portfolio-review

name	Portfolio Review
description	Find the companies that need attention, especially the quiet ones.
category	Portfolio

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

1. 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.
2. Read runway first. Months, and what the number depends on. If runway is short, nothing else on the row matters this quarter.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Update how_they_are honestly, including where the firm does not know.
6. 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.