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The Pre-Board Board: How to Create Accountability Before You Give Away a Board Seat

This is going to be BIG.

Typically, investors don’t take a board seat until you raise your first equity round—which means that it could be *years* before you have a real board meeting: A year of nights/weekends work researching, prototyping, and fundraising. First off, many founders don't really feel the need to have external accountability.

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Board Diversity

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

The board diversity problem is a symptom of a much broader problem around lack of diversity in founders that get funded and lack of diversity in VC firms. Most startup boards are made up of a few founders and a few VCs. No wonder you have no diversity on the board. Boards don’t need three or four VCs on them.

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Venture Capital is About Human Capital

Both Sides of the Table

We then help surround founders with other talent who want to join important causes but don’t have the startup idea themselves. We help founders through difficult moments, we help coach, we act as sparring partners, we help them resolve conflicts when they’re fighting with co-founders and we help them deal with adversity as well as successes.

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Lessons from a Diverse Venture Capital Portfolio

This is going to be BIG.

Twenty-five of them have at least one female co-founder. Fifteen had co-founders over 40. Five have LGBTQ+ founders. Three teams have African-American founders. The diversity is the direct result of our mission—to build the most accessible venture capital fund in NY. Three of the founding teams are married couples.

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Founders. Run. Amok. It Starts With a Term Sheet.

This is going to be BIG.

It was a company whose product I believed in and whose founder I liked, but a firm lobbed in a term sheet at a price 33% higher than what I had offered using a very light agreement meant for a much earlier stage company. Then, I read about the idiotic comments made by a co-founder of Rap Genius. No, probably not.

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The BSList: You Need a Co-Founder (No. 93)

This is going to be BIG.

That includes investing way earlier than they would normally, investing outside of scope, investing with their personal capital outside of the fund, etc. It’s your job as a founder to find out the specific risk associated with that attribute and to find out if the reason given is the only reason. Ok, I can accept that.

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The Perils of Founder Fighting

Both Sides of the Table

Nowhere is the politics more difficult than with co-founders, which is why for years I’ve spoken publicly about “ the co-founder mythology.” ” Of course we all go into businesses expecting to be aligned with our co-founders but over time life changes. Equity for the future? We sat down the three of us.

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