Overview

When I joined Aumni, it was a read-only platform. Investors uploaded legal deal documents, Aumni’s team parsed them, and users consumed the resulting insights. The system created trust — every number was sourced from signed legal documents — but it also created friction. Users wanted to move faster, explore their data, and tell their own stories without waiting for documents to be processed or corrected.

The challenge was clear:

How do we give users the freedom to interact with their data without compromising trust?

The Problem

Investors relied on Aumni’s accuracy but were frustrated by its rigidity.

They needed:

• Confidence that data came from verified legal sources.
• Flexibility to input or adjust information when legal docs weren’t yet available or were incomplete.
• Speed to answer urgent portfolio questions without waiting for manual data extraction.

Aumni’s read-only model couldn’t support both — trust and control were in tension.

The Insight

In user interviews with firms like a16z, General Catalyst, and Forerunner, we learned that investors viewed their data as living. They wanted a platform they could trust for source-backed accuracy and rely on as a workspace for real-time updates and modeling. The solution wasn’t “editable data" - It was a trusted, transparent system of contribution.

The Strategic Shift

We introduced the ability for users to input their own first-party data directly into Aumni — the biggest product strategy change in the company’s history.

It created a hybrid model:

• Document-sourced data remained the verified foundation.
• User-sourced data added agility, letting users fill gaps, test scenarios, and keep portfolios current.
  

Cap Table Comparison

The first feature to use this new model let investors upload and compare their own cap tables:

• Users could see how ownership evolved across rounds, directly within the interface.
• Visual comparisons highlighted dilution, new investors, and shifts in control.
• Clear markers distinguished Aumni-sourced data from user-entered data to preserve transparency and trust.
  

This was the first time users saw their data reflected live in the platform — immediate and interactive.

Investee Overview

We extended that interactivity to the Investee Overview Page — a high-level snapshot of each portfolio company.

Here, users could:

• Input up-to-date company valuations, new funding rounds, or transactions they participated in.
• View their ownership, cost basis, and performance metrics in one place.
• Understand both the verified history (from deal docs) and the current reality (from their own inputs).

Every design decision balanced credibility with control — showing users what was sourced, what was entered, and what had changed.