Startup Boards

The 2nd Edition of my book Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors launched today. My co-authors, Matt Blumberg, the CEO of Bolster , and Mahendra Ramsinghani, were a joy to work with. While the 1st Edition was a good book, I wasn’t particularly proud of it because I didn’t feel like it was my best writing. We worked hard on this edition, and I now feel like it’s equivalent in quality to my other books. ...

About a year ago, I decided to take a summer vacation from blogging. I didn’t feel like blogging when summer ended, so I extended my blogging vacation indefinitely. I figured I’d wake up one day and feel like blogging again or not. That summer vacation (from blogging) lasted a year. Initially, I was working on a new book that I got bored of midway through the summer. I put it on the shelf with several other partially completed books. Google Docs now has a surprising number of my started but unfinished books. ...

I had lunch recently with a founder. We were talking about current and future board configuration for his company and he said “Up until this point, all my board seats were simply for sale. Whenever a new investor showed up, they wanted – and got – a board seat.” I loved the phrase “board seat for sale.” It’s exactly the opposite of how I think about how to configure a board of directors, but I recognize that it’s a default case for many VCs and, subsequently for many entrepreneurs and companies. ...

When I wrote Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors with Mahendra Ramsinghani, our goal was to help entrepreneurs understand how to create an excellent board of directors, manage it effectively, and get optimal value out of it. This was challenging to do, as the topic of boards can be boring. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, including consistently positive reviews on Amazon, I feel like we accomplished that goal. ...

For those of you that missed my note yesterday, I’m going to start using the first paragraph of my posts with an announcement about something in my world. Today’s is the launch of a new product from Orbotix called Selfiebot . My Orbotix friends are masters at creating amazing robots and are hard at work on the next generation of what we are calling “connected play.” Selfiebot is an autonomous flying robot that shoots HD photos of you, freeing you from the limitations of a handheld startphone when taking selfies. Check out Selfiebot today . ...

On Thursday March 6th I’m doing my first public talk about my newest book – Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors . If you’ve got a copy, bring it and I’ll sign it. If you don’t have a copy, our friends at Silicon Valley Bank have sponsored one for each of you. But don’t be bashful, every good writer loves it when you buy a book also, even when he gives one away. ...

In my new book, Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors, in addition to decomposing and explaining a lot about the functioning of board meetings, I also describe my ideal board meeting. I had four of them this week. That’s a lot of board meetings in a week, but my weeks tend to either be “lots of board meetings” or “no board meetings” as I generally bunch them up. Thankfully, all four of them used my ideal board meeting template. ...

Just before Christmas I ran a week long pre-order campaign for my new book Startup Boards. It’s officially shipping at this point so if you are interested in it but haven’t yet ordered it, give your friend Brad a solid. The winner of the campaign is Angie Lawing from Mercury Labs in St. Louis. I’ll be hosting her and her board in Boulder for a board meeting whenever she wants. ...

My newest book, Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors , will ship at the end of the month. As a result, I’m activating Operation Pre-order today. Between now and Sunday, if you pre-order a copy of Startup Boards on Amazon , you will be entered into a random drawing. If you need immediate gratification, the Kindle version of Startup Boards is already shipping. If you want the hardcopy, you should have it right around the beginning of the year. ...

Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors is shipping. It was so satisfying to see this today. This was by far the most difficult book to write so far. The title we came up with should have tipped me off – it ended up be extremely challenging to make a book about “boards” not be “boring.” ...