Help Center

Yes. The first time you sign in, a welcome dialog offers Load sample data — this fills your workspace with a realistic sample portfolio (companies, rounds, funds, and updates) so you can explore every feature before entering real deals. Prefer a blank slate? Choose Start with an empty account instead.

Sample data is only offered for a new, empty workspace. When you're ready to start fresh, clear it from Settings → Danger Zone → Delete investment data, then add your own.

From the Portfolio page, click + Add investment in the top-right corner. A modal will open where you choose between a Direct Investment (equity in a company), a Venture Fund, or an Equity Grant.

For a direct investment, enter the company name, website (optional — used to fetch the logo), investment date, amount, and stage. For a fund, enter the fund name, manager, commitment amount, and first close date. For an equity grant, enter the company name, grant date, shares granted, and current value. Click Save and it will appear in your portfolio immediately.

Click + Add investment and toggle to Venture Fund at the top of the modal. You'll be prompted for fund name, manager, strategy, first close date, and commitment amount. Called capital, NAV, and distributions can be added or updated later from the fund's edit page.

Open the investment from your portfolio table and click Edit investment → in the drawer (or navigate directly to the edit page). Update the Fair value field to reflect the current mark. Pinion tracks a history of fair value changes so you can see how your mark has evolved.

Yes. On the investment's edit page, change the Status to Exited or Written off. Exited investments prompt you to enter the exit date and proceeds. Written-off investments are marked at $0. Both statuses are hidden from the default portfolio view when the Hide exits toggle is on.

Go to Settings → Import. Download the template, fill in your investments and funds, and upload the file. See the Import from Excel section below for full details.

Investments are grouped by the year of the investment date and sorted within each year by date. You can switch between Oldest first and Newest first using the sort toggle at the top of the table — this preference is saved across sessions.

MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital) is the ratio of current value to the amount invested.

For direct investments, Current Market Value is the fair value you've entered (or the investment amount if no mark has been set). For exited positions it uses the exit proceeds. For written-off positions it is $0.

For funds, MOIC is calculated on called capital (not total commitment), since uncalled capital hasn't been deployed yet:

IRR (Internal Rate of Return) uses the XIRR method — it accounts for the actual timing of each cash flow, not just a simple annualized return. Every investment date is treated as a cash outflow; today's portfolio value (plus any exit proceeds and fund distributions) is treated as the terminal inflow.

IRR requires at least two data points to calculate meaningfully. If you see "Insufficient data", add more investments with different dates and update their fair values.

TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In) is the overall multiple on your entire portfolio — direct investments and funds combined. Equity grants that have Include in portfolio MOIC enabled also contribute to the numerator.

TVPI is shown in green when ≥ 1× (above cost) and red when below 1×. A TVPI of 1.0× means your portfolio is exactly at cost.

When you add an investment you can optionally enter the post-money valuation at the time of investment. This is stored as the initial fair value and used to calculate your starting MOIC. You should update the fair value field over time to reflect the current mark — the Valuation at Cost is just the starting point.

Equity Grants let you track equity compensation — restricted stock, common stock, ISOs, and NQSOs — alongside your direct investments and venture funds. Common uses include board compensation, advisory shares, or any equity received without a cash outlay.

To add a grant, click Add investment and choose the Equity Grant tab. You can record shares granted, grant date, current value, and vesting progress. The full edit page (accessible by clicking the grant name) lets you add strike price, FMV at grant, vesting schedule, and notes.

The type tabs (All / Direct / Funds / Grants) filter by investment type. The status tabs (All / Active / Exited / Written off) filter by status. The Hide exits toggle hides exited and written-off investments regardless of the status filter — it persists across page refreshes. The search box matches company name, fund name, manager name, and tags.

Insights turns your portfolio into a set of charts so you can see how it's performing at a glance — concentration, return distribution, performance by category, and allocation. Open it from Insights in the sidebar; the charts update automatically from your investments, funds, and their current marks.

• Power Law — how much of your total value comes from your top few deals
• MOIC Distribution — how your investments are spread across return multiples
• Performance by Vehicle / Sector — average return broken down by how you invested and by industry
• Realized vs. Unrealized Value — cash already returned from exits vs. the estimated value of active positions
• Portfolio Composition by Return — a waterfall of which positions are driving the portfolio
• Check Size vs. Outcome and Time to Signal — scatter plots probing whether check size or hold time relate to returns
• Vintage Year Performance — returns grouped by the year you invested
• Allocation by Sector / Stage — where your capital is concentrated

Yes. If you track venture funds, Insights includes a fund section: called vs. uncalled capital, Fund MOIC Distribution, Fund Vintage Performance, and commitment by Strategy and by Manager.

The sector, stage, vehicle, and vintage breakdowns rely on those fields being set on each investment. Fields left blank — common right after an Excel import, which doesn't carry them — are grouped as uncategorised. Open an investment's edit page to fill them in, and customise the available options under Settings → General → Preferences.

Investor updates is a feature that lets you log the updates you receive from portfolio companies (founder emails, quarterly PDFs, etc.) and get an AI-powered summary, sentiment score, and key metrics extracted automatically. It's available on Family and Team plans.

Navigate to a company's edit page and scroll to the Investor Updates section. Click Add investor update. You can submit:

• Text only — paste the email body directly
• PDF only — upload the update as a PDF (drag-and-drop or browse)
• Email + PDF — paste the email body and attach the PDF for AI to read both together

After you submit, a Analyzing… badge appears. Processing typically takes 10–30 seconds. The row updates automatically when it's done.

Sentiment is scored from −100 to +100 by AI based on five signals from the update:

• Revenue trajectory (30%)
• Burn / runway health (25%)
• Team and execution signals (20%)
• Market and competitive position (15%)
• Founder tone (10%)

0 is neutral. Positive scores indicate a healthy, progressing business. Negative scores indicate material concerns. The chip shows green for scores ≥ +20, red for scores ≤ −20, and grey in between.

The period label (e.g. "Q2 2025" or "August 2025") identifies which reporting period the update covers. Pinion uses it to sort updates chronologically on the company page and to calculate the sentiment delta between consecutive updates.

AI extracts the period from the PDF cover page, subject line, or document header. If it gets it wrong, click the pencil icon next to the period tag on the update detail page to correct it.

Yes. Hover over the update row in the company's Investor Updates table and click the ✕ button that appears on the right. A confirmation prompt will appear before deletion.

Yes. Click Search in the sidebar to open the full-text search page. It searches the raw text of every processed update across your entire portfolio — useful for finding every company that mentioned a specific topic, metric, or person.

Results are ranked by relevance and show a highlighted snippet of the matching passage. Click any result to open the update detail page, where the matching terms are highlighted throughout the full text and a match navigator lets you jump between occurrences.

1. Go to Settings → Import
2. Click Download template to get the pre-formatted workbook
3. Fill in the Investments sheet with your direct investments and the Funds sheet with your venture funds — delete the sample row before importing
4. Drag the completed file onto the drop zone, or click to browse and select it
5. Pinion validates the file and shows how many rows it found — review, then click Import

Investments sheet:

• Company Name — required
• Website — optional; used to fetch the company logo
• Investment Date — required; format: MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD
• Amount ($) — required; number only (no $ sign needed)
• Valuation at Cost ($) — optional; the post-money valuation at time of investment

Funds sheet:

• Fund Name — required
• Manager — optional
• Strategy — optional (e.g. Early Stage, Multi-Stage)
• First Close Date — required; same date formats as above
• Commitment ($) — required
• Called Capital ($), Current NAV ($), Distributions ($), Notes — all optional

Import is additive only — it never overwrites existing data. If a company with the same name already exists in your portfolio, the imported investment round is added to that company rather than creating a duplicate. If no matching company is found, a new one is created.

Pinion validates the file before importing. If any rows have missing required fields or invalid dates or amounts, the entire import is blocked and a list of errors is shown with the row number and issue. Fix the errors in your spreadsheet and re-upload — nothing is imported until the file is clean.

Sector, stage, vehicle, tags, and vintage year (for funds) cannot be set via import. After importing, open each investment's edit page to fill in those details. These fields affect how your portfolio is broken down in the Insights view.

A workspace is a shared container for a portfolio. All investments, funds, and updates belong to a workspace. By default you have a solo workspace. On Family and Team plans you can invite additional members to collaborate on the same portfolio.

1. Go to Settings → Members
2. Enter the invitee's email address and click Send invite
3. They'll receive an email with a link to accept and set up their account

• Free — 1 member (solo only), no investor updates
• Family — up to 2 members, investor updates included
• Team — up to 5 members, investor updates included

Go to Settings → Billing and click the Upgrade button for the plan you want. You'll be taken to a Stripe Checkout page. After completing payment, your plan updates within a few seconds via webhook.

Go to Settings → Billing and click Manage billing. This opens the Stripe Customer Portal where you can change your plan, update your payment method, or cancel.

If your workspace has more members than your new plan allows, your account will be flagged as over-cap. New invitations will be blocked until you remove members to get back within the limit. Existing members retain access until removed.

Go to Settings → General and update the Display name field under Profile. Click Save.

Sign out, then click Forgot password on the login page. Enter your email and we'll send you a reset link. Follow the link to set a new password.

Go to Settings → General and scroll to Preferences. Each category (Sectors, Investment Vehicles, Tags) has an editor where you can add your own options, drag to reorder them, or remove ones you don't use. Changes apply workspace-wide immediately.

These options appear in the dropdowns when editing investments — keeping your list tidy makes the Insights breakdowns more useful.

Go to Settings → Danger Zone and click Delete investment data…. Type DELETE to confirm. This permanently removes all investment rounds, companies, venture funds, equity grants, and investor updates from your workspace. Your account and workspace settings are not affected.

Go to Settings → Danger Zone and click Delete account…. Type DELETE to confirm. This permanently deletes your account, all workspaces you own, and all data in them. You are signed out immediately.

Pinion can connect to AI tools — Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and others — via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once connected, you can ask your AI assistant questions about your portfolio in plain English and get live answers from your actual data.

Example: "Which of my investments has the highest MOIC?" or "What did Acme Corp report in their last investor update?"

1. Go to Settings → API Keys
2. Click + New key and give it a name (e.g. "My Laptop")
3. Copy the key — it's shown once only and cannot be retrieved later.
4. Use the setup command shown in the modal to connect your AI tool, or follow the steps below

You can create multiple keys — one per device or per team member. Revoke any key at any time without affecting the others.

If you want Claude to do the whole thing from scratch with no copy-pasting, you could say:

Replace pinion_xxxx with your actual key. Restart Claude.

Run the command shown in the key modal, or paste it manually in your terminal:

Replace pinion_xxxx with your actual key. Claude Code will confirm the server was added. Restart Claude Code if it was already running.

MCP is an open protocol — any compatible client uses the same key and URL. Add the following to your client's MCP configuration file:

Config file locations vary by client — check your tool's MCP documentation for the exact path. The JSON structure above is standard across all MCP clients.

The Pinion MCP server exposes six tools that your AI can call automatically based on your question:

• Portfolio summary — total invested, current value, and TVPI across direct investments, venture funds, and equity grants (where included in MOIC)
• List investments — all direct investments with MOIC and tags, optionally filtered by status or by tag label
• List funds — all venture funds with NAV, distributions, and MOIC on called capital
• List grants — all equity grants with shares, strike price, current FMV, paper value, and vesting percentage
• Investment details — deep-dive on a single company: all rounds, recent AI-analyzed updates, and the full original text of each update
• Recent investor updates — latest updates across the portfolio with sentiment, flags, key metrics, and the full original text of each update

Example prompts that work well:

• "Summarise my portfolio performance"
• "Which investment has the highest MOIC?"
• "What equity grants do I have and what are they worth?"
• "What were the red flags in Acme Corp's last investor update?"
• "How much capital have I deployed into venture funds vs direct deals?"
• "Which companies have sent investor updates in the last quarter?"

Go to Settings → API Keys and click Revoke next to the key. Revocation is immediate — any AI tool using that key will lose access instantly. Create a new key if you need to reconnect.