Since making the transition to venture capital, I’ve learned firsthand that a critical part of investor involvement and due diligence involves serving on boards of directors.
I quickly realized that the makeup of a board, as well as what’s required of its members, is vastly different at an early-stage startup than what I’d experienced when I was reporting to the board of a public company.
My formative experience with board meetings was as a CIO, when I would present information and strategy for my piece of the business. I began sitting in on meetings when I wasn’t actively involved, curious to see how they were run. Eventually, I joined the board of a small startup before landing at Ridge Ventures. As a VC, I’ve served on six boards and spoken with hundreds of founders.
When they’re run properly, board meetings provide tremendous value to founders. But they can be tedious tasks that members dread or a disorganized mess during which nothing meaningful is accomplished. They can run too long, lack the right content, require too many follow-ups or fail to drive enough action.
Remember that board members have a fiduciary duty and will not always agree with you on how best to move forward.
Frustration builds when people aren’t able to speak up and be heard regularly. Having a clear process in place that allows for focused, valuable work to get done efficiently is critical to getting the most out of your board meetings.
Here are 10 quick tips to ensure your board meetings run without a hitch.
Planning and consistency are critical
Establish a regular cadence for building the board deck and distribute it to members several days in advance. In the early stages, this process might be a one-person show driven entirely by the founder. As a company grows, key updates will need to come from other leaders.
Start early, have a template and structure in place and give your key stakeholders the opportunity to add content at regular intervals. Define topics and goals clearly in your agenda and distribute it to board members before the meeting. Follow up promptly and include a recap of action items to ensure everyone understands what is expected of them. Have a clear set of actions and takeaways. Keep track of what people have committed to and hold them accountable.
Keep the meeting on track
If a certain conversation goes on for too long, move it into a parking lot (a space for discussions or questions that can be addressed later) for offline discussion. Don’t turn your board meeting into a solutions meeting — this is a time to report, talk about where you need help and plan. Healthy debate is good, but you don’t want a whiteboard session.
Let employees present
Have a key engineer come in to give a product update or have the sales lead responsible for a major customer win come in and talk about what went right.
Many employees who don’t have regular opportunities to interact with the board consider it a huge career boost to get direct, face-to-face credit for an important accomplishment. Bring in the person who is best equipped to talk through the success story and make space for them in the agenda.
Reevaluate the balance of your content and adjust
If sales are starting to build up on a regular basis and your pipeline is strong, it’s probably not valuable to go through every single deal with the board.
Select the highlights, the ones that demonstrate trends you want to dig into in more depth. The board wants to see validation that your go-to-market motions are working and that you have a repeatable, winning formula with anecdotes to support.
Keep in mind everyone’s competencies
Remember that not everyone on the board possesses the same level of technical depth. If you’re going through a re-architecture or introducing a new product, explain technical concepts in the terms that matter to board members — what is the change, what is the effort involved and why is it being done?
A classic trap for AI or deep tech companies is that they go too far into the weeds for the board to understand and feel comfortable with a shift in strategy.
Prepare for hard questions
Remember that board members have a fiduciary duty and will not always agree with you on how best to move forward. It’s their job to ask hard questions, and in the case of VCs, they have to report back to their co-investors, too. They want to be able to clearly communicate information back and understand how they can help. Questions are not necessarily questioning of judgment.
Build a sense of trust
Try to build a rapport with and within the board. Think about opportunities for people to get to know each other and establish connections. It can be as simple as a board dinner or regular one-on-one meetings, but a critical part of building an effective, impactful board is creating a sense of community and trust.
Use the board to sound test succession planning or new leaders
If you’re thinking about promoting someone from senior director to a VP role on the leadership team, get them on the radar of specific board members. Have them come in and present to the full group to see how that resonates.
Over time, begin introducing them one-on-one so that when you make management shifts, there are no surprises and the board is already familiar and comfortable with your choice.
Be specific about where you do and don’t need help
Being prescriptive is key. Help your board members understand where the company needs the most help. For example, if you’re hiring senior executives, you may want your board members to help close a candidate. You might be looking for introductions to customer CIOs or CTOs, or looking forward to your next fundraising round.
On the other side of the coin, there might be areas where you don’t need help. If things are going really well, make that crystal clear to your board and be prepared to talk about why it’s happening.
Finish the meetings with an operational end cap
Approve the minutes of the last board meeting and be prepared to talk about equity option awards. Talk about any outliers: what they are and why they exist. Finally, set aside time to show your gratitude for the board members’ participation. Volunteer your time to talk to people individually after the meeting. Be available and be thankful!