How to turn your board of directors into your secret weapon

1. YOUR BOARD AS YOUR SECRET WEAPON
ARIEL POLER @ariel Human Augmentation

2. Ariel’s Background
 Founder: IPRO, Topica, & Textmarks.
 Board Member: Kana, LinkExchange, Freedom Financial, Odeo,
StumbleUpon, Silicon Investor, Scan, Strava, Returnly.
 Investor: AdMob, Flixster, Slideshare, BrightRoll, Instructables, VivaReal,
Optimizely, Thumbtack, Viki, Pantheon, ApartmentList, Mashery,
Kongregate, LendingHome, NexTag, Thync and ~100 more…
 Personal: MIT (math), Stanford (mba), San Francisco (home).
 Current Focus: Human Augmentation

3. Most Boards are a waste of time
– or worst
Most books suck
Most movies are a waste of time
Most of [fill in any category] are mediocre

4. Yet great boards can be
super valuable
Strategic advice
Connections
Ideas from other relevant companies
Sounding board

5. It all starts with the
board composition…
People who understand their role: to add value
People you respect and trust
Diversity of value added: industry, operations, confidant.
Diversity of personalities: cheerleaders vs devil’s advocates
Diversity of perspectives: healthy debate
Design your board for maximum valued added – not safety

6. You get out what you put in
Keep board members informed
Select the strategic and tactical issues to discusses
Prepare the relevant information and share it way in advance

7. Use Board meetings as an
opportunity to look at the Forest
Set medium and long term goals and objectives
Review performance against objectives
Discuss possible actions to address issues
Don’t get bogged down on the data. Focus on insights.
Everything on the board should be valuable to you

8. Share your analysis
It is not enough to share your plan and ask for feedback
We are consider Plan X over Plan Z. The pros and cons of each
plan are the following…

9. Board meetings rarely make good
brainstorming sessions
Instead, share the details and ask specific questions and
suggestions
If you don’t share the key information that you have, board
members won’t know what to focus on

10. Keep control of the agenda
25% of the time for updates
50% of the time for strategic issues
25% of the time for “other”
Don’t let board members go on tangents, e.g., feature
requests/gripes, advertising ideas, personal stories, etc.

11. Leverage board meetings to
benefit your management team
They can join meetings for 1/3 to 2/3 of the meeting
Management teams appreciate board exposure
Board members can give you valuable feedback about the
management tem dynamics

12. Specific Ways in Which Board
Members Are Valuable
Sharing relevant information from other companies
Service providers, best practices, software tools
Making introductions relevant to specific issues
Functional experts, industry experts, hiring references
Having follow up conversations with the management team

13. Ideal Frequency is
once or twice per quarter
Depends on maturity of the company, but a good starting
point is every other month. Very early companies might do
every 6 weeks. More mature companies every quarter

14. No speakerphones –
Everyone should be “present”
The dynamics of meetings deteriorate significantly when
everyone is talking down to the speakerphone
Better to have everyone on the phone and do a conference call
if needed
If someone can’t make it, fill them in after the meeting

15. Finding & Recruiting
Board Members is Hard
Very similar to hiring top talent
Your network is your best source
With the benefit that you can “share” board members
Use references & working meetings to evaluate
Start informally
Great boards attract great board members
Think about it when choosing investors
Compensation has a broad range, mostly in equity

16. It is never too early
to have a great board

17. ARIEL POLER @ariel Human Augmentation