Portico's New Look | Portico Advisers

Happy new year fam.

Portico’s entering ’22 with some fresh livery and a refocused mission statement that more accurately captures why we exist.

Namely, we support visionary founders in complex markets.

When Portico started, the business plan was to sell custom research to emerging market-focused PE fund managers and institutional investors.

Which we did.

We thought information asymmetries constituted the primary roadblock to capital flows.

In truth, reducing information asymmetries did little to animate investors to act.

In addition, it became manifest that research was a wedge in the door, but our core value proposition was helping founders think through their firm’s strategy.

Candidly, providing more granular information, or analyses with greater signal, was a necessary but insufficient service. It wasn’t going to solve clients’ biggest problems.

The founders we worked with were embarking on a slog — one where feedback from advisors and investors often culminated in misdirection and uncertainty. And more importantly, frequently deviated from the vision that animated them to attempt something bold in the first place.

Founders wanted an independent thought partner who reasoned from first principles and put in the work to help them succeed because the mandate mattered — not just financially, but because their partner had a shared sense of purpose and values.

We followed our clients — which now include VC firms, non-fund investors, corporates, and early-stage startups — into transaction advisory, impact frameworks & metrics, and special projects.

We embraced a genuinely global remit and built relationships with firms pushing the boundaries of the possible in healthcare and life sciences.

And we’re developing our expertise in crypto / web3, which we believe has enormous potential to reconfigure the creation, exchange, and distribution of value.

In sum, our brand identity and website were out of sync with the work we do, and they weren’t signaling the types of relationships we prize.

What are those?

We seek to build relationships with founders that possess three key characteristics:

The vision to identify breakthrough innovations and provide capital where it’s scarce;
The courage to pursue differentiated strategies in difficult markets; and,
The grit to persevere in the face of adversity.

If this sounds like you — and if you share our commitment to ethical business practices that elevate human dignity — we’d love to speak with you.

The dope logo, color palette, and website are mechanisms to signal that we’re here to support people who think differently and have the guts to forge their own path.

Are you one of them?

Mike

From the Bookshelf

Here I touch the inescapable contradiction I shall never be able to resolve. For man’s greatness does not reside merely in the destiny of the species: each individual is an empire.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (Harcourt: 2002)

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