By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

If you want firm wide relationship intelligence for a VC, PE or M&A team, 4Degrees is the stronger product. If you are one person and want to know which broker, banker or owner to text this morning, with the reason and the draft ready, FRONT OF MIND is the better 4Degrees alternative.

Full disclosure: I built FRONT OF MIND. So I will be straight about where 4Degrees wins.

Here is the moment that usually brings you to this page. You sat in on a 4Degrees demo, maybe because a friend at a growth fund uses it. The warm intro paths looked like magic. Then you remembered your firm is you, a part time analyst, and a phone with 1,400 names in it. There are no colleagues whose inboxes would light up that map. And the pricing page asks you to fill out a form.

The short answer

4Degrees is a CRM for private market deal teams. Its homepage calls it an AI powered CRM for private market deals and the relationships that drive them, built for venture capital, private equity, investment banking and M&A advisory, corporate development, commercial real estate and consulting (4degrees.ai, checked October 2026). It holds the pipeline and maps the firm’s network.

FRONT OF MIND is not a firm CRM. It opens on your 10 minutes for today: the few people in your own network worth a message now, a one line reason for each, and a draft you can send in a tap.

One is the record a team shares. The other is the morning list one person acts on.

What 4Degrees does better

I will say this plainly, because it is true. If you run a team, 4Degrees does things FRONT OF MIND does not try to do.

• Team relationship intelligence. Per its relationship intelligence page, 4Degrees analyzes how often and how recently you have interacted with a contact through emails, meetings and shared calendar events, then shows “the best path through your network based on the strength of your relationships and your team’s shared connections.” That second half is the point. The map gets better with every colleague who connects.
• Automatic capture across the firm. It connects to Google Workspace, Outlook and HubSpot, and lists extensions for Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn and Chrome, plus a Salesforce integration (4degrees.ai).
• A real deal pipeline. Deal flow management, pipeline tracking, reporting and analytics, all in one system the partners can review on Monday morning.
• Signals on key contacts. Its AI watches the web for people who changed jobs, published something, or showed up in the news.
• Fast for a firm platform. In its own comparison with Affinity and DealCloud, 4Degrees says onboarding takes days to a few weeks with dedicated support. Read that with the source in mind, since it is their sales page. But it is a fair contrast with platforms that take months.

If you have five or more people sharing deal flow and you need to know which partner has the warmest line into a target’s banker, 4Degrees was built for you. Stay there.

Where it strains for one person

The same design that makes 4Degrees good for a firm makes it awkward for a solo searcher, an independent sponsor or a broker working a buyer list.

• The intro map needs a team. Shared connections across colleagues are the engine. With one inbox, there is not much to map.
• Your best relationships are not in your email. The broker you text, the owner you met at a dinner, the CPA who refers you sellers. Many of those threads live in iMessage and a business card in your jacket, not in Outlook.
• It is a CRM, so someone owns it. Stages, fields and reports reward whoever keeps them current. If that is you at 11pm after a site visit, it slips.
• No published price. Per the 4Degrees pricing page, pricing is per user, per month, and “depends on a few factors specific to your organization and team.” You fill out a form with your industry and they contact you.

None of that is a flaw in the product. It is a sign the product is aimed at someone else.

What FRONT OF MIND does instead

I built it for one job: tell you who to reach out to today and why. After 1,000+ introductions across two communities, that was always the hard part for me. Not storing people. Knowing who to reach today.

• Your 10 minutes for today. A short list, each person with a one line reason: they posted, a birthday, you met at an event days ago and never followed up, a follow up is due, a pipeline deal has gone quiet 7 days or more, their company was in the news, or the relationship is going cold.
• The draft is written. A text style message, 40 words max, that references the reason. Nothing sends without your tap, and it learns from your edits.
• Posts you can trust. A post only shows up if it is confirmed to belong to that person. No congratulating the wrong John Miller.
• Capture in the room. Say a name and a sentence out loud, snap a business card or badge, or take a selfie together, and it is filed under the event.
• Liala, for the question you would ask a colleague. Ask out loud, “who do I know that is an M&A advisor” or “who lives in Miami,” and get the right people with why. That is the warm path question, answered for one person instead of a firm.
• Intros to make this week, with dated proof on both sides, so the intro lands as useful instead of random.

Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them. Export and delete anytime.

Where it strains: no shared firm network map, no team pipeline, no reporting for partners, no Salesforce sync. If you need those, you need a firm CRM.

Pricing side by side

As of October 2026:

4Degrees

• Per user, per month
• Price not published; request it through the form on the pricing page
• Demo offered from the homepage

FRONT OF MIND

• Free for your first 25 contacts and 1 intro
• $29 a month after that

Prices change, so check each page before you buy.

How I would choose

• You run a fund, a banking team or a corp dev group and need a shared pipeline with intro paths across colleagues: 4Degrees, or compare it with the other firm platforms in the DealCloud alternative for small firms guide.
• You are a searcher, independent sponsor, broker or super connector whose network lives in your phone: FRONT OF MIND.
• Your firm already uses 4Degrees: keep it as the record and add FRONT OF MIND for your own morning list. Different job.

If you are weighing lighter personal tools too, FRONT OF MIND vs Dex covers the address book side, and every personal CRM comparison is in one place.

4Degrees answers who on your team knows whom. FRONT OF MIND answers who you should text before your first call. Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who comes up first.

See how it works