GR: This post outlines recommendations for effective board meetings. To maximize value, prepare and distribute materials in advance—if necessary, allocate 10–15 minutes at the start of the meeting for everyone to review them. Board meetings shouldn't function merely as reporting sessions. While updating investors is important, use the time to problem-solve (all companies have issues) and make key decisions that will significantly impact the business. The board's primary role is to gain a clear understanding of the company's current state and the crucial decisions you're making in its management. Most of these decisions will revolve around resource allocation—what you're allocating capital and attention to. Use the board meeting to select key topics and dive deep on them. Leave meetings with clear, agreed-upon decisions on next steps.

• Sales led (enterprise customer focus) template:

  The_Sacks_SaaS_Board_Deck.pptx

• General template:

  Joe-Lonsdale_-The-1-hour-board-meeting.pptx

By: David Sacks

MAR 04, 2021

Agenda

1) CEO Update: 30 minutes

The CEO’s overview should start at the 30,000 foot level and then dive into more detail. Remember that your audience is not as immersed as you are in the business and may need their memories refreshed in terms of where the last board conversation ended. Here are some helpful ways to structure the presentation:

What’s Going Well, What’s Not Going Well

I like seeing this on a single slide, two-column format, using bullet points. What major progress has occurred since the last board meeting? What are the biggest problems? What’s keeping you up at night? From my time as a founder, I know that no matter how well a startup is doing, there are always existential risks and problems. So nothing makes me queasier than receiving an all-positive update. This suggests that founders are either not aware enough or not paranoid enough about the real problems, or simply don’t trust the board enough to confide in them. It’s important to recognize that board members are not there to sit in judgment of you but rather to collaboratively problem-solve with you. If you’re not able to discuss the company’s biggest problems with them, you’re much less likely to make meaningful progress. You should choose your board members accordingly.

Strategic Learnings

The CEO should discuss their strategic learnings from the quarter. I like to think of this as the “diff” on the investor presentation: if you were to write your investor presentation today, what would be different compared to the last time you wrote it? What have you learned about your target customer since the last board meeting? How have you changed your market thesis? Are there any pivots you need to make? If you were to chain these diffs together, you should be able to see a clear path through the “idea maze” from one financing round to the next. I’ve noticed that unsuccessful startups tend to repeat the same conversations in every board meeting. The issues don’t change because there’s no progress through the idea maze. Don’t be afraid of making changes to the original plan; change indicates learning.

Company Priorities

What are the company’s top 3-5 priorities this quarter? In light of the strategic learnings mentioned above, CEOs should constantly be prioritizing and reprioritizing the most important initiatives. If you do OKRs, then this list of priorities can provide a first draft of your quarterly objectives. The board meeting is an opportunity to take in advice and feedback before distributing goals with your entire team. To avoid thrashing, create high-level alignment with your board, your exec team, then the whole company.

Context Setters and KPIs

Every business has a handful of KPIs that should be covered up front to gauge the health of the business and set context for the rest of the meeting. Here are the ones that I always like to see:

• Runway. It’s always good to know how much cash is in the bank, the current monthly burn, and how much runway you have. Don’t bury the lede here. Nothing is worse than getting to the end of the meeting only to learn the business is almost out of cash and doesn’t have the degrees of freedom required to execute its plan. In that case, the board needed to have a completely different conversation.