Management

Many of the companies I’m an investor in are hiring a lot of people right now. For a current view, take a look at the Foundry Group jobs page . I’ve interviewed and hired a lot of people over the year and I’ve developed my own perspective and philosophy on the best way to do this. However, I don’t feel like I have all the answers so I asked a few people that I respect a lot (and fit in my definition of VP of People ) to weigh in with their thoughts. ...

I had a board update call recently that inspired me to write the first of my Reinventing the Board Meeting posts. The call was for a company that is doing great, is extremely well managed, and extraordinarily transparent. Two days before the call a very detailed update package was sent around to the board. It covered the operating characteristics of the business extensively and in a format that is consistent with all of the other reports. It was clear and unambiguous. ...

I hate board meetings. I probably have 100 per year which means I’ve gone to well over 1,500 of the past 15 years (I’m sure the number is much higher). The vast majority are excruciatingly inefficient – three to four hours that could be handled in 45 minutes. And even then, it’s unclear that the information covered was particularly useful to the entrepreneurs and management, who are the ones the board meetings should be useful for in the first place. And they don’t merely waste three hours – they burn a day in advance “getting ready” and who knows how much time after following up on random things generated by me and my fellow board members. Toss in travel (since we invest all over the country, I lose a lot of time to traveling) and it just sucks. ...

I find three hour “reporting board meetings” where everyone sits around and goes through a 50 page PowerPoint deck to be tedious. When I first started investing in 1994, this was the norm. I put up with it even though it wasn’t my style because (a) I didn’t know better and (b) I didn’t have any better ideas. 27,351 board meetings later, I know there is a better way. I’ve encouraged everyone I work with to try different approaches. I’ve written about some of my favorites in the past, such as doing an entire board meeting off of one slide with a list of “top of mind” items that the CEO has (this assumes that all the board material – appropriate data about the business, financials, and any department updates, have been previously circulated and consumed by all board members.) ...

My amazing day at the Supreme Court continued to bounce around in the back of my mind all day yesterday. I was at a board meeting for a company that I’ve been on the board of for almost a decade – it was the best (as in most productive) board meeting we’ve had in a long time. I’ve written about The Best Board Meetings in the past. One element of the best board meetings is a prepared mind. This is the powerful lesson from the Supreme Court. On Monday (at the Supreme Court), I saw eleven very smart people participate in a very complex discussion that they were extremely prepared for. In one hour they covered an amazing amount of ground. I attribute this to the work they did in advance of the meeting. ...

I was fortunate that two of my early mentors were master dealmakers. They had different styles and approaches so I learned an incredible amount from each of them. Before I met them I’d never made an investment, acquired a company, or sold a company. In the past 17 years since I met them, I’ve done a ton of each. React to the following: “We’d like to buy your company for between $35m and $50m.” That means $50m to you, right? ...

There was plenty of chatter about my post The Best Board Meetings . One idea popped up a few times and was well articulated by John Boyd in his post What Makes a Good Board Meeting? In it he talks about what is expected from a VC in a board meeting, rather than just from the CEO / entrepreneur. “So one thing I would add is nothing is worse than a board member that just gives “good body temperature”. i.e. I think it’s important for investors to have well articulated views and data to support their advice on strategic choices the company faces. I think it’s also important that when a CEO asks for investor help on an issue, it’s incumbent on the investor to tap his/her own extended network to get the best help possible. My point is, while a lot is expected of the CEO, the VC board members need to step up too and a lot of times they don’t.” ...

Over the past 15 years I’ve been to thousands of board meetings. Last week I had four; this week I have two. I’ve spent a lot of time – often during board meetings – thinking about how to make them better and more effective. Yesterday, Fred Wilson (who was at the Return Path board meeting in Boulder with me) wrote a great post titled Face To Face Board Meetings. Fred and I have been on a number of boards of the years and I strongly agree with his post. To be effective, board meetings need to be (a) in person and (b) there is immense value in a board dinner the night before a board meeting (maybe not every meeting, but at least once a quarter). ...

Q109 is over. The numbers are starting to roll in. After all the gloom and doom at the end of 2008, I’m very pleased with the performance of most of the companies in our portfolio. As I mentioned the other day, some struggled, but many met or exceeded their Q109 plans, and several of them destroyed them (sandbaggers, how I love thee.) There is nothing easy about operating a young company in any environment. It’s especially difficult in a downturn (or a recession, or whatever you want to call this.) If you haven’t managed to turn off TV news, stop reading the newspaper, and are still listening to NPR instead of the XM Chill station in the morning, you are likely continuing to get whipped around emotionally. So are the people in your company that are listening to all this crap every day. ...

I received the following email earlier this week from an exec at a company that I am on the board of. He sent it out to his entire company. I thought it clearly described the different between panic and urgency and explains why – in a business context – panic is useless, but urgency is critical. I don’t think I could have said this better if I had tried. In recent weeks, many of my business contacts have discussed the economy and the pressure we are all feeling on a daily basis. They all have a sense of pressure. I am sure many of you can relate. If you are not feeling the pressure these days, then you may want to step outside or turn on the TV, or read a newspaper. ...