INTRODUCTION
The word boardroom conjures up images of important people, puffing on cigars or sipping scotch, while sitting in leather chairs in wood-paneled rooms. These important people are talking about important things that determine the future of your company. Formality and seriousness hangs in the air. Big decisions are being made.
Startup boards are not that fancy and not as complex. First time CEOs and founders often have an elevated view of the boardroom. While this type of board may exist in some cases, a startup board is typically a small group of people trying to help build your company.
Over the years, we've served on hundreds of boards. A few were great, many were good, and some were terrible. When things in the company were going smoothly, the board was congratulatory and supportive. When there were challenges, some boards helped and some boards hurt. The tempo and interactions of these boards varied dramatically. In some cases reality prevailed; in others it was denied.
In 2010, Brad realized that the default structure of a startup board was an artifact of the past 40 years, dating back to the way early venture-backed company boards operated. Things had changed and evolved some, but the dramatic shift in communication patterns and technology over the past decade hadn't been incorporated into the way most boards worked. As a result, Brad ran a two-year experiment where he tried lots of different things, some successful, some not. As with every experiment, he did more of what worked, modified and killed what didn't, tried new things, and measured a lot of stuff.
The idea for this book emerged during this experiment. We decided that in addition to describing the new startup board approach that resulted from Brad's experiment, it was important to lay the groundwork and explain clearly how startup boards historically worked, and how they could be most effective, and what the challenges were. Brad's new board approach built on the traditional board of directors, so rather than throw it out, we use a highly-functioning one as the basis for a new, evolved, and much more effective approach.
While the topic may feel dry, we've tried, as Brad and Jason Mendelson (Foundry Group, Managing Director) did in Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, to take a serious topic, cover it rigorously, but do it in English with our own brand of humor. Our goal is to demystify how a board of directors works, discuss historical best and worst practices, and give you a clear set of tools for creating and managing and awesome board.