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Startup Boards

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  1. INTRODUCTION TO STARTUP BOARDS

    How Much Do You Know About Startup Boards?
  2. Why Boards Make Founders Uneasy
  3. What Do Boards (Really) Do?
  4. When Is The Best Time To Form A Board?
  5. Who Should Sit On The Board?
  6. Quiz 1
    1 Quiz
  7. BEFORE THE BOARD
    The Board Pack
  8. The Reporting Pack
  9. The Meeting's Agenda
  10. Circulating Bad News
  11. Frequency Of Meetings
  12. Quiz 2
    1 Quiz
  13. DURING THE BOARD
    Where Should The Meeting Take Place?
  14. Making Your Objectives Clear
  15. Leaving Space For Debates
  16. Keeping Track Of Time
  17. Inviting Guests
  18. Taking Board Minutes
  19. Quiz 3
    1 Quiz
  20. AFTER THE BOARD
    Circulating Minutes
  21. Following Up With Board Members
  22. What Happens When Things Don't Go So Well?
  23. Managing Conflicts Of Interest
  24. Replacing Board Members
  25. Quiz 4
    1 Quiz
  26. SPECIAL TIPS FOR INVESTORS
    Building Relationships
  27. Adding Value - Best Practices
  28. Understanding Your Legal Risks
  29. Coaching Founders To Improve Board Meetings
  30. Knowing Your Place & Role
  31. Exercising Influence Not Authority

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Startup Boards Why Boards Make Founders Uneasy
Unit 2 of 31
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Why Boards Make Founders Uneasy

Most Founders have grim thoughts when they hear about Boards. For some, the Board is the boss they didn’t want when they set out on their entrepreneurial journey. Unfortunately for them, taking money from VCs comes with Board seats attached, and means sharing decision-making.

Besides, good Boards help founders accelerate growth and avoid mistakes.

In these Founders’ minds, Boards are founder-unfriendly. Some high-profile cases such as Steve Jobs being fired from Apple, Travis Kalanick from Uber, and more recently, Adam Neumann from WeWork, entertain such fears. Although these cases are very different, they are routinely mentioned by entrepreneurs as examples of Boards having too much power.

Yet, we live in an unprecedented founder-friendly era: the Founder-to-CEO path is now more than ever supported by VC firms. Andreessen Horowitz is one of the pioneers in that domain.

More often than not, Boards are supportive of the founders.

Read the articles referenced below. What do you think about these situations?

💬 Let us know in the Comments section below.

👀 Sources & Additional Material

  • It feels like it was not only a mistake but plain wrong to fire Steve Jobs from Apple, a company he had founded. They had to call him back a few years later, and the rest is history. For Kalanick, it’s a whole different issue though. He had created a toxic culture at Uber and had to be let go.

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