A security upgrade comes with extra benefits for Aquamarine Capital

Background

Aquamarine is an investment partnership inspired by the original 1950s Buffett partnerships, run by Guy Spier, who follows a close replication of the original Buffett partnership rules. Managing millions of dollars in assets, the investment fund is steadily growing and relies on DocSend to securely manage their communications with prospects and other external parties.

The Challenge

Prior to Dropbox and DocSend, David Jud, Finance Manager at Aquamarine, shared that his organisation relied on outdated systems to store and internally share files among their global team. Additionally, the team was looking for a more secure way to externally share and track whitepapers with investors, prospects and other external parties.

The Solution

David turned to Dropbox’s file sync solution and DocSend’s secure document sharing platform to unify his organisation’s content storage, as well as safely distribute communications with prospects and other external parties.

A seamless way to sync and share files with Dropbox

As part of a fast-paced and globally distributed team that manages an investment fund, David is constantly collaborating with his teammates and communicating with investors, prospects and other external parties. Initially, Aquamarine was using legacy software to save and back up files. ‘We were having many issues with our legacy file storage system. We were unable to share files with individuals outside of our company or view documents that opened in a browser,’ David shared. Without a secure document sharing platform, David added, it was ‘challenging for us to communicate with people outside of our organisation.’ The team at Aquamarine needed a cloud-based system to sync and store their files from anywhere.

When the organisation switched over to Dropbox several years ago, they immediately felt the benefits of a purpose-built system that automatically backed up all of their important documents and investment research. ‘Someone on our team in the United States could be working on investor research and have a team member in Switzerland make comments on it simultaneously,’ David shared. Dropbox has become the team’s go-to file storage platform that makes it easier to work together from anywhere. ‘We are really happy with Dropbox,’ David adds.

Securely sharing whitepapers in DocSend

David is able to upload documents into DocSend and create protected links for people outside of the organisation to access industry whitepapers, reports and fact sheets. The files in DocSend are secured with an email whitelist, expiry dates and added password protection, limiting access to accredited individuals. These documents, originally housed in Dropbox for internal collaboration, are then shared externally using DocSend. Before a recipient opens a document, they sign an NDA in DocSend in a single click. Instead of managing multiple documents and links, Aquamarine’s NDA is custom-built into the document viewing experience within DocSend. All of this protection not only provides Aquamarine with peace of mind, but also allows for a frictionless user experience.

Tracking user engagement with thought leadership

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Guy Spier, Managing Partner of Aquamarine, launched a podcast called the Education of a Value Investor. Inspired by his book title of the same name, Spier holds conversations with influential thought leaders, covering everything from investment strategies, mindfulness, machine learning and more. The podcast has become a cornerstone of how the firm builds awareness and grows its network.

While Spier and his team were producing valuable pieces of content, it was difficult to keep track of individual user engagement among listeners accessing the material on a third-party host.

An innovative way David is solving this challenge is by including podcast transcripts in DocSend within each episode’s description. ‘DocSend is quite convenient. We upload our podcast transcripts into unique DocSend links and each viewer enters in their email before reading,’ David shared. Brand-new listeners who engage with the transcripts often become active members of Aquamarine’s network. With DocSend, David can keep track of these potential users and their journeys over time, while also enriching the overall listener experience by allowing access to the podcast in an alternative format. ‘I can receive notifications if certain episodes are gaining traction and I can see who is interacting with our content,’ David shared. DocSend makes the process of gating content intuitive, allowing anyone at the firm to create gated content and track listener engagement over time, regardless of technical marketing background.

DocSend’s intuitive integration with Salesforce

DocSend’s integration with Salesforce simplifies how David tracks user engagement with content. As someone who spends a lot of time in Salesforce, David is pleased that all viewer interactions with investor research housed in DocSend are also reflected on the account-level information in Salesforce. ‘It saves me a ton of time not having to switch back and forth between two softwares. We can see in Salesforce how people are interacting with documents we are sending out.’ For David, Salesforce is his single source of truth. DocSend enriches the basic insight he gets from Salesforce, providing ‘more granular data on how contacts are engaging with our content,’ David adds.

Virtual data rooms enrich investor conferences

Guy Spier holds an annual conference with peers to share updates on their investment research. Attendees present their findings and these presentations are confidential, so they need to be housed in a secure virtual environment.

David relies on DocSend’s virtual data rooms to hold conference materials and presentations that are shared with attendees. ‘It’s much easier for us to use a DocSend data room to hold all the conference presentations, rather than sending out twenty unique links to each attendee,’ David shared. Only an approved list of individuals can access the presentations prior to the conference in one easy-to-access data room.

Through the combined power of Dropbox and DocSend, Aquamarine has a streamlined way to update, manage and share content, whether with an employee internally or an external individual. ‘Dropbox and DocSend allow us to be extremely organised, buttoned up and proactive with all of our content management,’ David shared.