Happy New Year everyone. With the beginning of 2025 falling midweek and most people only returning to the office on Monday, we’ve had time to mull over what 2025 means to us. Often a new year can feel like a big rush, so it is nice to approach it a bit slower and be thoughtful about our goals.
Much is said about New Year’s resolutions. Are they meaningful, or just empty promises forgotten within a week? Despite this, most of us set them every year—or at least talk about doing so—to create a sense of purpose for the year ahead. In business, however, targets are an everyday part of life. With both types of goals in mind, we have set Piper’s New Year’s resolutions for 2025.
Meet more innovative brands.
Most of the investments we make at Piper develop after years of knowing a brand and so we always take time to meet start-ups at the beginning of their journey. We also learn a lot about how small brands innovate to compete. We are constantly working to grow our network by directly approaching founders, meeting people who work with founders or finding the brilliant communities founders join. While we invest in brands turning over £5m, we are supporters of founders growing brand legends at any stage. We do this by sharing our experience, offering intros to our network and inviting founders to our events.
Improve our B Corp score.
In 2025, we have to recertify for B Corp. This involves resubmitting our impact assessment and aiming to improve our score. The certification assessment is in the process of changing this year and is moving away from the scoring to a system that focuses on acting across all impact areas. This means this will be the last score we receive, and it also reminds us that the points are not the point. Since our certification we have done a lot to hold ourselves accountable to the aim of continuous improvement and have been proudly recording what we’ve done in our assessment, ready to submit later this year.
Set carbon reduction targets.
We have been working towards the goal of a decarbonisation strategy and setting reduction targets since we began emissions reporting in 2021. As an investor, most of our emissions come from our pro rata ownership of our portfolio, which means that our ability to decarbonise rests on our portfolio’s ability to decarbonise. We are now confident that Piper’s data and the data we collect from our portfolio is high quality enough that we can make realistic estimations. We are currently working with our long-term partner, Carbon Responsible, to create a decarbonisation strategy, and from there set measurable and time-bound targets.
Test the trends, and avoid the fads.
We don’t invest in fads. But, what our nearly 40 years of experience in brands has taught us is to look to trends for early signs of longer-term shifts in people’s behaviour and habits. Our investment in Maximuscle 20 years ago was an indicator of the move towards supplementation and self-care, which led to our investments in Wild Nutrition and Ancient + Brave. We keep up with the trends by testing them in the office. Last year we tried everything from dog treats made from bugs to vagus nerve stimulation devices. What will it be this year?
Invest in (at least) 2 more future brand legends.
Piper’s main goal, and the New Year’s resolution we set every year, is to find and invest in the brand legends of tomorrow. For us, a brand legend is a business that can become a £100m+ iconic household brand that we are proud to have on our walls. In 30 years, they are still going strong. They define their categories and constantly push innovation and thought leadership. They are brands that their customers love and tell people about. Their founders are ambitious, and purpose-driven, seeking to make people’s lives healthier, happier, and more fulfilling, while helping them minimise their impact on the environment.
There we have it, our goals for 2025. We hope to keep them all. If any of you have set resolutions to get investment or begin developing relationships with investors, please get in touch. We hope you all have a healthy, happy and fulfilling 2025.