Head of investments at London’s BGF Ventures, former LOVEFiLM and Mothercare CEO, and ex-chair of Moo.com, Simon Calver, on how tech founders should manage boards.
1. The board doesn’t run your company – you do
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the board are the people who really run the company, but they’re not; the CEO and leadership team are. The board are the ones who help ensure that the strategy is on track and that the shareholders’ rights are protected. They’re there to check the company’s being well run and to help support the executive team. At times it might be that a board member gets really heavily involved in a particular issue because that’s their area of expertise – but you’ve got to remember that they’re then going to step back and become board members and non-exec board members again. One of the early bits of advice I got from [Index Ventures partner] Danny Rimer was: ‘Don’t come to us asking about strategy. Come to us and present the strategy. And it’s our role to challenge it.’
2. Minimise the size of your board as much as you can
For a post-Series A-stage company, you need to be able to reach out easily to all the different board members and make quick decisions. That’s why if you have six, seven, or eight board members, that can become more complicated to manage and board meetings require more orchestrating. Don’t feel you have to put every executive team member on the board. The key question you need to ask yourself is: what is the correct balance to enable [me] to get the right speed of decision-making?...