Paul G. Silva

MARCH 25, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). The Challenge of Seeing the Truth In BE 2.0, Jim Collins makes a powerful observation: the most successful organizations don’t stagnatethey continuously self-correct.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2017

Many board meetings are bored meetings. This is a shame since the value that the right board could add is immense if you select the right board members and manage them effectively. Yesterday I wrote a blog post about what the role of a board actually is. Some boards are highly functional, many are not.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Nationally recognized leader and executive coach Jackie Jenkins-Scott provides her perspective as she explores examples of responsive leadership in her new book, 7 Secrets of Responsive Leadership. In your book, you talk about the four attributes of great leaders. What are these qualities and why are they so important?

leadership 292

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Tomasz Tunguz

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Automated book closing & reconciliation ; document ingestion Life, Physical, & Social Science Occupations 1.22 Automated document ingestion & reconciliation for closing books is changing accounting. But if a founder wanted a list of jobs to automate, the BLS’ white collar jobs boards is a wonderful place to start.

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data analysis construction education creativity 94

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

It’s predictable, there is no reason to get mad about it and with a well-designed play book you can overcome this much of the time. I left the meeting and had to attend a 3-hour board meeting where two founders have been fighting and each want the other one fired. I call it, “Remind me why I love you again?”

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pitching board funders entrepreneurs 381

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

Yet after a seed round of $2 million many are still doing Quickbooks entries, booking hotels & airplane tickets, negotiating offices leases and digging through employment benefits, legal contracts and such. At board meetings Ophir could focus on strategic questions because he knew that Phil could answer to every number in our board pack.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 2, 2014

I can assure you that move wasn’t a walk in the park for the board. First, I recently read the must-read book Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton. I’m friends with several people in the book and I’m sure they didn’t love being written about – nobody ever does in this sort of book. Foursquare?

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you publish a book, how do you get on the NY Times best seller list? Simply write a great book? But can you be rich and simply buy enough books to be on the list? So there are consultants who have armies of contractors around the country who can go and buy small batches of your book at many locations – all for a fee.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Pre-seed is just a narrower segment where you might raise $1–3 million on a SAFE note and not give out any board seats. There are of course many Seed VCs who take board seats, don’t over-commit to too many deals and try to help with “company building” activities to help at a company’s vulnerable foundations. Secrets of Sand Hill Road.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

We we backed Team Grove’s mission (Kevin sourced the deal and joined the board) and just encouraged the team not to ramp up costs like many contemporary startups because we’re going to play the long game. eliminating herbicides & pesticides. ” Enter Grove. ” Enter Grove.

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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. Audiobooks and eBooks. Gaming and E-sports.

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health accelerator opportunity hospitality 307

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2011

But when you’re in the mood to draw in a few new sources for entrepreneurship you might consider these two books non-traditional books on entrepreneurship that had an impact on me. He talks about this early in the book as a foreshadowing technique. These topics all feature in the book. American Pastoral by Philip Roth. (I

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 5, 2023

To put that timeframe in perspective, here’s a picture of analyst me taken at USV’s first office in 2005, dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt versus a picture of me, a GP at my own firm, over 100 deals later, now on my latest Zoom board call from my couch at home with my junior analyst of about a year and a half.

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ventures investment investing VC 545

Dream It

MAY 19, 2021

If there is sincere interest on the part of the investor, offer to review a smaller raise and revised plan with your board. On the other hand, maybe you and your board have confidence that the amount being raised is the minimum required to achieve key milestones and a smaller raise simply does not make sense.

pitching 393

pitching board health VC 393

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Most VCs are book smart. In fact, book smart can be a negative. I’ve sat on ad tech boards with board members who clearly knew little about impressions, fill rates, CTRs, RTB, eCPMs or the difficulties & opportunities of embedded mobile SDKs vs. HTML5. Smart is simply not a differentiator.

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VC advice board leadership 364

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2016

He brings knowledgable experts from varying points of view but never books anybody that engages in yelling matches. I haven’t read the book nor deeply reviewed Project Aristotle but the conversation on this morning’s show really resonated with me. I have a board meeting coming up this week and I just reviewed the agenda.

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frameworks board creativity SaaS 233

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2019

I’m going to focus this post around the concept of a “board dinner” or “board lunch” since this is part of a series around how to more effectively run board relationships but most of these tips can be broadly applied. Why a Board Dinner (or Lunch)? Managing a board is a bit like flying?—?the

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networking board construction disruption 262

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 28, 2013

It''s an especially relevant question for me as I''ve recently joined the board of the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering , one of two software focused high schools in NYC. Don''t get me wrong--I think software literacy is extremely important.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 5, 2014

She told of the teaching of the Talmud – a book which scholars use to debate doctrine and from which Jewish people are reminded to always learn and to debate. But as I rose in my career (and post MBA) I moved into a role in which I was to advise board-level executives on topics where I was expected to rapidly become an expert.

peer-to-peer 337

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs consulting VC 337

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 10, 2014

I could probably write a book on venture round pricing dynamics. Launching may or may not give you less dilution based on whether you''re looking at the median or the average, but across the board, having revenue changed how much dilution an entrepreneur had to take. What should you price your seed round at? Well, it depends.

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venture capital ventures board accelerator 397

TechCrunch

MARCH 24, 2021

banks and credit card company is also coming on board as a strategic partner, to launch Capital One Travel, which is the first instantiation of Hopper’s new B2B platform, Hopper Cloud. That characterization mostly comes from Hopper’s ability to offer customers financial flexibility around their travel bookings.

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capital disruption board accelerator 100

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 23, 2012

I read this book, " Why We Make Mistake s " and it talks a lot about "recall bias". What you should be doing is thinking about this more like a Pinterest board--meant to inspire and not necessarily for you to just buy everything. On average, it's probably nonsensical.

advice 416

advice startup VC strategy 416

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 12, 2016

The best designed mobile apps use the accelerometer, the camera, map integration, location, contact book integration, QR codes and so on. making the experience “as easy as buying a book on Amazon.” To say that the board, investor base and management team of Tact is stacked would be an understatement. Think about Snapchat.

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real estate leadership board investment 244

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Board Meetings. How do VCs break out of group think when they are shuttling from one board meeting to the next, from one conference to the other and talking with all the same people? I learned about this behavior and how to channel it from my favorite book about ADHD, Delivered from Distraction. Conferences.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

” Strangely, the best I’ve ever heard this exemplified is in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential - which is really a book about startups as told through kitchen stories. Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup. Writing a book will be fun.

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board VC construction opportunity 320

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

And having too much money certainly raises board expectations that you will do big things quickly. No board is going to give you $25 million up front and then expect your year-one staff expenditures to be $2 million. If you’re a startup or product person and haven’t read his book Four Steps to Epiphany please do.

entrepreneurs 374

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MARCH 13, 2020

In his book The Innovation Stack , he recounts how he and his cofounder, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, approached the problem of credit cards with a new perspective. In your book, The Innovation Stack , you talk about the difference between and entrepreneur and a business person. When everything affects everything, you have a dynamic system.

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innovation entrepreneurs entrepreneurship board 190

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2012

One day if you’re lucky you’ll be big enough to work with recruiters to hire senior members of your team or your board. And in it he profiles the work of Coach Campbell who was once on the boards of both Google & Apple. EXECUTIVE RECRUITERS. EXECUTIVE COACHES.

startup 363

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

APRIL 21, 2021

So this work to find the right pairing is critical and is a lot of the work that board members do with the founders and their leadership team in startups. And this is when operational leaders are hired and the work starts to find the right long-term sustainable operating model. Most are not. Operational leadership, fortunately, does not.

leadership 279

leadership VC advice sustainability 279

Dream It

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

It doesn’t matter whether your business model is B2B, B2C, or any other model, you still need to “sell to people” to get your key hires on board, critical partnerships and suppliers, and maybe even a deal from your landlord. Improve your selling skills by studying the many books and videos available on that very skill. co-founder).

startup founder 397

startup founder founder startup pitching 397

Y Combinator

MARCH 7, 2023

YC Group Partner Surbhi Sarna has written a book called Without a Doubt , and today it goes on sale. I have no idea how Surbhi managed to write a book while also being a Group Partner at YC (a more-than-full-time job!). It's a must-read for anyone interested in healthcare.

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entrepreneurship culture advice health 96

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2019

I understand that Adam Grant is a fairly popular professor at Wharton and has a book that some people loved called “Originals” (for me it interesting but not mind blowing, and I have some first-hand knowledge of some of its inaccuracies). Would you recommend that I create an open Trello board and anybody can add tasks for me there?

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advice board pitching startup accelerator 250

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 31, 2022

Gotham Gives is run by Jennifer Klopp and we are joined on the board by our long-time friend and philanthropic partner Sarah Holloway. USV TEAM POSTS: Albert Wenger — May 30, 2022 Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies (Book Review). You can subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more videos as they come out.

culture 219

culture education venture capital board 219

Revolution

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

Where to go: Book a room at the 21c Cincinnati for an artful stay, explore the country’s glowing commercial history at the American Sign Museum, and catch a Bearcats game at the University of Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium. Read highlights from the annual meeting. Where we went: New York, New York?

venture capital 246

venture capital pitching board ventures 246

Entrepreneurs' Organization

JULY 6, 2020

I interviewed a number of prominent VC’s and entrepreneurs for my recent book. Brad says: “Talk to people you trust, whether they’re investors, board members, co-founders, mentors, whatever; make sure you’re open about the stress and the struggle you’re going through both financially in the business and personally.”

peer-to-peer 321

peer-to-peer startup advice entrepreneurs 321

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2013

bang on the windows of a board meeting recently and stick his tongue out at all of us. It’s something you’d imagine working best on a tablet where the parents take digital assets (think: photos & stickers) and engage with their children in story telling, arts-and-crafts, scrap-booking and the like. Aka Punky Brewster.

startup 398

startup creativity advice entrepreneurs 398

TechCrunch

JANUARY 22, 2021

Christine Tao and Lori Mazan , the brains behind Sounding Board , want to train any leader within an organization to be a better leader. But in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Sounding Board has seen demand for its platform grow even more. Quarterly bookings have increased 3.4 million Series A led by Canaan Partners.

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