COBURN VENTURES

SERVICES

Our clients would most likely say that the service Coburn Ventures provides is exceptionally differentiated.

Coburn Ventures was incorporated in 2005, but it really started in 1993 when we began systematically studying monumental change at the societal, marketplace, organizational, and individual levels.  Essentially, we started developing something of a “change” pattern-recognition “engine”.  We observed that change was incredibly under-studied. We experienced that our own passion for change-learning could be infinite.  We would always be students and never seduced into considering ourselves so-called “experts”   From our learning we might aim to systematically generate highly relevant practical uncommon understandings (insights).   I think of this capacity as a “change engine”.

Our clients use this “change engine” in two basic ways.  

#1:          EXTERNAL CHANGE

They aim to significantly increase their capability to effectively forecast the future in order to build businesses and to invest with high conviction.

#2:          INTERNAL CHANGE

They aim to significantly increase their capability to effectively change or advance their own internal processes. 

Specific clients decide to dial up the mix of these two basic uses  -- external and internal -- as they see fit.   

Practical:                                         While we generate extensive distinctive foundational thinking, we insist on also translating it into both practical application and change.  Some people work on (1) foundational thinking; Some people work on (2) practical application/change.  We demand both parts from ourselves.

Customize:                                        We have created a very large library of more than 400 foundational writings, but we do not employ a cookie-cutter approach.  We see change as very specific for every circumstance and, as such, all the work we do is customized for clients’ specific situations. 

Creative:                                              Our clients would likely say that Coburn Ventures’ thinking is extremely creative and that the vast bulk of our ideas are completely new to them. 

Hardest Problems:                           Typically, our clients quickly bring to us some of the very toughest challenges they are working on.  This would seem to be a function of (1) an extremely high trust level that we create together and (2) their confidence that we have the ability to practically help them.

Extremely Wide Range:                  We work on an extremely wide range of problems in either (1) externally-geared change forecasting or (2) creating internally-geared process change that is typically extremely wide.  

Client Commonality:                        Our clients tend to already be student-minded, process-oriented, and highly successful but they are also far from satisfied in their current accomplishments.  They are pursuers of excellence.  If they weren’t all of these things, the atypical “change” work we generate would not resonate but would instead seem to be superfluous.  

Complement:                        Our work tends to complement – not compete with -- the inputs and processing our clients already use. 

Community:                                        We have long done all of our work in the context of community.  It is a community of passionate investors, industry friends, and non-profit leaders.  We are continually striving to advance a high-trust woven fabric of relationships.  We realize the term “community” is often diluted or abused as happens frequently to great words.  It is often confused for mere “network”.    Instead of people coming to “get” stuff from one another which typifies a negative-energy “network”, we aim to create spaces in which individuals enjoy an opportunity to contribute to one another.  A true distinctive very rare “community”.    In the process of making this distinction between community and network for 18+ years, we tend to be uninteresting to those who mainly want to network and we, instead, attract those who also cherish community orientation.

THREE WAYS OF ENGAGING

Our clients might be thought to have three distinct ways of engaging with Coburn Ventures work:  (1) Content, (2) 1x1 Work,  (3) Gatherings.

#1        COBURN VENTURES CONTENT

Our clients would almost certainly say our content is highly differentiated.  This is a function of decades of developing this lens of change, combined with a community of clients encouraging us to keep going along this distinctive path.  

Our content includes a 400+ library of written pieces attending to “external” and “internal” change across 6 sub-categories:  (1) process, (2) investment process, (3) change frameworks, (4) foundational societal change (lenses), (5) culture, (6) sustainability.    

We now also have a library of well over 150 podcasts focused on change.  These podcast conversations are geared exclusively toward our 300-person community of investors and business creators.   On a weekly basis, we generate new podcasts as well as writing that comes under banners such as  “CIO Diaries”, “Spotlights”, “Visuals” and “Coburn Ventures Fridays”.   On a monthly basis, we also select one piece from our library to bring into the current moment with a fresh front end and re-release it as a “Coburn Ventures Imprint”.

#2        1 X 1 WORK

Our clients tend to bring us some of their very toughest challenges in 1x1 and small group work.  The breadth of distinct challenges is extensive.  Some of this work is focused on external work in directly forecasting.  Much of this work – since perhaps 2009 – is more so geared toward “process”.  Given our deep study and passion toward “process” as an avenue of affecting change, if a client wants to consider investment process change, it seems we are a rare group with which to engage.   Typically, the challenges brought forth are derivations we have pondered extensively at some point across the past few decades of investing.  We connect very quickly with the topics clients are wrestling with.   While our background in investing is our ongoing heritage, it seems most of the work translates for our non-investment clients as well.

#3      GATHERINGS 

We started our in-person gatherings the very week we were founded in 2005 when we brought together 34 friends at an Italian restaurant in Berkeley, California.  We had so much fun that we knew we wanted to build gathering somehow into the heart of Coburn Ventures. I suspect we have gathered people in person well over 300 times since then.   Our flagship gathering is perhaps a multi-day retreat in Sundance, Utah along with a sister multi-day retreat held in Europe.  Past European retreats have been in Prague, Budapest, Istanbul, Salzburg, Lisbon, Tallinn, Berlin, Turin, Krakow, Seville, and Porto.  In 2023, there are also retreats and gatherings in Amsterdam, London, Nashville, and New York.  Since 2015, we have been helping design and facilitate retreats for clients as well.

We also started virtual gatherings early on.  Coburn Ventures has always operated at least 60% “virtual” since inception and as such we have been very much at home with employing video every single day.  But it wasn’t until 2020 during the pandemic that our pace and various forms of online gathering skyrocketed.  We have likely held over 500 virtual gatherings during the past four years including many tailored exclusively for a specific client. 

Our in-person and virtual gatherings have three critical design principles:  (1) high participation, (2) student-mindedness, (3) community-orientation.  We aim to create internalizing processes to support affecting change and generating insight.

The heightened frequency of our online gatherings and, specifically, the liberal use of breakout rooms has significantly increased the depth of relationships among people in our community to a very rare level.

A FINAL CONTEXT OF OUR SERVICE: THE PURSUIT OF INSIGHT GENERATION

As passionate business people and investors, we wish to generate practical highly relevant insight that can be activated.   We think of “insight” as an uncommon understanding.   So we are, essentially, aiming to systematically generate uncommon understandings.  It is as if we are aiming to systematically and routinely get ourselves positioned under the apple tree like Newton did in order to get hit on the head with insights (e.g. “Gravity!”) and then know what to do with them.  That is our goal as active investors and business creators.

Uncommon Understanding is a function of “Uncommon Inputs” and “Uncommon Processing”

In this pursuit, we often note that if someone wants to systematically generate uncommon understandings (i.e. “insights”), it is vital to employ “uncommon inputs” and use “uncommon processes”.  Common inputs and common processes aren’t apt to systematically result in uncommon understandings.  The work we do incorporates the use of many uncommon tool kits.   The orientation of studying “change” is, in itself, quite uncommon.  If we can take advantage of pattern recognition issuing forth from what we term, again, a  “change engine” we might systematically and structurally increase our capacity to routinely generate practical “uncommon understanding”.