Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

What used to be an “A” round in 2011 is now routinely called a Seed round and this has been so engrained that founders would rather take less money than to have to put the words “A round” in their legal documents. 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.

ventures 471

ventures VC venture capital funders 471

Gust

JULY 18, 2012

The basic structure of corporate governance is well ingrained among the legal and investment communities, but it’s worth reviewing for those who don’t enjoy dealing with Board resolutions and proxy statements for a living. Here is where the concept of fiduciary duty looms large.

board 188

board financing finance consulting 188

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

He serves on the boards of OCEANIX, Atom Computing, Conscious Cultures and MycoWorks. You want to proactively manage the order in which people access information and focus their attention on a few key documents that they can return to when they fall down a rabbit hole. An elegant strategy memo is your most important document.

founder 97

founder strategy pitching venture capital 97

Berkonomics

JANUARY 11, 2018

Some of you have gotten along forever without a board of directors, or used your spouse as the “other” board member from the start. But there are some very good reasons to build a great board composed of some outside members. And good board members can add real value to you and the company.

board 97

board creativity sustainability health 97

TechCrunch

JANUARY 14, 2021

Most developers don’t enjoy writing documentation for their code and that makes life quite a bit harder when a new team member tries to get started on working on a company’s codebase. Using Swimm, you can create the standard — but auto-updated — documentation, but also walkthroughs and tutorials.

development 100

development board ventures investing 100

TechCrunch

APRIL 12, 2021

You hear so much about data these days that you might forget that a huge amount of the world runs on documents : a veritable menagerie of heterogeneous files and formats holding enormous value yet incompatible with the new era of clean, structured databases. Hugging Face raises $40 million for its natural language processing library.

mix-use 108

mix-use real estate SaaS construction 108

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? This can be your star Chief Architect who loves to code but hates having to handle the admin like testing, documentation, recruiting, etc.

creativity 400

creativity venture capital entrepreneurs board 400

Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

blocking a quorum, or preventing a shareholder/board action). This could be through shareholder voting rights (set through a super-majority that gives that investor a block) or at the board-level (on certain decisions that require board approval like the consent of each preferred director).

startup 348

startup communities VC ventures 348

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

In 1995, while in high school, Seth wanted to start a business scanning paper documents for companies, but realized it was a non-starter when he learned that a scanner costs $4k. What is the communication rhythm and dynamics with the board and in other meetings? Seth likes to get together with board members every 30 days.

board 286

board culture VC education 286

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 13, 2019

The company’s misogynist culture was well documented before Susan Fowler tipped the scales in 2017 and I don’t recall a single investor saying anything about it up to that point. How many LPs are asking the top tier funds what they’re doing to enforce and oversee values and culture from a board perspective?

culture 343

culture incumbents enablement sustainability 343

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

Generally speaking in venture capital financings the legal documents will specify that only “major investors” (a threshold set in the agreement – which can be $500,000 investor or more). We led an investment round in a company a while ago in which we wrote a seven-figure check and have taken a board seat.

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venture capital VC board financing 352

Hunter Walk

NOVEMBER 11, 2024

For startups, a good Board is better than no Board, but a bad Board is worse than anything. One component of a good Board is a high value add Independent Board Member, which in my experience, often doesn’t get added early enough (for a variety of reasons). I knew I wanted to help build it from the ground up.

board 81

board collaboration energy advice 81

Entrepreneurs' Organization

APRIL 7, 2023

Document what is successful right now. This is when you get your staff on board with the overall systematization of your follow-up processes. There are many reasons your staff will want to help you document and improve the follow-up processes. Edit the documentation to include the new processes you have built.

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creativity consulting entrepreneurs board 224

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

In 1999 I was in Japan doing a strategy project for the board of directors of Sony. 18% of all errors come from people using the wrong documents. hours are spent every day by workers searching for documents. I’d rather make decisions with uncertain numbers than no numbers. It becomes folklore. I encourage it.

consulting 415

consulting data analysis advice construction 415

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2019

But I hate worse when I let down the people for whom I’ve totally committed my time to: the boards I set on, my limited partners, my colleagues at Upfront, companies that are pitching me and looking for feedback and my family. Would you recommend that I create an open Trello board and anybody can add tasks for me there?

advice 250

advice board pitching startup accelerator 250

Berkonomics

MARCH 17, 2018

I’ve been sued as a board member too many times over the past twenty-five years of board service. Entrepreneurs blaming their board for failures of a fragile, early stage company. As a result, I now insist upon D&O insurance for every board upon which I sit. Five times. Does that shock you? It does me.

board 97

board entrepreneurs investing investment 97

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 2, 2014

I can assure you that move wasn’t a walk in the park for the board. It was written by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and documents the 2012 election from the early GOP primary fights right through to the final outcome. Zynga not only had many hirings & firings but ultimately it led to Mark Pincus stepping aside as CE O.

startup 385

startup coworking advice leadership 385

Berkonomics

MAY 23, 2024

Give one percent equity to each outside board member vesting over two to four years of service. Many early-stage CEOs and board members have asked for some guidance regarding pay and time commitments for board members. Here is my best advice, based upon many boards and many years. Realistic human images.

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board VC consulting advice 62

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Together, these documents will help distill not only your vision for the current fundraise, but more broadly the long-term differentiation and trajectory of your company. While you have undoubtedly already shared these responses by email or live discussion, it’s helpful to see all the correspondence documents in one place.

financing 125

financing finance real estate construction 125

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2010

I had to understand their business requirements and document them all. And few people in my experience do this well so many board meetings wander. I next moved into system design where I designed computer systems to deal with large industrial natural gas customers and telecommunication companies. It is at the appropriate level.

entrepreneurs 372

entrepreneurs consulting frameworks advice 372

Entrepreneurs' Organization

JANUARY 24, 2024

Visualize Your Goals: As part of an annual tradition, we started off January 1 in my family by making family vision boards. A vision board is a great way to document your goals for the year and keep those objectives front of mind. Make A “Stop Doing” List: Achievement is not about doing more.

sustainability 209

sustainability board energy accelerator 209

TechCrunch

APRIL 26, 2023

On the other hand, Appruve, which provides an API that verifies user identity, fraud detection and digital documentation, primarily focuses on new datasets that enable or complement traditional government data such as international passports and national IDs.

venture capital 145

venture capital enablement innovation ventures 145

NZ Entrepreneur

APRIL 28, 2019

Here’s how to build a startup advisory board. And while it often seems more involved and complex than it is in reality, setting up an advisory board is something you should look to put in place in the early stages of your entrepreneurial venture. Selecting an advisory board is the tricky part.

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board startup advice strategy 68

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 22, 2014

I was at an alumni dinner at UCSD (I am on the alumni board) and a group of people were talking about how their kids use UberX to get rides home from parties at night. They want us to store our documents. It is perhaps the best new product of the past 5 years in terms of improving my professional life. I know that.

mix-use 418

mix-use innovation pitching board 418

Dream It

MAY 4, 2021

Board meetings can be very powerful events where founders get valuable feedback, ideas, and strategic direction. Oftentimes, founders dread board meetings and look at them as low ROI events. Their primary role is to confirm the board meeting agenda. Tip #3: Focus on key issues How do you know what a “key issue” is?

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board startup advice founder 352

Paul G. Silva

MAY 29, 2020

When you do so, you’ll notice the milestone’s color will darken and your SSRL score (in the upper left corner of the document) will increase. She fills it in and shows it to her board of advisors. Her board help her reorganize her strategy and ToDo lists to focus obsessively on these milestones.

founder 182

founder board venture capital strategy 182

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

Bijan Sabet – investor & board member in some small companies you might have heard of like Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee & OMGPOP – took issue with the whole notion that you even need a Powerpoint deck anymore. In Bijan’s post he references Bryce Roberts who recommends getting up and white-boarding. I recommend it.

VC 299

VC board pitching venture capital 299

Berkonomics

APRIL 6, 2023

Some of you have gotten along forever without a board of directors, or used your spouse as the “other” board member from the start. But there are some very good reasons to build a great board composed of some outside members. And good board members can add real value to you and the company. Generative.

board 62

board creativity sustainability health 62

Gust

AUGUST 23, 2014

While not every investor will have every right (or every right with the same frequency), the types of things we’re talking about include: Seat on the Board of Directors. Non-voting Board Observer Seat. “Information rights” (the ability to come into the office and ask questions and view documents).

investing 139

investing investment VC board 139

Berkonomics

APRIL 18, 2024

No board member should be grandfathered, guaranteed a board seat forever. We have investigated the restrictions imposed by investment documents and the obvious need to keep continuity on the board with the retention of the CEO position at the very least. How about non-profit boards? And that’s not good.

board 62

board communities development investing 62

Berkonomics

APRIL 11, 2024

Picking up where we left off… In my last insight, I described the CEO who stacked the board with two friends, making a majority for control purposes and relegating the investor representatives to insignificance. If the CEO does not fight for balance of the board, outside board members must fight for this to protect the corporation.

board 62

board technology investing investment 62

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 24, 2023

Analyze features such as Gantt charts and Kanban boards, which provide visually rich overviews of projects. We love using labels, tags and colors—the more organization and filtering, the better. This empowers us to prioritize tasks, identify bottlenecks, and monitor progress. Prioritize tasks Prioritization is essential.

culture 216

culture innovation strategy entrepreneurs 216

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 27, 2021

A typical enterprise grapples with hundreds or thousands of agreements, contracts and other legal documents every year, and it usually engages costly legal counsel either inside or outside the company to assess those documents on their behalf. In all, Ontra is processing some 20,000 NDAs monthly at the moment.

board 94

board networking technology innovation 94

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

A $100 million fund does not actually have $100 million in capital but $100 million in “committed capital,” essentially a legal document that states that LPs will send the fund money when “called.” I think you’ll start seeing pushback on complete board control by the founding team,” stated Martino. “I

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ventures startup capital board 334

Gust

MAY 24, 2012

By contrast, venture capital and angel investments normally take the form of Preferred Stock with rights and preferences set forth in the company’s Certificate of Incorporation and other governance documents. Nevertheless, these preferences aren’t intended to last forever.

board 159

board incumbents angel investing investing 159

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.

data analysis 87

data analysis construction education creativity 87

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 18, 2024

Not only will it cost you multiples more than average in legal fees to get this deal done, but you might wind up with some gnarly documents with terms that prevent other investors from wanting to come in. That’s why I normally ask for a Board Observer seat. It will save everyone a lot of cost and time. On one hand, I get this.

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investing investment startup real estate 221