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Capital Connect

B2B

CRM

Design Systems

Smart investor tracking for founders and bankers

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's venture fundraising platform. As lead designer, I took its Investor Engagement Tracking experience from 0 to 1, replacing a spreadsheet workflow founders and bankers had shared for decades.

Capital Connect

B2B

CRM

Design Systems

Smart investor tracking for founders and bankers

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's venture fundraising platform. As lead designer, I took its Investor Engagement Tracking experience from 0 to 1, replacing a spreadsheet workflow founders and bankers had shared for decades.

Capital Connect

B2B

CRM

Design Systems

Smart investor tracking for founders and bankers

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's venture fundraising platform. As lead designer, I took its Investor Engagement Tracking experience from 0 to 1, replacing a spreadsheet workflow founders and bankers had shared for decades.

Capital Connect

B2B

CRM

Design Systems

Smart investor tracking for founders and bankers

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's venture fundraising platform. As lead designer, I took its Investor Engagement Tracking experience from 0 to 1, replacing a spreadsheet workflow founders and bankers had shared for decades.

cms image

My role

Lead designer, IM and Track

Timeline

~16 months (2024)

Team

Peer designers, 3 PMs, 2 Eng pods (8 FE/10 BE)

Scope

0→1, concept to ship, user research

My role

Lead designer, IM and Track

Timeline

~16 months (2024)

Team

Peer designers, 3 PMs, 2 Eng pods (8 FE/10 BE)

Scope

0→1, Concept to ship, User research

My role

Lead designer, IM and Track

Timeline

~16 months (2024)

Team

Peer designers, 3 PMs, 2 Eng pods (8 FE/10 BE)

Scope

0→1, concept to ship, user research

My role

Lead designer, IM and Track

Timeline

~16 months (2024)

Team

Peer designers, 3 PMs, 2 Eng pods (8 FE/10 BE)

Scope

0→1, concept to ship, user research

01

Background

Designing for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's platform for venture-stage fundraising, a marketplace where founders run their raise and investors discover companies to back. It has three parts:

Designing for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's platform for venture-stage fundraising. It works in three connected parts:

Designing for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's platform for venture-stage fundraising, a marketplace where founders run their raise and investors discover companies to back. It has three parts:

Designing for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow

Capital Connect is J.P. Morgan's platform for venture-stage fundraising, a marketplace where founders run their raise and investors discover companies to back. It has three parts:

01

Deal marketing

Deal marketing

Where founders promote their raise to the right audience

Where founders promote their raise to the right audience

02

Investor matching

Investor matching

Where founders and investors find the right fit with each other


Where founders and investors find the right fit with each other

03

My focus

My Focus

Investor engagement tracking

Investor engagement tracking

Managing outreach and moving deals forward. My two products sit here: IM for founders, Track for bankers.

Managing outreach and moving deals forward. My two products sit here: IM for founders, Track for bankers.

My role

I joined in 2022 as the platform entered beta with almost no design foundation, and led design on IM and Track over the next ~16 months, from discovery to release. My focus was Engagement tracking, where founders manage outreach and move deals forward after the first connection.

The outcome

The team's bet was to take fundraising from a high-touch service to a self-serve product, digitizing 11 of 14 steps while preserving the 3 moments where human relationships drive the most value. In its first year, Capital Connect drove $100M+ in capital raised across 17 fundraises, onboarding 1000+ investors and 800+ companies.

Life cycle of a fundraising deal

Founder

Wants to find the right investors and engage with them efficiently

Banker

Connect companies with the right investors and guide deals forward

Investor

Stay informed on opportunities and evaluate them quickly

02

Research

Zooming in on investor engagement tracking

The stretch of a fundraise from first outreach to close, studied with the people who live it.

Zooming in on investor engagement tracking

The stretch of a fundraise from first outreach to close, studied with the people who live it.

0+

User interviews

Series A and B, with bankers as research leads

0+

User interviews

Series A and B, with bankers as research leads

0+

Cross-functional sessions

PMs, engineers, legals. Aligned on scope before commit

Method 01

Shadowing & user interviews

Sat with founders and bankers through a live raise, mapping their real workflow against industry norms.

Method 02

Priority mapping

We mapped each job by impact and time burden, surfacing where to start.

Method 03

Requirements & constraints gathering

Brought PM, engineering, and design together early to align on goals, scope, and limits before building.

Sarah Johnson

Founder of Northstar Finance

San Francisco

PST

"I'm raising while running the company. I can't afford to lose track of who's interested and what comes next."

Goal

Find and target the right fintech investors and keep every conversation moving toward a close.

Frustration

Outreach lives across email and spreadsheets, it's difficult to navigate fund raising process. Cold intros go nowhere, and progress is impossible to see at a glance.

Need

One place to track every investor, their interest, and the next step, with J.P. Morgan bankers' expertise when she needs it.

Marcus Reid

Banker of J.P. Morgan

Banker of J.P. Morgan

New York City

EST

"I want my time where it moves a deal forward, with founders who need an intro or a push to close."

Goal

Guide each deal forward at the key moments, collaborating with founders in one shared flow instead of working in parallel.

Frustration

Routing everything through him recreates the bottleneck. He becomes the middleman for updates founders could manage on their own.

Need

A shared workspace where founders run their own outreach, and he steps in where his network and judgment matter.

Tools

Investor research

Data room

Communication

03

Problem and solution

One deal, many tools, and no single source of truth

Problem

Problem

Problem

Founders and bankers each kept their own tracker. The same list got maintained twice and drifted apart.

Solution

Solution

IM for founders, Track for bankers. Both roles work from one shared list they can edit together.

Problem

Users needed to track both the firm's overall interest and each person's progress, but a flat list forced both onto one row and made neither readable.

Solution

The investor row splits into two levels. The firm level rolls up progress across the firm. Expand it to see each contact and where they stand.

Problem

Users needed to track both the firm's overall interest and each person's progress, but a flat list forced both onto one row and made neither readable.

Solution

The investor row splits into two levels. The firm level rolls up progress across the firm. Expand it to see each contact and where they stand.

Problem

Users needed to track both the firm's overall interest and each person's progress, but a flat list forced both onto one row and made neither readable.

Solution

The investor row splits into two levels. The firm level rolls up progress across the firm. Expand it to see each contact and where they stand.

Problem

Users needed to track both the firm's overall interest and each person's progress, but a flat list forced both onto one row and made neither readable.

Solution

The investor row splits into two levels. The firm level rolls up progress across the firm. Expand it to see each contact and where they stand.

Problem

Founders' cold outreach frequently got no reply. But not every investor needed a banker, and routing everything through them would recreate the old bottleneck.

Solution

Founders choose how to reach each investor: send a direct invite, or request a warm introduction, a personal referral from their banker to an investor in their network.

Problem

Founders' cold outreach frequently got no reply. But not every investor needed a banker, and routing everything through them would recreate the old bottleneck.

Solution

Founders choose how to reach each investor: send a direct invite, or request a warm introduction, a personal referral from their banker to an investor in their network.

Problem

Founders' cold outreach frequently got no reply. But not every investor needed a banker, and routing everything through them would recreate the old bottleneck.

Solution

Founders choose how to reach each investor: send a direct invite, or request a warm introduction, a personal referral from their banker to an investor in their network.

Problem

Founders' cold outreach frequently got no reply. But not every investor needed a banker, and routing everything through them would recreate the old bottleneck.

Solution

Founders choose how to reach each investor: send a direct invite, or request a warm introduction, a personal referral from their banker to an investor in their network.

04

Outcome

Two products, one shared workflow — IM for founders, Track for bankers

Find the right investors and build a shortlist

Every investor is scored against the deal profile and filtered by industry, check size, and fit.

Track every investor in one view

Shortlisted investors land in a single view of outreach and interest, with status, history, and last contact in one place. Collapse for firm-level status, or expand to act on individual contacts.

Invite investors without starting from scratch

Reach out individually or in bulk. Guided templates give founders a starting draft, so outreach never begins from a blank page.

Both sides working from the same picture

Each founder gets a dedicated Track. The banker sees the full investor list with scores, status, outreach, and meeting progress, mirroring what the founder works from so both sides stay on the same picture.

Surface what needs attention

A side panel pulls together the tasks, pending invites, and follow-ups tied to each firm, so the next action is always clear without digging through the list.

Step in on warm intros

When a founder requests a warm introduction, it reaches the banker as an actionable request. The banker reviews the match and either makes the introduction or declines, stepping in only where their network moves the deal forward.

05

Challenge

Where do we honor existing mental models, and where do we introduce something new?

Where do we honor existing mental models, and where do we introduce something new?

Current workflow

Founders and bankers had run on the same spreadsheet template for decades, and their time is scarce. The hard part was not building a better tool. It was getting them to give up a familiar workflow for a new one, willingly.

The tension

Push too hard on a redesign and you disrupt active deals. Go too soft and you ship a digital spreadsheet.

A phased rollout that earned trust before changing how people work.

A phased rollout that earned trust before changing how people work.

01

Get user started fast

Match the columns and filters users already knew, so the tool felt familiar before it felt different.

What was shipped

  • Spreadsheet-familiar interface

  • Same columns and filters

02

Make progress visible

Introduce firm and individual status, so users can see where each relationship stands.

What was shipped

  • Firm and individual status

  • Outreach status bar

03

Automate manual work

Connect the steps users had been doing by hand, now that the tool had earned its place.

What was shipped

  • One-click direct intro

  • Status automation

  • Task side panel

Built apart and designed as one

Built apart and designed as one

IM ran first so Track never started from scratch. The pods built separately and synced at automation, while design held the line throughout to keep one coherent experience.

IM ran first so Track never started from scratch. The pods built separately and synced at automation, while design held the line throughout to keep one coherent experience.

06

Handoff

From every edge case to a system that scales

Mapped every interaction and edge case down to the detail, then pushed those learnings up into the platform's shared design system as it scaled.

From every edge case to a system that scales

Mapped every interaction and edge case down to the detail, then pushed those learnings up into the platform's shared design system as it scaled.

Handoff without guesswork

I specified every state and interaction up front, so the build was a shared reference instead of a back-and-forth. By making the spec the single source of truth, I gave engineers, PMs, and design one place to align, so decisions got made once, not relitigated.

Scaled from product to platform

I resolved them in my product and pushed the findings up as scalable patterns and tokens, so a decision made once could hold across the platform.

07

Impact

Live since Q2 2022, iterated across two years on the platform

Launch was step one. From the first pilot with bankers and founders, we iterated through two years of research, 20+ features, and every real fundraise that tested the platform.

Live since Q2 2022, iterated across two years on the platform

Launch was step one. From the first pilot with bankers and founders, we iterated through two years of research, 20+ features, and every real fundraise that tested the platform.

0M+

Raised across 17 live fundraises

0+

Companies onboarded

0+

VCs and institutional investors

08

Reflection

What I learned from designing for trust before reinvention

What I learned from designing for trust before reinvention

Investor engagement tracking is a decades-old workflow, and much of it still runs on people meeting and talking directly, bankers and founders building trust in person and on the phone. Automate too much too fast and you strip out the human judgment that is the nature of the work. The new technology could live behind the interface, but what users saw had to feel like the way they already worked and trusted every day.

To start, I kept the navigation plain and familiar, matched the columns and filters they already used, and resisted complexity they never asked for. Adoption was not won by giving them more. It was won by fitting the way they already worked, instead of asking them to adjust to something new.

Investor engagement tracking is a decades-old workflow, and much of it still runs on people meeting and talking directly, bankers and founders building trust in person and on the phone. Automate too much too fast and you strip out the human judgment that is the nature of the work. The new technology could live behind the interface, but what users saw had to feel like the way they already worked and trusted every day.

To start, I kept the navigation plain and familiar, matched the columns and filters they already used, and resisted complexity they never asked for. Adoption was not won by giving them more. It was won by fitting the way they already worked, instead of asking them to adjust to something new.

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Background

Research

Problem & Solution

Outcome

Challenge

Handoff

Impact

Reflection

Copyright © 2026 Ting Fang Cheng

Copyright © 2026 Ting Fang Cheng

Copyright © 2026 Ting Fang Cheng

Copyright © 2026 Ting Fang Cheng