Laurel Mintz, GP
The holidays are right around the corner and so we thought we'd chat with you a bit about why December is such an important time for you to watch your portfolio company's trajectories.
Here's five reasons why we are watching our portcos this December:
1) December is obviously a big holiday push so if your portcos aren't where they need to be in December it means that they may not have a strong holiday season and it's a sign that they're not going to be as strong potentially in calmer months. Specifically q1 we want to make sure that December holiday goes into a strong Q1 especially as we know on the marketing side a lot of especially consumer products actually have much stronger Q1's than even Q4s because people are gifting, gift certificates, Etc that then get redeemed in Q1
2) Holiday months allow you to to see where your Founders priorities lie. Where are they spending their time effort and energy? Are they taking time off? Are they doing a hard push understanding that this is a critical time for their brand?
3) Annual planning allows you to see how your portcos are planning for the next year. Are they actually putting planning sessions on board and are they involving their investors in that process? Or at least educating and empowering us to understand what their vision is for the next year?
4) See how strong their marketing is. What are they doing in the holiday months and thinking about into again the following year? What are their marketing strategies? Their approaches? What do their spends look like to make sure that they aren't either spending in an oversaturated category during holiday or being hopefully far more creative in how they're approaching their marketing for the season.
5) See if they are sticking to their values. We want to make sure that, depending on the season, they are still staying true to who they are core. As you know, our quadruple bottom line approach, the investments that we make have to be good for people, purpose, planet and profits and holiday is a great season to understand if our portfolio companies are making efforts to give back to their community in line with what our vision and values are for our investment theories.