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Your board should protect you!

Berkonomics

All other board functions are secondary. Even venture capitalists who sit on boards where they have significant investments often forget this point. Actually, there are two legal duties of board members. Second is the duty of loyalty… …Loyalty to the corporate person, not to the shareholders who elected the board member.

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The Pre-Board Board: How to Create Accountability Before You Give Away a Board Seat

This is going to be BIG.

Typically, investors don’t take a board seat until you raise your first equity round—which means that it could be *years* before you have a real board meeting: A year of nights/weekends work researching, prototyping, and fundraising. I’ll make it simple. How many is too many, for example?

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Vinod Khosla’s advice for top VCs? Don’t sit on your founders’ boards

TechCrunch

Serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor Vinod Khosla has some strong, contrarian advice for the venture capital industry: don’t sit on your founders’ boards. Other VCs accuse us of being very active and very engaged — but the flip side of it is they vote on boards. We don’t — no matter how important an issue.”

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The Twenty Year Itch: My Last VC Investment Out of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures

This is going to be BIG.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll complete my next investment. Last August, I passed the point at which I had spent literally half my entire life working in this asset class, having started at the General Motors pension fund doing institutional investments in venture funds and late-stage directs back in February of 2001.

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The Pros and Cons of Rando Rich People Investing in Your Startup

This is going to be BIG.

These are people that didn’t make their money through a tech startup or startup investing. Governance Moreso than a lot of actual VCs, a lot of high-net-worth folks tend to ask for board representation—even in the super early stages of a company where boards tend to be a little less formal. I’m not talking about active angels.

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Here is How to Make Sense of Conflicting Startup Advice

Both Sides of the Table

Everybody has a blog these days and there is much advice to be had. Many startups now go through accelerators and have mentors passing through each day with advice – usually it’s conflicting. So far from not taking advice from other people – I want more advice, more data points, more opinions.

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Take only “smart money” investments

Berkonomics

Professional investors usually bring “smart money” to the table, defined as money that comes along with good advice and great relationships for corporate growth. Each of these companies needed more cash than professional angel investors were willing or able to provide, and we turned to the venture community for larger investments.

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