tinyhumansai Portfolio Review
The failure this prevents is passive: a firm knows its portfolio well for a quarter and then relies on whatever founders volunteer, which is systematically better than reality.
When to use
- A quarter turns.
- A company has gone quiet.
- A round is being raised somewhere in the portfolio.
Steps
- Sort by
last_contact, not by status. A healthy row nobody has spoken to in five months is not a healthy row; it is an unknown one. - Read runway first. Months, and what the number depends on. If runway is short, nothing else on the row matters this quarter.
- Treat quiet as a signal. Founders who are struggling send shorter updates. The absence of bad news is not good news, and this is the single most reliable pattern in venture.
- Check the asks. An unanswered ask is the fastest way to be excluded from the next round's information, and it is usually unanswered because nobody re-read the row.
- Update
how_they_arehonestly, including where the firm does not know. - Flag what needs the operator — a bridge, an introduction, a hard conversation. Those are decisions, not tasks.
Output
An updated portfolio ledger and a short list of the companies needing
attention this quarter, with the quiet ones named as unknowns rather than
assumed to be fine.