For some of the businesses we have a formal role as a non-executive Director in others the guidance and support we provide is less formal.
Our portfolio has businesses in three distinct stages:
There are those in ‘Start-up’ - businesses where we have provided seed funding and support while they clarify their service offering, build the minimal viable product, acquire their first ‘proper’ customers and demonstrate product-market fit.
The majority of businesses are in ‘Scale-up’ – For these, product-market fit is defined. The challenges are typically about maintaining focus, achieving sales, adding capable people to the team and continuing to deliver operationally while not running out of cash.
The final category is ‘Stable’ – Sooner or later every business on the planet is run for yield - delivering enough value to customers for the company to generate enough profit to meet the future needs of the business AND to pay dividends to investors. Some of the businesses in the portfolio sit in this segment. Managing a stable business is just as challenging as managing a business in scale-up or start-up; if a business is successful others will want a part of that market. Constant vigilance is required to ensure that the products and services change to meet the needs of customers and that the team providing the services have the skills, confidence and capability to deliver them.
The Current Portfolio
