Coburn Ventures Podcast

As investors, we are outsiders, so when we hear from management that the company has an interesting opportunity in a new market or a plan to improve its market share, it can be tempting to think that company can make that strategic move effectively.   But whether or not that company can succeed is largely due to the weakness or the strength of the culture. Because here’s the important part: explicitly or implicitly, many new company goals, even those that are seemingly only product-oriented, actually require changing some part of company culture. So, what do we mean by assessing company culture? In this conversation, we discuss attributes of strong and weak culture and why sometimes, a weak culture could be exactly what you want. I hope you enjoy it.

We’re back with Gavin Ivester, who we got to talk to last month about caring and what companies are asked to do to become a truly modern company. Today, we dive in on Gavin’s most recent thoughts on emerging marketplaces of a very distinct flavor: these communities are springing up organically around the world, and fix themselves around an extremely personalized or customized preference, like flying planes or youth ice hockey. What is going on here? Let’s jump in.

Our thoughts and mental models determine how we see the world, so as change investors, we like to make sure we have a few different ways of seeing. It's one of the neatest things humans can do -- intelligence plus empathy = vast possibilities. We use change frameworks to do this, and today, I suppose we’re introducing a new change framework. I found this one in the work of Robert A. Johnson, so it comes from a mix of psychology and medieval religion, a combination I never thought I’d attend to as an investor, but it helped me think of marketplace changes in a very new way, so I hope you find it useful too.

Today's conversation is our chance to go even further below the surface on one of our 11 Unavoidable Changes: Empowering the End Nodes. JP Rangaswami wrote the piece that grounded this idea, and we are happy to be together today to go deeper on the topic. At about minute 15 there are a few ideas that are so striking to me that I want to call them out for you. The ideas are about engineering interactions in order to increase the data set you have… in order to then be in a position to make better decisions. I hadn’t thought so clearly about the impact empowering the end nodes has: it can add a new layer of intelligence, actively iterating and coursing through the whole enterprise. JP walks us through a few different ways to do this, and we surmise that empowering the end nodes will be one of the competitive advantages of great businesses that can move to “smart” end nodes, rather than the “dumb” end nodes created by more traditional top-down business models. I hope you enjoy it.

The 11 unavoidable ideas are one of the oldest components of our process. For those of you who have been around for a while, the Unavoidable Ideas are a variation of what we used to call our Node 1 Societal Shifts. These shifts were the starting point for every company we would analyze for our portfolio. At the very top of our funnel, the first filter was this question: Is this company benefiting from or negatively impacted by one of the societal changes that we’ve identified? It increased conviction from the beginning that we had a company that was in the midst of major change, and that is where we wanted our portfolio to be positioned, in monumental change! Here are "11 Unavoidable Ideas" that are in play right now, and we believe are worth noticing and thinking through at a deeper level. I hope you enjoy it.

There’s a big difference between believing you understand a concept and really internalizing it. If I know anything about the community surrounding Coburn Ventures, I know that we always want tools to adapt, change and learn new things in our work and life. But more than that, we don't want to create new blind spots by thinking we understand something that we really don't. Pip and I have developed pilot projects and working groups with clients that helps embed internalization in investment process, but we’ll go deeper on those specific tools another time because today we include a friend later in this conversation whose profession demands internalization of every piece of his act such that to his audience, all motions are effortless: he needs to be particularly beguiling to his audience...its magician and mentalist Ryan Oakes. I hope you enjoy it.

ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) presents pressure to go from one mindset to another about what investing is and to whom all of the benefits accrue and why. A change like this leaves open a lot of opportunities for confusion, and for jumping to conclusions…both enemies of a strong and clear investment process on a high-functioning team. Today, we are aiming to bring awareness up around common misunderstandings arising with ESG. We start with misunderstandings between investors and marketers, and then between investors and... investors. I hope you enjoy it. 

Jennifer Brown helps organizations understand what Diversity, Equity and Inclusion means in real life. What kinds of listening needs to happen, what programs work, how to go beyond the surface level… so that employees can come to work as their full selves. Jennifer acts as a guide in this sometimes rough terrain. Today we start with some knowledge-building, and basic definitions like equity vs. equality. After that Jennifer helps us see more of what DEI looks like in an effective organization and why its so important for building trust, belonging and in that, productivity. Let’s jump in.

As I listened back to this recording, I was shaking my head most of the time. This is about the least summery summer book list that has ever been released. I mean, my best "beach read" is a study of Old New York and Pip has a recommendation that profiles families in North Korea. That being said, the goal is to take in some new inputs this summer...and especially uncommon or unconventional inputs, and I am constantly amazed by the power of research and writing, but especially world literature, to open up new considerations, new perspectives, and broaden my imagination. For an investor, there is so much value in widening the aperture and letting a writer hold hands with the reader's imagination to do the thing we humans can do: consider the many different ways of looking at the world and our collective past and future. It's a skill, but with the help of a good book, it's also play. We looked for books that had a combination of new ideas and great fun, and that is how we created the so-called summer book list. I hope you enjoy it.

We're here for Part Two of our conversation with Mike Lee of The Future Market and Alpha Food Labs.  This week we'll get deeper into a systems-level approach to understanding our current food system to have a better view of where it may be going next. We start at the layer of culture, observing how our regional preferences create regional bonds and identity, and that this is ever more present in multi-national brands aiming to plug in directly to our cultural and political identities. Finally, Mike walks us through a couple of compelling examples of why "sustainability" cannot be yanked out of the context of the whole food system.