Venture Capital Case Study: Underscore VC

James Orsillo is Partner and Chief Financial and Operating Officer at Underscore VC, and executive support is one of his responsibilities. When James contacted Prialto, Underscore had one assistant supporting six executives. While James knew they needed to add support he was wary of hiring and training new executive assistants only to have them quit. 

“We had gone through some of the pain of hiring and training people and they leave, and you start over,” he said. “The executive assistant was a high turnover position in every company I have worked at, and I saw Prialto’s model as a way to avoid that.” 

The bottom line: “We want to make sure that everyone has adequate resources without adding more management overhead, and a solution that could grow and flex to our exact needs,” James said. “Prialto’s managed service model gives us a lot of options to tailor administrative services for different executives and can grow with us.” 

Accelerate adding executive assistants without the cost and disruption of hiring, training, and frequent turnover. 

Seamless Admin Support

Underscore started with two Prialto Productivity Assistants (PAs) to schedule executive meetings, coordinate travel and file expenses for two partners. “One of the partners told me how much value the PAs were adding beyond calendar and expense management, doing project work too, so we expanded from there and brought a PA in to support myself too.”  

“There are a bunch of things that are important, and there are things that you need me to do, like wire money” James said. “But I'm not the only person that can send an email to someone to schedule an important meeting.” 

Core Processes 

Calendar and Expense Management

Underscore executives use an assortment of codes for types of meetings, priority levels, how soon it needs to be scheduled, and how long the meeting should be, and the Prialto PAs learned the codes quickly and ran with the system. PAs also prepare expense reports for executives to save the time it takes to find and copy receipts and enter line items and billing codes. 

Data Management for Budgets and Fund Allocations 

James developed custom processes for uploading financial data for budgets and fund allocation that required the PA to fill out forms, get signatures, and closeout workflows. “This was something new and different and my PA took it and ran with it,” James said. 

Daily Schedules

PAs compile schedules for the next day’s meetings for executives and send them at the end of the previous days so the executives always know what the next day will bring.