How a global VC firm upgraded their internal tooling while cutting costs and saving time, one app at a time

• One app changed how the firm makes investment decisions. Creandum's fund partner built an AI-enabled tool with Lovable that's grown to run the firm's investment process, portfolio, and fund management. It showed the rest of the firm what was possible with Lovable, and adoption took off.

• From 0 to more than 100 apps in over a year. As the team became more proficient at building with Lovable, they graduated from creating internal tools to apps and services used directly by founders and portfolio companies—delivering a better experience while getting more done in less time and with fewer external SaaS dependencies and costs.

• Building across every department and role. Creandum's entire team builds apps with Lovable, from internal legal dashboards and office tracking tools to a Founder Summit app used by 90+ event attendees. Role-based access controls and authentication allow teams to securely build apps with sensitive financial and legal information.

How a global VC firm got everyone building

Creandum is a leading early-stage VC firm, with teams working across San Francisco, London, Berlin, and Stockholm. It has backed some of the best-known startups, including Spotify, Modal, Rillet, and Black Forest Labs.

The team handles everything required to find, evaluate, and support ambitious founders. This often means managing a complex workload that spans investment decisions, legal requirements, marketing and events work, and running four global offices. For years, a patchwork of CRM, HR, and finance tools, layered on top of Google Docs, email, and Slack kept things moving. Processes were manual and plenty of useful information never got captured at all.

When Creandum led Lovable's Seed round in January 2025, the team already knew the product. What they didn't expect was how impactful it would be to their own operations. In a little over a year, that early conviction turned into 100+ apps across the firm, built by everyone from legal counsel and office managers, to interns and General Partners.

Creandum rolled out Lovable access firm-wide, giving every team member a common workspace and encouraging people across roles to keep building. As more people saw what their colleagues were creating, they recognized they could build apps for their own challenges, too, without needing to be developers. Lovable was becoming less of a point solution for a handful of early adopters and more of a shared capability across Creandum.

From solving a single problem to firm-wide adoption

It began when Peter Stilwell, Creandum's Operating Partner, began exploring ways to add more structure to one of the firm's most important processes: deciding which companies to back.

The process ultimately comes down to an investment committee vote. A simple score indicates whether someone supports an investment, but not why.

Thanks to Lovable, Peter was able to reimagine this vital process without drastically changing the way the firm operates internally. Team members now vote through a shared link and record their reasoning, giving the investment team better visibility into each decision while creating a growing dataset of insights to inform future investments.

"With Lovable, we can capture more nuance. The voting app gives us critical context that guides our long term investment strategy," says Peter Stilwell, Creandum's Operating Partner. "Maybe you really like the founder, but aren't sure about the deal structure. The app built by the team brings together all that critical context to guide our long term investment strategy."

The investment voting app became a turning point for Creandum. It got team members across departments thinking about what else might be possible with Lovable.

"At the start, we saw a lot of people building one-player tools that would help them in a workflow or process that had previously been time consuming," says Peter. "As we've become more experienced as a team building on Lovable, it's been great to see how far things have come."

Reinventing legal and operations workflows

Creandum's legal and operations teams are among the firm's most active groups building with Lovable, creating tools to streamline and improve time-consuming daily tasks.

The legal team got started by looking for a faster way to complete essential checks without slowing down transactions. They built a lightweight due diligence app that replaces manual forms with a more intuitive mobile-first experience. This has later moved on to apps automatically triggering the internal compliance work required in connection with making investments (drafting, collecting signatures and filing). Now the team saves time, moves faster, and can focus on what really matters - a better experience for both the investment team and founders.

"It feels great to be able to send a link and have it all collected in one place when it comes to routine compliance matters rather than having various word documents being sent around," Jacqueline Björklund, General Counsel at Creandum, explained.

Every day we welcome a mix of founders, LPs, colleagues, and fellow investors across our offices around the world. Making sure everyone receives a first class experience and warm welcome is critical - first impressions account. The London office manager saw the opportunity to build a visitor and space-tracking tool to better understand how Creandum's four offices are being utilized, and to give office managers more control over the resources and supplies they need to track in each location.

"Our office manager wasn't expecting to be building software, but this app they created is giving us much better visibility into how we use our space, and helping us make smarter decisions about everything from office capacity to stocking supplies during busier periods," says Peter.

From internal tools to a Founder Summit for 90+ people

As Creandum's team became more confident with Lovable, the firm started building beyond its own walls. Its Founder Summit in San Francisco earlier this year put that shift into practice.

Bringing 90+ founders together from around the world would normally mean managing a constant stream of agendas, updates, logistics, recommendations, and attendee questions via email. Instead, Head of Events Lovisa Wahlberg and the summit planning team built a custom Founder Summit app.

"Other event tools would always miss something and I'd have to piece together three or four event tools to meet my needs," says Lovisa. "Now I can build exactly what I need. We started with the agenda so I could push last-minute changes instantly, then added breakout activities and map integration as the event grew."

Attendees could check the live agenda in real time and explore an interactive San Francisco map, built with the Google Maps API, for event locations and local recommendations.

QR codes on printed materials took attendees directly to the live app, keeping information current while reducing the need for reprinted agendas and one-off emails.

Instead of juggling multiple tools and email updates, founders had everything they needed in one place throughout the event. This created a smoother experience for attendees while giving the Creandum team the flexibility to adapt in real time.

The app became more than an event tool. It demonstrated how quickly Creandum could build polished, customer-facing experiences that reflected the firm's brand while making the event easier to navigate for every attendee. Now, Lovisa is building registration for the firm's next Founder Summit in Lovable.

When anyone can build, new ideas come from everywhere

New ideas keep surfacing as more of the team builds, and the person with the idea doesn't have to be a developer.

At Creandum, they might be legal counsel, an office manager, an intern, or the head of events. Now, building a better way to work can start with whoever is closest to the problem.