Great post. I come into most board meetings a little bleary and this resolved me to stop.
But since you mentioned that portfolio companies sometime work late to get ready, I wondered: how much time do you think your portfolio companies put into board prep? What's the right amount of time in your opinion?
It takes us a half-day to get ready -- which is lot when you think about how many days you have in a month -- and I used to fret that it was time wasted managing up. But it turns out that just bringing together all the facts of the business into one coherent story about what's really going on is a useful, necessary exercise. I'd say 50% of the value of a board meeting could happen without the board being present at all.
dantinpa
· 3 months ago
Absolutely. 1/2 of the benefit is knowing that you have to be accountable for what you said you were going to do 3 months earlier, measuring it relentlessly and being honest with yourself about your progress. Your point about making sure the management team drives the prep is also key, so it's not just the CEO story. Forces everyone to get on the same page and well worth it.
Michael Lazerow
· 3 months ago
Love this post! I've been doing the same thing on the entrepreneur side this week. 2 cross country flights, a redeye, 13 sales meetings and I'm about to run into my board meeting and then speaking at a conference today and event tonite. (Yes, I got my board prep done a few days early). A few thoughts:
1) Board meetings are not just for the board. They're for the entrepreneur. They're a critical point each month or quarter to get your thoughts in order and explain your rationale for doing what you're doing. It's an excuse to dig into the numbers and take a step back from the day to day to really understand what's going on.
2) Any entrepreneur that goes into a board meeting without a deck or supporting materials should be fired.
3) I now know how to survive redeye flights and the day after: sleep as much as you can on the flight, take a 2 hour nap when you land and drink a ton of water all day.
4) Do the board meeting prep a few days in advance. Don't send it until the day before the board meeting. Why? (a) the board won't read it in advance, or at least before the day before the meeting (usually); and (b) things change up until the meeting.
Nice post. I'm surprised I didn't see you somewhere in the skies over Nebraska.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Thanks for the comment mike. I'm not gonna get that 2 hour nap but I wish I was
Michael Lazerow
· 3 months ago
Two things:
1) I'd trade sleep for your portfolio. 2) Lose the picture with your three chins!
MML
Mark Essel
· 3 months ago
Great advice Michael.
RAM1
· 3 months ago
Yep, that prep work is impportant to Board members as well as for the entrepreneur I've found. Helps them to engage their minds on the important and meaningful factors about the business and its important to me to be able to formulate some questions and see where the bodies are buried.
I've also encouraged the companies of which I am a director to ditch the standard deck format and instead study and apply the concepts of Edward Tufte.
The presentations are a lot more eye-opening and meaningful and get the thinking and dialogue really flowing well. Not the standard "cheat" for the presenter.
Rob
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
where does one go to bone up on Edward Tufte?
Yule Heibel
· 3 months ago
Definitely look at Tufte's The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint ("...slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis...").
Also check out any of Philip Greenspun's riffs on Tufte here. Some good stuff there.
I actually found a couple of typically wordy comments from me on Phil's ancient 2003 blog entry, PowerPoint v. PowerPoint (well, my 2nd comment is long, anyway).
And in 2006, Phil had a nice (and pithy) synopsis of Tufte's Beautiful Evidence book, here. Phil isolates 3 key ideas from Tufte's book, describes them briefly, lets the reader grok it and run with it. Consider it the Cliff Notes version! ;-)
Oh, PS: I hope you get to catch up on some rest over the weekend!
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
I think we now need an expert in design principles to aggregate all the presentation suggestions in this comment thread into one compelling PowerPoint presentation -- or maybe several, and have a little contest for the one that gets voted the best.
Yule Heibel
· 3 months ago
@DaveinHackensack: ;-)
ShanaC
· 3 months ago
Choose three colors and one tonal variation of one of those three colors, plus black and white(maybe) for shading for any image you have. Those three colors must act as your grayscale. Otherwise people will get confused with the visual hierarchy on the page. Choosing that you will have certain elements distinctly on the white end of life, or the black end of life creates coninuity, yet that's not always obvious when you look at an image. Nor is it obvivious that your eye follows a grayscale along a page (up a page, down a page, left, right) so where you put your now grayscaled objects can either focus people's attention or distract the hell out of them.
When in doubt, take a screenshot, take it into Photoshop or the GIMP, and convert To Grayscale. You'll see where your eyes are floating to on the page, including off the page! You'll see if everything that should be highlightlighted, is highlighted.
(It works in real life, I've tested this one with friends, they are often surprised by how grayscaling helps create visual hierarchy and that it can be done with color, too. Colors have gray in them.)
Yule Heibel
· 3 months ago
Sounds like a great recipe for managing the visual load, ShanaC - thx!
I think ppt can be a good tool for managing a board meeting - it helps keep the group on the agenda. However, it is often used as a crutch and people often present or facilitate a discussion in a much more engaging way without it.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Yup
I like pictures but no words
leeschneider
· 3 months ago
Fred, anytime there's a discussion of a good .ppt presentation I always refer them to the Apple Keynote events. Beautifully done slides, lots of pictures, very little text, and never a "cheat" for the presenter.
Harish Venkatesan
· 3 months ago
In that vein, http://www.presentationzen.com/ is a great resource for tips on design principles to keep presentations simple, clear, and engaging.
GraemeHein
· 3 months ago
Presentation Zen is a great book.
What I've noticed is that too many people don't use the notes feature for decks - put text in the notes and leave slides for illustrative purposes. Creates a document that can be distributed by itself as well as a presentation that isn't horrible.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Yup. They are excellent
pfreet
· 3 months ago
If the BOD deck is all pictures, why bother to send it out in advance of the meeting? :-)
ShanaC
· 3 months ago
Language is limiting. Some concepts just don't translate well until you percieive them. I can write you a description of bread. Seeing bread (if you have sight) is a better understanding of bread. Touching and holding bread might explain bread somewhat more. Smelling and eating bread and having the full experience of bread probably would be best (especially homemade bread mmmmm)
Even with data, seeing the entire set of books doesn't tell you very much until you extrapolate something meaningful into other forms. Same goes with bread. The word bread means something when you eat it.
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
"Language is limiting."
Says the woman who writes in torrents.
ShanaC
· 3 months ago
;) I'm a young cheeky one, aren't I. I could say that the great ones all write, but actually, I don't know. I can tell you that language is limiting, which is why I have sat down for months straight and drawn every day, and why I am suddenly so interested in all things code, even though right now it is scary. Writing is a good way to just start out the sketching process, and to calm some anzieties, and work out some thought processes. I guess that's why I am suddenly deciding to crowdsource what to do with the next year of my life. Less about the crowdsourcing, more about thinking through the issues in a calm manner through a written mockup.
It's usually writing-drawing-coding-object-experience. Just something I've observed. Not just me, who'se observed this either. It's why I've been told to write by many people, the first person being an art teacher who thought I was having problems expressing myself during critiques (and those are brutal). Unless you disapprove of my torrents? ;)
davehendricks
· 3 months ago
Fred - you don't sound like you have much (enough) time, but in case you are serious you can learn from the master yourself: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Thanks!
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
"If I find myself getting tired, I get up and participate in the meeting standing up."
That's an old Army technique. Back in basic training, they'd tell you if you felt you were falling asleep in a class, and didn't want to get abused for it, go stand up in the back of the room.
Question for you: you mentioned in a previous post that you were online on your flight out to SFO. Your battery lasts that long on your laptop?
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
virgin america from jfk to sfo has wifi and power available to every seat in the entire plane. it is the only way to fly. if i was president, i'd make it the law of the land :)
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
Interesting. I figured you were flying some corporate jet out of Teterboro that had power outlets available. I've never seen a commercial jet with that, but it makes perfect sense. You get that on Amtrak, after all.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
I've only been on one corporate jet in life. I like to fly commercial
GraemeHein
· 3 months ago
You like to fly commercial? I'm really interested in why you do. I have theories, and can see how it could be very beneficial, but I'd like to test the hypothesis.
Everyone I know that flies regularly would pretty much sell their soul to be able to fly privately.
timraleigh
· 3 months ago
That photo says it all...
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
That's from a vacation we were on a while back. My kids shot it
timraleigh
· 3 months ago
Ya, trust family to take the most honest pictures, maybe not always the ones we always like the best.
RichardForster
· 3 months ago
I think the board pack has to go out at least 3 days before if you are expecting your non-execs to be able to give meaningful input.
For the VC backed companies I've worked for, it's been mandatory that the bulk of the pack has been distributed in good time beforehand, granted there might be a last minute addition if it's pertinent. But stuff like financials, sales updates etc quite frankly can go out a week before.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
That's true and its best practice. But it doesn't always happen
RacerRick
· 3 months ago
Also... don't have a 2 year old and a 3 month old living in your house at the same time.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Been there done that but the two year old is now in college
jason
· 3 months ago
mindfulness might be a practice to consider. it can really help people "be present" - especially when they're sleep deprived. at least it's worked for me:)
vcbrazil
· 3 months ago
After the Nov. election, Bill Clinton was asked for one piece of advice for President Obama. "Get enough sleep." He said (paraphrasing) 'the president's job is to take in information and make decisions and you need to be well-rested to make good decisions.' Clinton said that all his worst decisions came when he was sleep-deprived. Good advice for the corporate world, as well.
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
I'm guessing President Clinton didn't take his own advice. He probably does now though, after his heart surgery.
Keenan
· 3 months ago
I guess George W. didn't get much sleep.
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
I think he actually got plenty of sleep. How much sleep is Obama getting? He seems to be continuing a lot of Bush's policies (on Iraq, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, the financial bailouts, etc.).
Keenan
· 3 months ago
It's always harder to clean up the dominoes than it is to know them down.
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
As long as this is the change you believed in.
Keenan
· 3 months ago
LOL!
What's it been 10 months? I knew expectations were high, but WOW! I'll at least give him 2 years before I start judging. Just as I gave Bush. I'm less concerned with the name and party than I am with the effort and results.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Two years seems reasonable. I'll join you in that timeline keenan
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
that is good advice
Charlie Crystle
· 3 months ago
Fred--it seems like you're overscheduling unnecessarily. It may seem convenient to stack all of the travel and meetings together, but I can't believe it doesn't impact your performance.
Of course I'm writing this from vacation...
ShanaC
· 3 months ago
Ok, offbeat suggestions that I got from a Doctor. They're very concerned with the way I sleep, so this kind of thing is normal for me. Spot on about the diet. Though I find personally i need more food to compensate. Also relaxing stretching/Strenthbuilding exercises-such as yoga. If you're going to maintain a strange internal calendar for a while, fine. Just maintain it. ( I was doing a lot of night work and filming, and my classes were very late in the afternoon, so I just stayed up all night, I was sort of worried about it...)
You may want to buy a bottle of time released melatonin to reset your clock when you are done with the crazy flight thing. It's also about the staying asleep. And I regularly sleep in coach....It's a learned skill. Learn about what puts you to sleep in terms of triggers, and use them to your advatage. Especially because you'll never know where you'll have to sleep.
Mark Essel
· 3 months ago
Best of luck catching some shut eye between hops/meetings. Sometime sleep deprivation unlocks my more outlandish creativity, who knows what wild input you'll have?
Are board meetings a mix of startup health checkups and strategy review? If so I can understand how interesting/important they are. From my perspective most meetings are tough to value (most of the time they disrupt work, so there's always a cost, but not always a payoff).
Ps imagine coach mid seat at 6'7". Flights are horrific
ShanaC
· 3 months ago
Just look forward to a tomorrow night. That too. It may be hectic now, tomorrow will be a lot more self reflective. (My house smells like my favorite time of year, and I'm sure yours smells good too...) I can't believe I forgot that. May you be written in the book of life.
GL
· 3 months ago
There's only so much human badwidth. Looks like Union Square Ventures needs to bring on board another General Partner to deal with new investments....
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
or do less deals. bringing on partners is not a scalable solution either. at some point you stop being the firm you were.
benortega
· 3 months ago
I think everyone here would be ok with you NOT responding so quickly on their comments so you can try and get in a power nap.
We need you to be fresh, otherwise, how will you be able to effectively listen and relay back all the good insights you'll draw from those meetings??
kenberger
· 3 months ago
A friend of mine at Google in Europe swears by Polyphasic Sleeping http://bit.ly/G8ixF
And some swear by supplements such as Melatonin.
Neither has worked for me at all.
There sure is massive oppty for investable innovation here!
DaveinHackensack
· 3 months ago
That sounds like what Kramer tried on that Seinfeld episode.
Getting paid to nap is a pretty sweet deal though. Most jobs you'd get canned for that.
Roman Giverts
· 3 months ago
\
markslater
· 3 months ago
thats what you will look like come sunday when the brady clinic comes to the meadowlands;)
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
i'm going to the game mark. i fully expect to get our clock cleaned. but i will be rooting hard for the jets anyway.
Loudon NH - Nascar - Father-in-law works for Nascar so press passes for the brit! if you have not been to one of these - it is surely reccomended - it is the greatest single slice of americana in one place at one time.
Commentator yesterday was explaining that tony stewart was having a poblem with his right rear tyre but that the pit crew were not telling him - and the commentator told tony to 'check twitter buddie!'
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
nice! i went to a nascar race in charlotte north carolina a few years back
we were in the infield
it was the loudest thing i've ever experienced
glenngutierrez
· 3 months ago
Hard core.
charlie f
· 3 months ago
Fred, as a member of the million mile club and someone who is rooting for your continued success, let me share that the obvious. The pace you're on is not sustainable, it's unhealthy, and straining on the relationships that make life special. If USV has a board, it just may ask the partners to share how the firm is going to sustainably scale to the opportunity.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
Its a good question charlie, particularly since I don't believe that VC is a scalable business
And even though I plead guilty to working at an unsustainable pace, I do make a lot of time for the things that make life special.
Right now is a time of opportunity for me and our firm. So I feel like I have to go for it. But clearly I can't do this way for the long haul
Is that perfect ad-targeting or what?!?! (I used to work in AdSense so I feel a hint of pride)
WRT to board meetings - I've been in a similar trend lately: Austin, Boulder, Berkeley, etc. Advice: learn to sleep in cabs, planes, and airport lounges
ShanaC
· 3 months ago
Yes, but not always in trains nor buses unless you are the last stop. (I've gotten off in the wrong place that way) Where confmy clothing and pack something nicer ro take out, and a toothbrush, will help this process.
fredwilson
· 3 months ago
What's even more funny about that ad is my wife and I just bought a new mattress for our bedroom. We looked at that mattress but went for another brand
Mark MacLeod
· 3 months ago
Wish all investors treated board meetings this way. Too often they're just management broadcasting to investors. No value add.
That is an interesting riff. I'm not going to talk publicly about that particular situation though
Guest
· 3 months ago
Completely understood. It was sent in the vein of sharing information that might have been of personal interest. Even in the neural network of social media we can only be in so many places at once.
All Comments
But since you mentioned that portfolio companies sometime work late to get ready, I wondered: how much time do you think your portfolio companies put into board prep? What's the right amount of time in your opinion?
It takes us a half-day to get ready -- which is lot when you think about how many days you have in a month -- and I used to fret that it was time wasted managing up. But it turns out that just bringing together all the facts of the business into one coherent story about what's really going on is a useful, necessary exercise. I'd say 50% of the value of a board meeting could happen without the board being present at all.
1) Board meetings are not just for the board. They're for the entrepreneur. They're a critical point each month or quarter to get your thoughts in order and explain your rationale for doing what you're doing. It's an excuse to dig into the numbers and take a step back from the day to day to really understand what's going on.
2) Any entrepreneur that goes into a board meeting without a deck or supporting materials should be fired.
3) I now know how to survive redeye flights and the day after: sleep as much as you can on the flight, take a 2 hour nap when you land and drink a ton of water all day.
4) Do the board meeting prep a few days in advance. Don't send it until the day before the board meeting. Why? (a) the board won't read it in advance, or at least before the day before the meeting (usually); and (b) things change up until the meeting.
Nice post. I'm surprised I didn't see you somewhere in the skies over Nebraska.
1) I'd trade sleep for your portfolio.
2) Lose the picture with your three chins!
MML
I've also encouraged the companies of which I am a director to ditch the standard deck format and instead study and apply the concepts of Edward Tufte.
The presentations are a lot more eye-opening and meaningful and get the thinking and dialogue really flowing well. Not the standard "cheat" for the presenter.
Rob
Also check out any of Philip Greenspun's riffs on Tufte here. Some good stuff there.
I actually found a couple of typically wordy comments from me on Phil's ancient 2003 blog entry, PowerPoint v. PowerPoint (well, my 2nd comment is long, anyway).
And in 2006, Phil had a nice (and pithy) synopsis of Tufte's Beautiful Evidence book, here. Phil isolates 3 key ideas from Tufte's book, describes them briefly, lets the reader grok it and run with it. Consider it the Cliff Notes version! ;-)
Oh, PS: I hope you get to catch up on some rest over the weekend!
When in doubt, take a screenshot, take it into Photoshop or the GIMP, and convert To Grayscale. You'll see where your eyes are floating to on the page, including off the page! You'll see if everything that should be highlightlighted, is highlighted.
(It works in real life, I've tested this one with friends, they are often surprised by how grayscaling helps create visual hierarchy and that it can be done with color, too. Colors have gray in them.)
http://armsandinfluence.typepad.com/armsandinfl...
Good summary of "Death by PowerPoint"
I think ppt can be a good tool for managing a board meeting - it helps keep the group on the agenda. However, it is often used as a crutch and people often present or facilitate a discussion in a much more engaging way without it.
I like pictures but no words
What I've noticed is that too many people don't use the notes feature for decks - put text in the notes and leave slides for illustrative purposes. Creates a document that can be distributed by itself as well as a presentation that isn't horrible.
Even with data, seeing the entire set of books doesn't tell you very much until you extrapolate something meaningful into other forms. Same goes with bread. The word bread means something when you eat it.
Says the woman who writes in torrents.
It's usually writing-drawing-coding-object-experience. Just something I've observed. Not just me, who'se observed this either. It's why I've been told to write by many people, the first person being an art teacher who thought I was having problems expressing myself during critiques (and those are brutal). Unless you disapprove of my torrents? ;)
That's an old Army technique. Back in basic training, they'd tell you if you felt you were falling asleep in a class, and didn't want to get abused for it, go stand up in the back of the room.
Question for you: you mentioned in a previous post that you were online on your flight out to SFO. Your battery lasts that long on your laptop?
Everyone I know that flies regularly would pretty much sell their soul to be able to fly privately.
For the VC backed companies I've worked for, it's been mandatory that the bulk of the pack has been distributed in good time beforehand, granted there might be a last minute addition if it's pertinent. But stuff like financials, sales updates etc quite frankly can go out a week before.
He said (paraphrasing) 'the president's job is to take in information and make decisions and you need to be well-rested to make good decisions.' Clinton said that all his worst decisions came when he was sleep-deprived.
Good advice for the corporate world, as well.
down.
What's it been 10 months? I knew expectations were high, but WOW!
I'll at least give him 2 years before I start judging. Just as I gave
Bush. I'm less concerned with the name and party than I am with the
effort and results.
Of course I'm writing this from vacation...
Spot on about the diet. Though I find personally i need more food to compensate. Also relaxing stretching/Strenthbuilding exercises-such as yoga.
If you're going to maintain a strange internal calendar for a while, fine. Just maintain it. ( I was doing a lot of night work and filming, and my classes were very late in the afternoon, so I just stayed up all night, I was sort of worried about it...)
You may want to buy a bottle of time released melatonin to reset your clock when you are done with the crazy flight thing. It's also about the staying asleep.
And I regularly sleep in coach....It's a learned skill. Learn about what puts you to sleep in terms of triggers, and use them to your advatage. Especially because you'll never know where you'll have to sleep.
Are board meetings a mix of startup health checkups and strategy review? If so I can understand how interesting/important they are. From my perspective most meetings are tough to value (most of the time they disrupt work, so there's always a cost, but not always a payoff).
Ps imagine coach mid seat at 6'7". Flights are horrific
We need you to be fresh, otherwise, how will you be able to effectively listen and relay back all the good insights you'll draw from those meetings??
And some swear by supplements such as Melatonin.
Neither has worked for me at all.
There sure is massive oppty for investable innovation here!
Getting paid to nap is a pretty sweet deal though. Most jobs you'd get canned for that.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3513332&i...
Commentator yesterday was explaining that tony stewart was having a poblem with his right rear tyre but that the pit crew were not telling him - and the commentator told tony to 'check twitter buddie!'
i went to a nascar race in charlotte north carolina a few years back
we were in the infield
it was the loudest thing i've ever experienced
And even though I plead guilty to working at an unsustainable pace, I do make a lot of time for the things that make life special.
Right now is a time of opportunity for me and our firm. So I feel like I have to go for it. But clearly I can't do this way for the long haul
Is that perfect ad-targeting or what?!?! (I used to work in AdSense so I feel a hint of pride)
WRT to board meetings - I've been in a similar trend lately: Austin, Boulder, Berkeley, etc. Advice: learn to sleep in cabs, planes, and airport lounges
Here's my recipe for a great board meet: http://www.startupcfo.ca/2007/12/board-meeting....
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/09/18/one-b...
Interesting banter on valuations...