Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2019

I have been writing a series on how startup boards get selected, who sits on them and what to avoid. I started this series in part to help entrepreneurs but also to help newer investors because I’ve know with so many new companies you have so many new board members and many people are trying to figure out there respective roles. msuster Many investors don't know how to be good Board members. As a board member it is your job to know this.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

Bolster came out of stealth and into a beta period today and is opening up its marketplace to companies that want to access fractional talent and to executives who want to work at high growth companies in interim, fractional, advisory, or board roles. I have had the great pleasure of working with Matt Blumberg and the senior leadership team of USV’s former portfolio company Return Path (which was sold in 2019) for much of the last twenty years.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 22, 2020

Indianapolis-based Boardable , a provider of board management software tools for nonprofits, has raised $8 million in a new round of financing, the company said. Most nonprofits manage their board members with ‘digital duct tape’—endless email threads and file sharing services.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

One of the things that founders have the most angst about is whom they should have on their board and at what stage of the business. This is smart because amazing board members can be transformative with important advice and access and can also help attract other great board members (and team members). Bad board members can make business very unpleasant. Do you need a board when you first start you company? If you get a smart person on the board?—?just

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Y Combinator

JULY 15, 2019

One of the most common questions we hear from founders is “How do I manage my board?” It’s something that provokes anxiety, because this is the first time the founder/CEO is subject to external supervision, and the board has powers that include the firing of the CEO and the senior management. Where possible, I’ve included specific examples – drawn from YC companies and partners – of how companies have handled board issues. But first, what’s the purpose of a board?

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

Startups that are backed by professional financial investors almost always have a Board of Directors that consists of some set of founders, investors and sometimes independent directors. While the management of a startup company deals with the day-to-day decision-making within the company (strategy, budgets, goals, tasks, compensation) ultimately the Board of Directors has the legal governing responsibilities for these things. Who Should be on Your Board?

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 17, 2020

Let’s take a few minutes to examine the kind of equity financing available to small or early stage businesses. These firms will continue to finance the company without VC money required, and in return keep the capital structure simple for the life of the company.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

I’ve written a few posts about boards recently as part of a series on the subject. I admit that I haven’t yet read it but I’ve had numerous discussions with Brad over the years about board structure & conduct and consider him a mentor on the topic. When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. So our board meetings consisted of discussion about.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 1, 2021

Other investors include the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, Fidelity, Wellington Management, and the Qatar Investment Authority, according to Crunchbase. That financing valued Compass at $6.4 Compass , the real-estate brokerage startup backed by roughly $1.6

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Forming a board. Board members can provide useful feedback, help to focus the founding team, and provide a network of contacts. . Unfortunately, many companies don''t get financing--because they don''t get any of the above. That''s how board participation can help an advisor scale. So why wait until you have a company to setup a board? It''s what the best performing companies do once they take on outside investors.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Should All of Your Management Team Attend Board Meetings? The age old question for every startup is whom to involve in the board meeting. The reality is that there are some board meetings in which having a broad set of management present is a great idea and there are some meetings where in can be a hindrance. If you’ve taken the time to assemble important people on to your board then you ought to use the scare time you have together to pick their brains.

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Gust

JULY 12, 2012

A board seat in and of itself has no particular value, and is often something to be *avoided*, rather than sought out. The legal role of the board is to make strategic and corporate-level decisions, hire/fire the CEO, and represent all of the stockholders of the company. Indeed, being a member of the board of directors means that you have a legal, fiduciary responsibility to the other investors, and are required to put the stockholders interests ahead of your personal ones.

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Innovation 2 Enterprise

FEBRUARY 2, 2020

Our senior vice president of marketing and our director of finance are both women. “Whether it is experience, age, gender, race, or any other trait, the different life and work experiences that individuals bring to a company or a board of directors provides a significant advantage in problem solving and strategic planning, which ultimately creates the best outcome for all.” By 2021, the bank will look for two diverse board members. By Scott Meacham.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

I’ve sat on many boards over the past 2 decades and seen my share of high-functioning boards and low-functioning boards. Here are some observations I have from this exposure: If a company moves from strength-to-strength with predictable outcomes, easy financings, low staff turn-over, limited competitive threats then the composition of the board probably doesn’t matter as much. In the best cases boards come together to help the company get through its trough?—?in

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Gust

JULY 15, 2012

I recommend that every early-stage startup find three Advisory Board members. Even more importantly, you should expect these members of your team to be your advocates to angel or VC investors, or even be part of your friends and family financing round. Besides laying out the benefits, your advisory board invitation letter also might include: Your business plan executive summary. The Advisory Board’s objectives and focus.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He wrote a post this long weekend on how he manages the board of DataSift. In his post he asserts, “You get the VCs you deserve” and the corollary “You get the performance out of your board that you deserve.” By spending more time educating your board on your business you get more valuable advice from them. In addition to helping manage the board Chris also helps represent the interests of the angel investors / common stock holders.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most board meetings are administrative updates that accomplish very little other than inform board members about the performance of the company since the last board meeting. If they only ever received updates then don’t expect them to be bought into tough decisions when you inevitably have the board meeting where the news isn’t positive. This is part of a broader series on Board Meetings. The board deck & financials arrive the night before the meeting.

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Startup Grind

AUGUST 17, 2018

I joined the board of one of my international investments for the first time ever last year. When I was a Y Combinator partner, I noticed that more and more of the batches were companies started by international founders. It's now at 35 percent , and because of this a common question I hear now is: How do you set yourself up to raise money in the U.S.? I’ve invested in several startups that started out as international companies and either moved to the U.S.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

Should You Allow Board Observers on Your Startup Board? Photo by Antenna on Unsplash A board observer is somebody who attends your board meeting but doesn’t have a voting right. There are also certain points in a board meeting where you can ask the board observers to step out of the room unless they’ve negotiated specific rights that preclude this. Why do board observers exist? Note: This is part of a series on Startup Boards.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2017

There’s a lot of mystique about what happens at board meetings and a lot of imagined board-room drama. The image of boards and of investors vs. founder conflicts has been so at odds with my experiences on dozens of boards over the past 20 years that I thought it was worth sharing what I actually see. In fact, as one Twitter commenter observed to what do board do, “Often, not much.” The administrative work we actually do at board meetings?

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Flourish, Core Innovation Capital and Quiet Capital also participated in the latest financing. Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and struggle to get out of a debt cycle.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2012

I recently read Brad Feld’s thought provoking piece encouraging founders to sit on the board of another startup company. You’ll be on the other side of the financing discussions (a board member, rather than the CEO). . You’ll have a peer relationship with another CEO that you have a vested interest in that crosses over to a board – CEO relationship. . But I also agree with his warning, “I usually recommend only one outside board.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

When I first read Paul Graham’s blog post on “High Resolution&# Financing I read it as a treatise arguing that convertible notes are better than equity. On the former I mentioned a video that I shot for This Week in VC talking about how Farb Nivi solved this problem: “Farb talks about how he got Rob Lord on board at Grockit.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Zeta co-founder Aditi Shekar has spent the past three years tracking the ways couples share and manage their finances, from each card swipe to every split bill. Zeta is a new fintech platform that helps couples join their finances. Social finance 2.0

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Feedough

OCTOBER 29, 2020

It also involves a lot of money; and this money is generally sourced by taking loans (debt financing) or selling equity (equity financing). On the other hand, equity financing is usually a go-to-strategy for most founders to raise funding, get strategic guidance, and run a successful long-term startup. But what exactly is equity financing, how it works, and what are its sources? What Is Equity Financing? How Does Equity Financing work?

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abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 17, 2014

banks consumer checking offerings have become less favorable across the board. Finance government stimulus Internet Payment Regulation Uncategorized Venture Capital Disruption payments wealthfront Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley believe that the financial services industry in the United States is “ripe for disruption. ” The basis of this argument is really two fold. First, they believe that the current offerings from the financial incumbents are lacking.

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Innovation 2 Enterprise

NOVEMBER 24, 2019

He was CTO of a highly successful startup through an eight-figure acquisition, an entrepreneur-in-residence at Techstars, and has served multiple years on the advisory board of South by Southwest Interactive. He was talking about the Technology Business Finance Program (TBFP), Oklahoma’s nationally recognized pre-seed capital fund that i2E administers for the Oklahoma Center for Science and Technology. By Scott Meacham.

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OurCrowd

JANUARY 11, 2021

The post [OncoHost in Yahoo Finance] OncoHost Welcomes Nobel Prize Winner to Scientific Advisory Board appeared first on OurCrowd Blog. Aaron Ciechanover Joins Host Response Profiling Company to Improve Precision Oncology and Overcome Resistance to Cancer Treatments. Read more here.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

With a wealth of experience in traditional finance, as well as fintech, and her vision for bringing digital assets into the mainstream, we feel very lucky to have her on board.”

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Berkonomics

APRIL 3, 2014

We’ve spoken of financing a young company through friends and family, known as “inside angels.” VCs often invest no less than $2 million in a single deal, finding it difficult to put less money to work and still spend time on boards and coaching entrepreneurs to a successful liquidity event. Those are difficult goals for most entrepreneurs, making this form of financing unavailable to most, but attractive to those that fit into these criteria.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

The simple existence of a board member with invested capital at stake means that some of the more existential risks of the earliest stage have been mitigated. Ryan Falvey. Contributor. Share on Twitter.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Returning backers Jefferies Financial Group, New Residential Investment Corporation — an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC — and 166 2nd LLC ( the family office of WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann) also participated in the financing.

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Gust

JULY 18, 2012

Yet I’ve rarely seen entrepreneurs more fired up than when recounting war stories of startups whose founders had control of the company wrested from them, were forced to take financing or compensation deals on outrageously onerous terms , or worst of all, fired from their own companies. The Board of Directors makes most strategic decisions for the company at a high level, including, crucially, the appointment and removal of executive officers (CEO, President, CFO, and so on).

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

Now founders and CEOs and Boards have a plethora of options for moving from a privately held business to a publicly held business. hacking finance stocks VC & TechnologyAs many of you know, Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are all the rage on wall street right now. SPACs are publicly traded “shell companies” that raise capital in an IPO process and then use that capital to merge with a privately held business.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

From dorm rooms to board rooms: How universities are promoting entrepreneurship. ” From dorm rooms to board rooms: How universities are promoting entrepreneurship. Finance Labor SaaS Startups TC Transportation Venture Capital EC Newsletter Extra Crunch Roundup

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MARCH 18, 2020

You can expect to see families invest in toys, to keep their children occupied, as well as board games, projects and puzzles that can be done as a family in the evening and on weekends. Hasbro , which currently has five of the 10 top-selling board games on Amazon, has major potential here. BUSINESS GROWTH FINANCES INNOVATION PR/MARKETING acceleration partners remote work robert glazer stay-at-home economy stay-home economy

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Cue statement from Rutger Arnhult, chairman of the board of M2 Assets Management: “Northmill Bank is already a profitable company with a proven and sustainable business model, which stands out among today’s tech investments.

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