super impressive.
Ken
the leadership, commitment of the team has been awesome. i don't have any benchmarking data.
Casey
there's a lot of support from the tech team and we are learning how to build and work within Claude; Stripes seems to be far ahead of other companies in terms of AI; office hours are helpful to learn
Hannah
data team helping us build and trouble shoot
Ron
-speed of transformation -resourcing against the problem space -learning mindset / curiousity - good ideas coming from everywhere
Brooke
Lots of educating, hands on support, and the new web app tool is amazing!!!
Bryan
Rapid rollout and adoption of skills across teams and workflows
Lucy
Creating powerpoints in Claude, shared skills I've found to be helpful, the communication and help that the data team has provided is great and super helpful
Jim
- Strong progress integrating all of Stripes datasets which is critical - Office hours are great and feedback is being taken and executed really quickly, think its leading to a lot of fast progress and better focus
Kaylee
The data team! And all the amazing work they've done!
Allie
Having a variety of tools to utilize to start working to build with and having the data team's assistance in navigating that. Office hours have been helpful to have a set aside time to ask questions and get more hands-on experimentation of the new tools we've rolled out.
Monica
Strong internal alignment, dedicated team of resources with positive attitudes around helping whenever / however. Feels like things are moving super quickly which is great.
Jessica
Impressive rollout

What isn't working

12 responses
Sarah
There are many tools to learn, which can feel somewhat overwhelming.
Ken
need to be relentless to get all data online and the energy put against this challenge needs to persist
Casey
there is a lot of information at once sometimes it can feel overwhelming digesting it all and seeing what might be applicable; for finance team specifically there is a lot of nuance in some of the tasks we do that are time consuming so it will be interesting to see how we can continue to build some things out
Ron
-once we go through this deployment + experimentation phase, we will need to move towards a phase of integration + optimization... i..e really concentrate the resources on the things that matter the most (scoring, prioritization, deep and differentiated diligence) that will move the needle for how we find and invest in the best companies
Brooke
Scheduled tasks - I haven't set up very many because the few I have don't work great.
Bryan
More room for improvement in 1) sourcing (scoring / company recommendations) and 2) accuracy of responses - at times Claude skills rely on the wrong info source for a given question (ie portco questions should go straight to internal data, not to pitchbook), 3) Claude stability / response times
Lucy
I feel like it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the options and define what the 'end goal' is in a more tangible way
Jim
- One of the best uses of AI should be taking all our past closed deals and passes and synthesizing the common threads, patterns and biases that we should be aware of on the next deal, haven't seen any of this yet - For example, 100% or 80% of our 3x+ investments all had these 3-5 factors and likewise most poor investments had XX attributes as well - More focus on standard AI tools for sourcing - many AI companies are already tackling using AI for diligence and this is already commoditized, getting there first and building the best relationships with companies is where team members will be needed and can build Stripes' edge
Kaylee
Still having a hard time understanding my potential with AI
Allie
Feels like there's been a bit of start here, now stop, and start using this other tool here- some of this likely is inevitable in this type of change/transition. I appreciate the AI office hours, but would apprecaite seeing more focused team-specific AI working sessions. For some things, it feels more beneficial to have smaller groups together to understand more of our team priorities, the path we are focused on, and how some of our individual AI updates can fit into the team's end goal updated AI/workflow picture.
Monica
I personally feel behind as a leader - know my team is all using it well and coming up the curve, building everyday but with my own schedule I haven’t been able to prioritize learning myself - although I know it’s super easy once you start. But I feel less capable today given lack of time to experiment as a builder myself. Would love some more hands on help there at some point. I don’t feel I fully understand all the capabilities and don’t want to be behind. Also would love to understand what others are building across the organization to learn what and how we can use better. I think / wonder if there are other admin capabilities or cross functional capabilities that we should build and roll out as a priority that could be helpful like with scheduling? Know there’s some tinkering there but not sure how much it’s been used or effective. There’s so much evolving and happening or rolling out each day - not sure I or others are able to keep up with everything availability, and how to use.
Jessica
Implementing into my daily tasks while working through my projects seems to be time consuming/keep running into errors that I have trouble figuring out but need to come back to after my tasks/projects are completed

Heard from other firms

5 responses
Hannah
from everything i've heard, we're way ahead the curve
Ron
-using it more for rigorous analytical purposes and/or selling - i.e. building the Waymo pricing dashboard and projection, for example
Brooke
No - I don't have many friends in finance but across the board, all of my friends' companies are behind us
Lucy
Nothing different from what we're doing already - maybe certain people at the firms are more advanced in what they're building in claude but nothing super notable
Monica
Not yet

What they want to see next

1 responses
Lucy
Same as above - really just becoming more advanced in Claude which we're already starting to do

Data sources to connect

7 responses
Ron
- cleansed / normalized data from our own past CIMs / research - ability to easily initiate agents that can go get specific data and track it longitudinally over time
Brooke
our events platform (Gatsby), portfolio list, something that deeply understands what the companies in our pipeline do and their ICP
Lucy
We're working on Thrive which is great! That's the main thing that comes to mind for mem right now.
Jim
We need a consumer sourcing dashboard ranking the best companies in Enigma and Earnest by key metrics, that search and filterable by sector, etc. I started asking about the Earnest dashboard I think over a year ago at this point. It is our #1 source of sourcing data (shows growth and retention) and we need to utilize it to its fullest.
Kaylee
Alphasense
Allie
Allvue, QuickBooks and banking/brokerage platforms (if possible)
Jessica
OFAC / Political contributions public databases / SEC releases
Proprietary & Confidential
Q2 AI Survey · n=16 · Internal data team