Coburn Ventures Podcast

As a midpoint in our series on leadership, we are dropping in a short but simple concept that I think could be valuable just because it's a valid candidate for a real blind spot for us, the lens we see through as investors and business leaders, and for the management teams we interface with and depend on to have a strategy that syncs up with reality. So, this podcast is about growing our awareness and being able to see things we may have been missing, by learning about this concept of being mis-aged. Let's jump in.

Today we kickoff a series on leadership, and what better way to do that than to visit with Lisa Baird, our friend and leader of Heidrick & Struggles Global Human Resources Practice. We dive right in, and start with hiring: What are corporations looking for in their leadership and more importantly, why? What attributes are required to meet the moment?  We end with Lisa's own questions for management that she uses for assessments and interviews, so stay tuned for that. Let’s jump in.

What does it take to identify a company that is a true guardian of an increasingly valuable, durable brand? Now that we have learned more about brand character with Veta, we will focus on assessing if the company is actually acting consistently with brand character as one of the key ways to preserve and build brand value.  If we, as investors, are going to purport that a company has “a great brand” or a brand that translates to an intangible asset, I think we will benefit from understanding how Veta builds brand character as a key to generate durability and long term success. Let's jump in.

Today we get to dive in on the topic of brand with a day-to-day practitioner, advisor, and creator of brand value, Veta Bates.  Veta gives real-life examples of products and then helpfully pairs them with analysis behind what each company is doing with their brand development that is or isn’t adding value.  As we start,  Veta is recounting a conversation she and Gavin Ivester had about a very specific yet-to-be-named product. We start there because it takes us right to the heart of how product design and brand character can come together for powerful effect. Let’s jump in.

After our intro to assessing brands, we now add a new dimension: values-based branding, that attempt that can hit or miss that aims to tightly tie brand and behavior to value signaling and an offer of being “values-aligned” with a product, service, or company. Why does this seem to be fertile ground, and is it, really? That question is why we brought in Irwin Kula for his perspective on how we belong, believe, and matter has morphed… making these values-based offerings so easily exploitable for companies. How will this play out? Let’s jump in.

Today we start a new series on branding, and especially how to consider the value of brands in assessing the broader corporation and its competitive advantages.  We start with one idea that I want to highlight because I think it's not the standard idea of what a brand is to a corporation: it is that the brand resides in the buyers' mind. It is NOT owned by the corporation and DEFINITELY NOT controlled by the corporation.  So with that, we’ll discuss five different elements of the brand and then some questions and live examples to help with assessment. Let's jump in.

The G is in ESG, which stands for Governance, is often seen as the point of relief for our clients. It’s the part where they tell us: we know we have a lot to learn on Environment and Social, but Governance, we’ve got it. We’ve been doing that really well for a long time. But what if the G in ESG is different from the G of the past 3-4 decades? When we step back, I don’t think anyone would think it surprising that maybe what's expected out of G today is different. Let’s jump in.

One of our goals in this series of ESG podcasts is to take the abstract idea of ESG and bring it to life with concrete examples. There are leaders out there in both the investing world and of course, the business operators, who are defining and iterating on the standards of ESG, and we want to hear more about it. That’s why today we’re speaking with Jasper Van Brakel, CEO of RSF Social Finance. Jasper gets to sit in the middle of business leaders, their stakeholders, and their investors, of which he is often one, and he offers us a view of how a multi-stakeholder, ESG focused investment event or regular quarterly meeting might go down. I hope you enjoy it.

Today we are talking about the history of the money management industry, and how values that were "baked in" in the 1980s when this industry really took off are dictating a lot of what we think is possible and right in the industry, and why the emergence of ESG and ESG related investment philosophies can seem so incongruent. But to do this, to go through unearthing the founding values of an industry, we start in an interesting place, with a discussion about the concept of the commons, and how this thought-provoking piece of political theory applies to our struggles with ESG today. The idea of the commons starts to address all the externalities that investors say are outside of our domain. How long will we be able to draw that line? What do our industry's "founding values", implicit or explicit, have to say about these externalities? The forces all around the industry are changing, so let's take a look at it from these two angles today.

We are in a time in which ESG or multi-stakeholder investing, the real process of it, the real ‘how to” is actively being defined. Its defined by doing it. And though the marketers already have great tag lines out in the market and Regulators are having their say in what they want to highlight,   investors will also create the market by putting their stake in the ground, by having their own process and their own philosophies.  This is why speaking with Jags today is so helpful, so inspiring, and so grounding.  Jags is really a great pioneer: he is so willing to explore what ESG investing really implies for how he does his work. This has led him to incorporate ESG in ways that most of you might not anticipate. He meets with people you may not have ever considered vital to your process. He has a clear understanding of his core beliefs which guide his decision-making.  Notably, Jags is not considered an ESG specialist! He is a portfolio manager.  We’ll discuss so much in this conversation, from core beliefs, to his voting record, to why he doesn't use the term engagement anymore and finally, how all of this comes down to the day-to-day business including communicating his work to clients.  I think it will give you a view into how he does multi-stakeholder in a more holistic sense than many, and hopefully it might spark some ideas that are resonant for your ESG philosophy and process. I hope you enjoy it.