The five modules that run the firm.
Tasks, Referrals, Pursuits, Clients, and Meet. Each is built around how advisory firms actually operate. They connect, so a single meeting can move a relationship, a pursuit, and a client file forward in one place.
Tasks
Plan the week. Protect the priorities.
Most task tools let you keep adding. Ventura's task surface starts with a different premise: a week has a limited amount of attention, and the firm runs on whether the top priorities actually get done.
Tasks come from the work — a meeting, a pursuit deadline, a client request, a relationship that needs a touch. They show up here with the context that created them, and the top two priorities stay protected until they're complete.
- Top-two protection
- The system enforces a calm cap on the priorities you commit to in a given day. Three only in genuine emergencies.
- Linked to the work
- Every task knows where it came from — a referral, a pursuit, a client file, or a meeting — and links back to that record.
- Personal and professional
- Follow-through outside the firm matters too. Personal items live here, on the same calm list.
Week 21 · Top priorities
Top 2 for today
Send Catalyst SOW v2 · Call Sarah Donovan
Send Catalyst SOW v2
Pursuit · Catalyst Holdings
Call Sarah Donovan re: Northwind
Referral · Sarah Donovan
Review Cortland CFO pack draft
Client · Cortland Concrete
Coffee with Patrick Chen
Referral · Patrick Chen
Send proposal v2 to Boulder Health
Pursuit · Boulder Health
Referrals
Never let a valuable relationship go cold.
Referral-led firms run on bankers, lawyers, accountants, lenders, wealth advisors, and former clients. The relationship is the moat. The problem is that without a system, the people who quietly send you your best work go six months without a meaningful exchange — and the firm doesn't notice until the pipeline thins.
Ventura keeps the relationship queue in view. Who needs a touch. Who's ready for an ask. Where you've been give-first lately. The cadence is 45 days by default and configurable per relationship.
- Relationship queue
- Bankers, lawyers, accountants, lenders, and advisors with their current status and last meaningful touch.
- Give-first ledger
- Intros, assists, and value provided in the last 90 days — the part of trust that's easy to lose track of.
- Stale & overdue signals
- Relationships drift past their cadence and surface as overdue. No more discovering it eight months in.
Relationship queue
Sarah Donovan
Meridian Capital · Banker · Commercial
Connected last touch · sent the structured deal note
On cadence
9d ago
Patrick Chen
Holloway Legal · M&A counsel
Owes a coffee · ask about year-end pipeline
Due
43d ago
Anita Marwah
Greer & Co. · Tax partner
Sent founder intro to the Boyd file last week
Give-first
5d ago
Devon Park
Crestlane Lending · Lender · Mid-market
Stale - last meaningful exchange in late winter
Stale
112d ago
Lena Okafor
Westin Family Office · Wealth advisor
Ready for an ask · introduce to Henderson
Ready
14d ago
Give-first ledger
14
Intros + assists in the last 90 days
Touch this week
7
2 marked done today
Pursuits
Keep active opportunities moving.
A pursuit is an active opportunity that's already past the introduction stage and on its way to a proposal, a verbal, a decision, or a no. Tracking pursuits in an inbox is fine until you have eleven of them, two with deadlines this week, and three that have stalled for nineteen days because nobody noticed.
Ventura tracks every live pursuit with its stage, owner, value, next step, and the date the next step is owed. Stalled and at-risk pursuits surface themselves so they don't get lost between weeks.
- Queue and pipeline views
- Switch between a queue of what needs attention and a board view of stages across the firm.
- Stalled detection
- Pursuits that have sat in a stage too long without a follow-up surface as at-risk.
- Owners and values
- Every pursuit has an owner, a value, and an expected close — the bare minimum for a real pipeline.
Active pipeline
Qualifying
Northwind Logistics
Boulder Health
Proposal
First Nation Energy
Due Fri
Catalyst Holdings
Decision
Larkspur Foods
Stalled
Follow-up due
Send revised SOW to Catalyst Holdings — sat 4 days
Clients
Know which files need attention before they become problems.
Once a relationship has turned into a paying engagement, the failure mode shifts. Now the risk is delivery: a file slips behind, recovery dips, a client stops responding, or someone forgets the next step from the last meeting. The trust that won the work erodes quietly.
Ventura tracks engagement health at the file level — status, next actions, WIP, A/R, recovery, client touches, and file-health rules — so the partner running a portfolio can see which files are quiet on purpose and which are quiet because something's wrong.
- Portfolio health
- Every active engagement with its current state, recovery percentage, and next milestone.
- WIP and recovery
- Work-in-progress dollars and recovery percentage visible at both the file and portfolio level.
- File-health rules
- Files waiting on client input, below recovery target, or past their milestone surface as at-risk.
Portfolio health
Active eng.
18
+2 vs LM
Recovery
87%
+3pp
At risk
3
files
Cortland Concrete
On track
Monthly CFO
$42.1K
87%
Halton Millwork
Watch
Forecast Update
$18.4K
71%
Northbeam Studio
At risk
Strategic plan
$26.8K
58%
Westfall Mechanical
On track
Board Pack
$9.2K
92%
Meet
Turn conversations into execution.
Most meetings end the same way: a page of notes, a vague intention to follow up on three things, and the rest forgotten by Thursday. The work that came out of the meeting lives in a notebook or a thread and never makes it back into the system.
Ventura's Meet surface takes pasted notes or a transcript and surfaces the candidate tasks, relationship touches, pursuit updates, and client actions buried inside. You decide what to accept. Accepted actions land in the right module with a link back to the meeting that created them.
- Paste or transcribe
- Paste in raw notes, or push a transcript. Either way, Ventura surfaces useful candidate actions.
- You stay in control
- Suggestions are suggestions. Ventura never auto-creates tasks. You decide what's worth keeping.
- Linked to the right module
- Accepted actions land in Tasks, Referrals, Pursuits, or Clients — connected to the record that earned them.
Tuesday strategy review
Notes
Catalyst wants pricing in writing — Devon mentioned the deal committee meets Tuesday. Need a v2 SOW with the scope change.
Lena is going to need an intro to Henderson on the wealth advisory file. We can do it Thursday.
Patrick still owes me a coffee. Year-end pipeline ask.
Suggested actions
Send proposal v2 to Catalyst by Friday
Pursuit · Catalyst Holdings
Intro Lena Okafor to Henderson on the wealth advisory file
Referral · Lena Okafor
Confirm forecast assumptions with Cortland controller
Client · Cortland Concrete
Schedule coffee with Patrick Chen — owes one
Referral · Patrick Chen
You decide what goes anywhere. Ventura never auto-creates work.