Capital Allocators · Monday, September 14, 2026
Abby Barlow explains how she uses AI tools like Claude to build custom software solutions for her investment office, rather than relying on expensive third-party services. She details building a benchmarking tool that previously involved complex Excel spreadsheets with many tabs, which Claude helped her create as an app in about half a day.
“Think of this as an app or a software program that historically you would maybe buy from a market. Benchmarking or a pacing model or portfolio company look-through to understand what you own. But instead of paying someone to host that service and implement a tool, I've said, I'm going to see what I can build first.”
“This benchmarking tool is a great example where I used to, in Excel, build vintage year comparison across funds and peer groups. It was messy. I would end up with 60 tabs in Excel. It took a long time. I got halfway through with one of those projects and I said, hey Claude, look what I'm trying to do. How would you approach this?”
“It thought about that. It spit out an app. I iterated it with Claude. It probably took me half a day to say, I have this amazing tool that I can now use. And I've used it eight or 10 times since.”