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Viewed from the outside, board selection and corporate governance can seem like a bit of a black box — particularly at a startup. Generation Investment Management partner Dave Easton spoke at TechCrunch Early Stage about how to build a board as a founder, and specifically how to build a board you can live with. Easton’s own ample experience serving on boards as both a full member and as an observer, as well as Generation’s focus on building sustainable, ethically managed, mission-driven businesses helped peel back the curtain on the murky topic of good governance.
On the composition of boards
Easton noted that many boards end up overcrowded — in terms of both the number of people and also the background of those present. Mixing up the type of board members you have managing your corporate governance is key, he said, especially as a company grows in size and maturity.
In terms of fields, the sorts of things that we find that often go wrong is when your board is stacked full of investors. I think investors are great — I’m an investor. I think there are super useful things investors do. But five investors is not very useful, right — it’s just more people who will generally think the same. So a typical thing that we’re doing when we come in is, we’re saying we’re not taking a board seat, we’re gonna give our board seats to an operator — someone who actually knows what they’re doing. When you’re in the earliest stages it’s probably fine to avoid operators and just have one or two investors. Particularly operators who come from, like bigger company backgrounds, they’re not necessarily so helpful when you’re getting product-market fit. But as you get bigger and bigger, you know, operators start to trump investors, and we think boards need to move more heavily in that direction. (Time stamp: 09:34)
Don’t put settled topics up for debate
On the subject of what should actually take place at well-run board meetings, Easton said that one of the most common pitfalls he’s encountered is when management sort of performatively offers up subjects for debate. It’s something that’s easy to do, but it also ends up not only being wasteful of the time of those present, it also leaves a bad taste in basically everyone’s mouths.
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