The document provides an overview of strategic imperatives and key performance indicators for a software company. It outlines goals to achieve top-quartile growth metrics, improve revenue retention, release a second product, and hire key leadership. Updates on progress are provided, including some initiatives being ahead or behind schedule due to issues like product bugs or difficulty finding qualified candidates. The CEO is advised to maintain focus on the strategic imperatives, communicate critical topics to the board, and provide performance updates and progress by department on goals.

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DEMOCRATIZING THE FOUNDER
PLAYBOOK
Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors
Chapter 1: CEO Overview Best Practices
January 2023

2. Proprietary and Confidential
Maintain Focus on your “Strategic Imperatives”
Sorenson Notes
• Maintain focus on the key
initiatives that must be
accomplished this year
• Results-oriented goals
Overview on your strategic imperatives for the upcoming quarters
Overview of Strategic Initiative Metrics / KPIs
Achieve Top Quartile
ARR Growth & GTM
Unit Economics
• Goal: Achieve top-quartile SaaS growth & efficiency metrics
‒ Grow new logo quota capacity & build out customer
success function to support customer base and enable
upsell bookings
• Rationale: Prove ability to achieve repeatable, top-quartile go-
to-market motion
• Meet 2023 ending ARR budget of $20M (>200%
growth YoY)
• Achieve New Logo ARR growth of >200% YoY
• Achieve >$1M ramped per-rep-productivity
Improve Net
Revenue Retention
• Goal: Build highly predictable upsell and retention motion
‒ Finalize modular pricing and upsell strategy
‒ Ensure sufficient capacity from customer success function
to support customer base and upsell goals
• Rationale: Improve GTM efficiency, create more value for
existing customer base
• Achieve >90% renewal rate from customers with
contracts expiring
• Achieve >130% net expansion
Release Scalable
Second Product
• Goal: Release second scalable product for general availability
by year end
‒ Finalize product, test in beta, and release for GA
‒ Finalize modular pricing and sales strategy for existing
customer base
• Rationale: enable upsell, expand TAM, add more value for
customer base
• Roll out and attain >10% adoption of new product by
year end; >25% adoption by 6-months post- general
availability launch
Hire Key Leadership
• Goal: hire CFO and CMO
• Rationale: improve financial controls and predictability;
improve top of the funnel lead gen & brand awareness
• NA
Note: all metrics and commentary are illustrative examples

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Maintain Focus on your “Strategic Imperatives” (Cont’d)
Sorenson Notes
• Maintain focus on the key
initiatives that must be
accomplished this year
• Results-oriented goals
Overview on your strategic imperatives for the upcoming quarters
Q1 Initiative
Target
Completion
Forecast
Completion
Status Issues
Achieve Top Quartile
ARR Growth & GTM
Unit Economics
• Maintain 3x YoY growth
• Hit new logo bookings
target of $2M in Q1
12/31/2023 NA
• Maintaining sufficient pipeline
coverage to support sales
capacity growth
• Staying ahead on AE hiring
Improve Net
Revenue Retention
• Finalize modular pricing
• Finalize expansion
quota program and
incentives for customer
success team
2/28/2023 2/28/2023
• Managing account executive
morale now that upsells are
directed to CS team
Release Scalable
Second Product
• Beta test MVP of
product to >100 users
9/30/2023 11/30/2023
• Degrading time to remediate
bugs on flagship product &
slowing rate of feature updates
for flagship product
• Need to scale SMB product
team
Hire Key Leadership
• Onboard and transfer
ownership of sales
process management
to CRO
6/30/2023 8/1/2023
• Finding a CFO that is focused
heavily on accounting cleanup
and financial infrastructure
= ahead of plan = on plan = behind plan
Note: all metrics and commentary are illustrative examples

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Exceeding Expectations
● Business goals or metrics that
remain stable / high performing
● Areas we have seen process
improvement
What Keeps Me Up at
Night
● Key competitive concerns
● Significant business threats
● Persistent Problems
Today’s Discussion Topics
and Objectives
● Have we spread ourselves too
thin in certain areas?
● Are we focused on the wrong
key questions or problems?
● Areas to optimize performance in
future periods
Structure & Calibrate: Align Board on Priorities
Example Sorenson Notes
Overview on what is and isn’t working across your organization
• Communicate most critical
topics facing company
• Provide opportunity for
management team and board
members to raise questions
and concerns
• Be willing to adjust agenda
and reserve time for high-
priority concerns and
discussion topics
Note: all metrics and commentary are illustrative examples

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Balance Big Picture/Details: Performance Update (Example 1)
Example
• We typically evaluate software
businesses across five key
metrics:
‒ ARR growth
‒ Customer satisfaction
‒ Product profitability
‒ Sales efficiency
‒ Cash burn & liquidity
position
• While sometimes more is
considered better, in this case,
clean and concise summary
slides like this can help keep
discussion focused on core
business performance metrics
Sorenson Notes
Note: all metrics and commentary are illustrative examples

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Balance Big Picture/Details: Performance Update (Example 2)
Example
• Provide context around
metrics. Explain what
decisions drove outcomes and
how to improve future
outcomes.
• Include commentary on
performance trends and
underlying drivers: What drove
variance to plan; which
decisions worked as expected,
etc.
• Disciplined approach to self-
diagnosis can help drive
company improvement.
Sorenson Notes
Note: all metrics and commentary are illustrative examples

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Reflect and Introspect: Progress by Department / Goal
Example
• OKR example 1 provides static
view of business goals. OKR
example 2 communicates
organizational health by
department over time.
‒ Understand goals defined
in prior meetings and
measure performance
over time on quantitative
and qualitative basis.
• Effective board meetings
typically produce follow-ups,
deliverables, and action items.
• Track, prioritize, and execute
on board meeting action items
and provide progress updates
to Board.
Sorenson Notes
Sales
• Expanded sales engineering team
• Reduced sales headcount by 4 AEs
• Sales cycle shortened by 60 days on average
Marketing • Significant improvement to MQL generation, pipeline regularly up
• Hiring larger content marketing team, focus on whitepapers
Product • Understaffed and focused on maintenance, need to expand
• Urgent hires required on senior product manager side
Engineering
• Product team ‘subbing in’ to help with maintenance
• New features rolled out in 2022 were buggy
• Customer satisfaction and NPS remains high
Team • Outhired in 2022, team in place to execute on 2023 plans
• Reduced headcount with RIF of underperforming employees
G&A / Finance
• Closed bridge loan from existing investors
• Aligned budget to decrease burn and increase
runway
Great Problem
Note: all metrics and commentary are illustrative examples