Community resource

Portfolio Management Tools

Templates and trackers for advisors managing multiple founders simultaneously.

flowchart TD PM["Portfolio\nManagement"] --> TRACK["Portfolio\nTracker"] PM --> INTROS["Intro Email\nTemplates"] PM --> QR["Quarterly\nReview"] TRACK --> UPDATE["Weekly\nUpdate Scan"] TRACK --> FLAG["Flag At-Risk\nCompanies"] UPDATE --> PRIORITIZE["Prioritize\nSession Time"] FLAG --> PRIORITIZE INTROS --> F2I["Founder to\nInvestor"] INTROS --> F2F["Founder to\nFounder"] INTROS --> F2C["Founder to\nCustomer"] QR --> ASSESS["Assess Each\nCompany"] QR --> REBALANCE["Rebalance\nTime Allocation"] QR --> EXIT["Graduate or\nOff-board"] REBALANCE --> NEXT["Next Quarter\nPlan"] EXIT --> NEXT style PM fill:#1a237e,stroke:#0d1147,color:#ffffff style TRACK fill:#283593,stroke:#1a237e,color:#ffffff style INTROS fill:#303f9f,stroke:#283593,color:#ffffff style QR fill:#3949ab,stroke:#303f9f,color:#ffffff style UPDATE fill:#5c6bc0,stroke:#3949ab,color:#ffffff style FLAG fill:#ef4444,stroke:#dc2626,color:#ffffff style PRIORITIZE fill:#22c55e,stroke:#16a34a,color:#ffffff style F2I fill:#7986cb,stroke:#5c6bc0,color:#ffffff style F2F fill:#7986cb,stroke:#5c6bc0,color:#ffffff style F2C fill:#7986cb,stroke:#5c6bc0,color:#ffffff style ASSESS fill:#9fa8da,stroke:#7986cb,color:#1a237e style REBALANCE fill:#9fa8da,stroke:#7986cb,color:#1a237e style EXIT fill:#9fa8da,stroke:#7986cb,color:#1a237e style NEXT fill:#22c55e,stroke:#16a34a,color:#ffffff

Portfolio Tracker Template

Copy and maintain this tracker. Update it after every session.

ADVISOR PORTFOLIO TRACKER
Updated: [DATE]
Advisor: [NAME]

┌──────────────┬───────────┬──────────────┬─────────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────┐
│ Company      │ Stage     │ Last         │ Top Issue        │ Next Action      │ Status   │
│              │           │ Check-In     │                  │                  │          │
├──────────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┤
│ [COMPANY 1]  │ [1/2/3]   │ [DATE]       │ [ISSUE]          │ [ACTION + DATE]  │ [G/Y/R]  │
├──────────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┤
│ [COMPANY 2]  │ [1/2/3]   │ [DATE]       │ [ISSUE]          │ [ACTION + DATE]  │ [G/Y/R]  │
├──────────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┤
│ [COMPANY 3]  │ [1/2/3]   │ [DATE]       │ [ISSUE]          │ [ACTION + DATE]  │ [G/Y/R]  │
├──────────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┤
│ [COMPANY 4]  │ [1/2/3]   │ [DATE]       │ [ISSUE]          │ [ACTION + DATE]  │ [G/Y/R]  │
├──────────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┤
│ [COMPANY 5]  │ [1/2/3]   │ [DATE]       │ [ISSUE]          │ [ACTION + DATE]  │ [G/Y/R]  │
└──────────────┴───────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────┘

Status Key:
  G (Green)  — On track. No urgent issues.
  Y (Yellow) — Needs attention. One or more warning signs.
  R (Red)    — At risk. Requires immediate advisor engagement.

NOTES:
- Flag any company where Last Check-In is more than 30 days ago
- Flag any company where Top Issue has not changed in 2+ sessions
- If 3+ companies are Red, you are overextended. Consider off-boarding or delegating.

How to Use the Tracker

After every session: Update the Top Issue, Next Action, and Status columns
Weekly (5 minutes): Scan the tracker. Who is overdue? Who is Red?
Monthly: Review whether Top Issues are changing. Stale issues mean the founder is stuck or you are not being effective
Quarterly: Full portfolio review (see template below)

Intro Email Templates

The most valuable thing an advisor does is make introductions. These templates make them easy to send well.

Founder-to-Investor Introduction

Subject: Intro: [FOUNDER NAME] / [COMPANY] <> [INVESTOR NAME]

Hi [INVESTOR FIRST NAME],

I wanted to introduce you to [FOUNDER NAME], founder of [COMPANY].
[He/She/They] [ONE SENTENCE about what the company does].

Why I think this is worth your time:
- [TRACTION POINT: e.g., "$X MRR, growing X% MoM"]
- [DIFFERENTIATION: e.g., "Only solution that does X for Y market"]
- [FIT: e.g., "Right in your sweet spot of B2B SaaS at seed stage"]

I have been advising [FOUNDER NAME] for [X months] and
[ONE SENTENCE about why you believe in this founder personally].

[FOUNDER NAME], meet [INVESTOR NAME] — [ONE SENTENCE about the
investor's focus and why they are relevant].

I will let you two take it from here.

Best,
[YOUR NAME]

Rules for investor intros:

Only introduce when you genuinely believe it is a fit. Your reputation is the currency.
Always ask the investor FIRST if they want the intro (double opt-in).
Include specific traction numbers. Vague intros get ignored.
Keep it under 150 words.

Founder-to-Founder Introduction

Subject: Intro: [FOUNDER 1] <> [FOUNDER 2] — [REASON]

Hi [FOUNDER 1] and [FOUNDER 2],

I wanted to connect you two.

[FOUNDER 1] — [FOUNDER 2] is building [COMPANY 2], which [WHAT THEY DO].
[SPECIFIC REASON this is relevant: e.g., "They just solved the exact
payment integration problem you mentioned last week."]

[FOUNDER 2] — [FOUNDER 1] is building [COMPANY 1], which [WHAT THEY DO].
[SPECIFIC REASON this is relevant: e.g., "They are selling to the same
buyer persona and might have channel insights to share."]

I think a 20-minute call would be valuable for both of you.
No obligation, but I think you will find the overlap interesting.

Best,
[YOUR NAME]

Rules for founder intros:

Be specific about WHY they should talk. "You are both founders" is not a reason.
Suggest a concrete format (20-min call, coffee, async Slack).
Do not overdo it. One useful intro per month is better than five noisy ones.

Founder-to-Customer Introduction

Subject: Intro: [FOUNDER NAME] / [COMPANY] <> [CONTACT NAME] / [THEIR COMPANY]

Hi [CONTACT NAME],

I wanted to introduce you to [FOUNDER NAME], who is building [COMPANY].

[ONE SENTENCE about what the product does and why it is relevant
to the contact's company or role.]

I thought of you because [SPECIFIC REASON: e.g., "you mentioned last
quarter that [THEIR COMPANY] was looking for a better way to handle X.
[COMPANY] does exactly that."]

[FOUNDER NAME] — [CONTACT NAME] is [ROLE] at [THEIR COMPANY].
[ONE SENTENCE about the contact's context.]

No pressure on either side. If it is a fit, great. If not, no worries.

Best,
[YOUR NAME]

Rules for customer intros:

Only introduce when you believe the product is genuinely relevant. Do not waste your contact's time.
Frame it as "this might help you" not "please buy from my portfolio company."
Let the founder know what to expect: decision-maker vs. influencer, timeline, budget context.

Quarterly Portfolio Review Template

Run this every quarter. Block 60 minutes. Be honest with yourself.

QUARTERLY PORTFOLIO REVIEW

Advisor: [NAME]
Quarter: [Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 YEAR]
Date: [DATE]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PORTFOLIO OVERVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Total companies advised:  [NUMBER]
Hours spent this quarter: [NUMBER]
Average hours per company per month: [NUMBER]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
COMPANY-BY-COMPANY REVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For each company, answer:

[COMPANY 1]:
  Progress this quarter:     [SUMMARY]
  Key metric start of Q:     [VALUE]
  Key metric end of Q:       [VALUE]
  Advice I gave:             [SUMMARY]
  Did my advice help?        [YES / PARTIALLY / NO / TOO EARLY TO TELL]
  Intros I made:             [NUMBER] — outcomes: [SUMMARY]
  Time spent:                [X] hours
  Continue advising?         [YES / WIND DOWN / OFF-BOARD]
  Reason:                    [WHY]

[COMPANY 2]:
  [SAME FIELDS]

[COMPANY 3]:
  [SAME FIELDS]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SELF-ASSESSMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Where did I add the most value this quarter?
[ANSWER]

Where did I fail to add value?
[ANSWER]

Am I overextended? (More than 5-6 active companies = likely yes)
[YES / NO]

What type of founder/company am I best at advising?
[ANSWER]

What type should I stop taking on?
[ANSWER]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NEXT QUARTER PLAN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Companies to off-board:     [LIST]
Companies to increase time: [LIST]
Companies to decrease time: [LIST]
Open slots for new companies: [NUMBER]
Type of company I want to add: [DESCRIPTION]

Actions:
1. [ACTION + DATE]
2. [ACTION + DATE]
3. [ACTION + DATE]

Off-Boarding Gracefully

When it is time to stop advising a company, use this script:

OFF-BOARDING CONVERSATION

"[FOUNDER NAME], I have been thinking about how to be most useful to
you going forward. Honestly, I think we have reached the point where
[REASON]:

- [You need expertise I do not have (e.g., enterprise sales, hardware)]
- [The company is in great shape and does not need regular advising]
- [I am overextended and cannot give you the attention you deserve]

I want to make sure you are set up well:
- Here are 2-3 people who would be better advisors for your current stage:
  [NAME 1] — [WHY]
  [NAME 2] — [WHY]
- I am happy to make those intros.
- I am always available for a one-off call if something urgent comes up.

This is not about you doing anything wrong. It is about me being
honest about where I can and cannot add value."

Capacity Guidelines

Number of Companies	Recommended Cadence	Hours per Month
1-3	Bi-weekly sessions	4-6 hrs/company
4-6	Monthly sessions	2-3 hrs/company
7-10	Monthly or as-needed	1-2 hrs/company
10+	You are overextended. Off-board or move to group format.	--

Rule of thumb: If you cannot remember a company's top issue without checking your notes, you have too many companies.

Nonpartisan informational resource for Missouri — District 2 — not legal, medical, or financial advice. Source: dougdevitre/access-to-business.

Paid for by Matt Grant for Congress.