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Portfolio — Overview & Concepts
Portfolio is where you track every company you've invested in — their current valuation, performance, ownership structure, and cap table.
What problem it solves
Portfolio replaces the spreadsheet most firms keep for their holdings, and the inbox full of board packs that never quite make it into that spreadsheet.
The examples below use a made-up firm and companies to show how each feature is used.
| Feature | The problem | What Cairn does |
|---|---|---|
| Command Center | Holdings, valuations, and performance live in different files, and nobody is sure which version is current | One list of every company with invested capital, the value of your stake, ownership, MOIC, IRR, and the latest revenue, burn, and runway |
| Valuation history | A company's past valuations live in old board decks and emails, so nobody can show how its value moved | Every dated valuation in one chart and list, with how each was arrived at, recorded automatically when the valuation changes |
| Performance metrics | MOIC, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI are recalculated by hand and drift out of date | Calculated automatically from your stake in each company, every time you look |
| Investment ledger | A company's cheques and exits live in emails and a spreadsheet, and its IRR is somebody's estimate | Every investment and realization with its date, the invested and realized totals worked out from them, and IRR calculated from those dates |
| Cap table | Ownership is tracked in a separate cap table file per company | Shareholders, rounds, and option pools per company, with ownership worked out for you |
| Reading board packs | Monthly P&Ls arrive as PDFs and Excel files, and someone retypes the figures | Upload the file and Cairn Intelligence reads its monthly figures and suggests where each line belongs |
| Data requests | Each quarter someone emails every company for its figures, then chases the ones that don't reply | Send each company a link to upload its board pack or type in a few figures, no login needed, and see who has sent figures and who is late |
| Confirm before it counts | AI-read numbers can be wrong, and LPs see these figures | Nothing counts until a person reviews and confirms it, with checks that catch wrong units and lines that don't add up |
| Tear sheets | Every board meeting or LP question means rebuilding a one-page company summary by hand | A one-page PDF of the company as of any date, with its figures fixed so it stays an accurate record |
| Health | Spotting the company that's running out of money depends on someone noticing | Every company gets a status (At risk, Watch, Healthy) with the reasons, and you can sort by it |
| Geographic exposure | Nobody can say how much of the fund sits in one country without rebuilding a spreadsheet | A world map and table of invested, NAV, TVPI, and DPI by each company's HQ country, with countries above your concentration threshold flagged |
| Fund links | Everyone sees every company, even ones in funds they don't work on | Link each company to the funds that hold it, so a member limited to Fund II sees Fund II's companies |
Example: from board pack to Command Center. Northwind Analytics, a Fund II company, emails its March board pack as a PDF. An analyst uploads it on Northwind's page and clicks Read figures. (With a data request, Northwind uploads the pack itself through its link and Cairn reads it straight away, so the reading is waiting when the analyst looks.) Cairn reads January to March: subscription revenue, services revenue, cost of revenue, three expense lines, cash, and burn. It notices the pack says "$000s" and applies thousands. "Subscription revenue" was mapped last month, so it's already categorized; "Partner fees" is new, so the analyst picks Revenue › Services for it, and Cairn remembers that for April. The analyst confirms. Northwind's page now shows March revenue of $412K and a trend chart. In the Command Center, its row shows Revenue $412K, Burn $180K, and Runway 7.2 months, with a Watch health badge because runway is under 12 months.
The company list
The Portfolio page (the Portfolio Command Center) shows every company in your portfolio with filters for status, sector, and stage, plus a summary of key metrics across your whole portfolio.
Alongside each company's investment figures, three columns show its latest confirmed month of financials:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Revenue (mo.) | Revenue for the company's latest confirmed month |
| Burn | The monthly burn the company reported |
| Runway | The runway the company reported. If it reported cash and burn but no runway, Cairn estimates it as cash ÷ burn and shows it with a ~ |
Each figure shows the month it's from underneath, in the company's own currency. Figures more than three months old are greyed out and marked not recent. Runway under 12 months is amber, and under 6 months is red. A company with no confirmed figures yet shows —.
Next to each company's name, a Health badge shows whether its latest figures need attention:
| Health | Meaning |
|---|---|
| At risk | Needs attention now, for example runway under 6 months |
| Watch | Worth keeping an eye on, for example rising burn |
| Healthy | Nothing in the latest figures needs attention |
| Not recent | The latest figures are over three months old |
| Too early | Not enough confirmed months to judge yet |
Hover the badge to see the reasons. A company with no confirmed figures shows —. You can sort by Health and filter the list by it.
The Geography page
Portfolio › Geography shows where your capital sits, by each company's HQ country:
- Map — each country with holdings is shaded by TVPI, DPI, or At risk (the share of its NAV in companies whose health is At risk), with a bubble sized by NAV or Invested. Hover a country for its figures, or click it (or Tab to it and press Enter) to see its holdings. Countries too small to draw, such as Singapore, are listed under the map.
- Filters — fund, vintage, sector, stage, and status. Picking a fund or vintage shows those funds' share of each company, not the whole position.
- Concentration — the five countries with the largest share of NAV. Countries above the threshold (25% unless you change it) are flagged on the map, the panel, and the table.
- Table — the same figures by country, sortable by any column, with Export CSV.
- Unassigned — companies with no HQ country are counted separately and left off the map, with a Set country button for each.
Example: a concentration question from an LP. An LP asks how much of Fund II is in the UK. A partner opens Geography, picks Fund II, and sees United Kingdom at 31% of NAV, flagged above the 25% threshold. Clicking the UK lists its four holdings, and Export CSV gives the by-country figures to send back.
The company detail page
Opening a company shows:
- Performance metrics — MOIC, IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI for that position. The IRR card says whether it's calculated from the investments or was entered by hand.
- Investments — every investment and realization with its date, fund, and note; the invested, realized, stake value, and IRR they give; and each fund's share when more than one fund holds the company.
- Valuation history — a chart of the company's valuation over time, and a list of every dated valuation with its method (entry valuation, last round, comparables, DCF, cost, or other) and notes. The latest one is marked Current.
- Company info — sector, stage, entry date and valuation, current valuation, ownership %, invested and realized capital, HQ location, HQ country, website, and description, plus the funds that hold the company.
- Financials — the company's Health, with every reason behind it and the month it's based on; its latest confirmed month (revenue, gross profit, EBITDA, and net income, plus cash balance, monthly burn, runway, ARR, and headcount when the company reports them); a monthly trend chart; the latest month's balance sheet and cash flow, when the company reports them; and the documents its figures are read from.
- Data requests — the links the company uses to send you its figures, what it has sent through them, and a Request figures button.
- Tear sheets — one-page PDF snapshots of the company as of a date, for IC, boards, and LPs.
- Cap table — the company's shareholders, funding rounds, and option pools.
Key terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MOIC | Multiple on Invested Capital: (realized + stake value) ÷ invested |
| TVPI | Total Value to Paid-In: (realized + stake value) ÷ invested, the same as MOIC for one company |
| DPI | Distributions to Paid-In — realized returns relative to invested capital |
| RVPI | Residual Value to Paid-In: stake value ÷ invested |
| IRR | Internal Rate of Return: the annual return worked out from the dates and amounts of the company's investments and realizations, with today's stake value as what's left |
| Stake value | What your share of the company is worth: its current valuation × your ownership %. Without an ownership %, there's no stake value and MOIC, TVPI, and RVPI show — |
| Investment | Money a fund put into the company: a round or a follow-on |
| Realization | Money a fund got back: a sale of shares, a dividend, or an exit |
| Investment ledger | A company's investments and realizations. Invested and realized amounts are the totals of its entries and can't be typed in |
| Cap table | The record of who owns what share of a company |
| Shareholder | A founder, investor, employee, or option pool holding shares |
| Funding round | A discrete round of investment (e.g. Series A) |
| Option pool | Shares reserved for employee equity grants |
| Reading | What Cairn Intelligence found in one uploaded document: its monthly figures, each with a suggested category, waiting for review |
| Confirmed figures | Figures a person has reviewed and confirmed. Only confirmed figures appear on the company page and in the Command Center |
| Category | Where a line from the document belongs in Cairn, such as Revenue › Recurring or Operating expenses › G&A |
| Gross profit, EBITDA, net income | Calculated by Cairn from the confirmed figures each time you view them, never typed in |
| Data request | A request for one company's figures for a period, such as Q3 2026, with a due date. The company answers through its own link without logging in |
| Request link | The web address a company opens to answer a data request. Anyone who has it can send files or figures to that request, so share it only with the company |
| Tear sheet | A one-page PDF of a company as of a date: position, valuation and its change over the quarter, financials, health, and your commentary. Its figures are fixed when it's made |
| Health | Cairn's assessment of a company's latest confirmed figures, with the reasons behind it. It's worked out from rules, not typed in, and updates whenever new figures are confirmed |
| Total assets, total liabilities | Worked out by Cairn from the balance sheet lines each time you view them |
| Net cash flow | The month's operating, investing, and financing cash flows added together |
| Current valuation | The company's latest dated valuation, for the whole company. Your stake value is this × your ownership % |
| Valuation method | How a valuation was arrived at: entry valuation, last round, comparables, DCF, cost, or other. Cairn also records "Company update" when someone edits the current valuation |
| HQ country | The country where a company is headquartered, stored as an ISO country code. The Geography page groups companies by it |
| NAV | Net asset value: for one company, your stake value. A country's NAV is the total of its companies' stake values |
| Concentration threshold | The share of NAV above which a country is flagged on the Geography page. 25% unless you change it, and not saved |
| Unassigned | Companies with no HQ country. They're counted on the Geography page but not placed on the map |
| Linked funds | The funds that hold a company. Members limited to certain funds only see companies linked to their funds |
IRR is calculated from the company's investment ledger once every entry has a date and the stake has a value. Until then, an IRR entered by hand is still shown, marked Entered by hand. See How company IRR is worked out.