In prior posts about my “Founders’ Dilemmas” MBA course, I provided an overview of the course, details about the Introductory case and the cases in the “When to Found” module, details about four cases in the “Building the Team” module,…
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Board problems: Even numbers? Multiple founders?
Question #1: Is it good to have a split board? Question #2: For the founder-CEO, is having another founder on the board a good thing or a big mistake? In the Vermeer case with which we introduce the semester, the…
Posted in board of directors, co-founders
“Do I Have an Effective Board of Directors? (How Can I Tell??)”
In April 2006, almost two dozen VCs, CEOs, and industry experts came together to form the Working Group on Director Accountability and Board Effectiveness (whew — quite a name! I’ll take the liberty of using “WGDABE” instead :->), chaired by…
Posted in board of directors
Building a Board: Composition by Company Stage
Paul McManus of Boston Millennia Partners asked whether I have data on how board composition changes by company stage. I can slice my data using rounds of financing, company age, and a variety of other metrics. Most of those metrics…
Posted in board of directors, investors
Building a Board: The Impact of Company Stage
In response to the original post about the “Building a Board” results (see below), Tim Connors of USVP inquired about the role played by the company’s stage of development. Even though our analyses (and the original blog posting) focus on…
Posted in board of directors, investors
Building a Board: Mentorship? Monitoring?
You’re a founder-CEO with deep technical expertise but little business experience. VCs tell you that they’ll help guide you through the treacherous business issues you’ll face as you grow your business. (In fact, you are having trouble finding any VC…
Posted in board of directors, investors
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