A VC - Latest Comments in Face To Face Board Meetings

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

John Risner — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:18:53 -0000

Great post. If you can't expect to attend BOD meetings in person, then you should not join the Board. F2F adds to much value. The premeeting dinners are great venues for industry/market discussion vs. deep dives into company issues at the meeting proper.

While for profit boards need to offer a teleconf option, as things do come up that prevent F2F, the non-profit Board that I serve on eliminated proxy voting for directors and attendence by teleconf. This has made a great difference in Board engagement.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:32:26 -0000

I'm going to read your post

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

Steve Gonzalez — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:14:59 -0000

social media and the rapidly increasing technology in teleconferencing makes it extremely easy to attend meeting all over the world without ever having to leave your office. However, I look at business and meetings like I look at poker, body language is everything not the cards you're holding. So if you're playing to win attend the meetings in person.

Cheers,

Steve

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:59:10 -0000

I get it. Interesting approach

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

Venkat — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:18:41 -0000

Never mind then. I am approaching the issue from the point of view of virtual-work trends, and am interested in going beyond people's vague sense that some stuff needs to be done face to face and some can be safely virtualized. One of the ways I try to probe this is to ask people wherever I go about specific types of meetings (eg. technical meetings, interviews, performance reviews, ice-breakers, new-team-chemistry-creation...). I find that people cannot easily put a finger on the DNA of the meeting attributes that make it F2F-critical. Probably a social science research question...if somebody could codify this into a recommendation calculator that takes in 20 Q&A responses and pops out a "do this F2F" or "you can safely do this on livemeeting" type recommendations... there's probably money in such an offering :)

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:03:38 -0000

Got it

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:00:26 -0000

I'm not sure I understand your question. But the way I see it, board meetings are hugely important for a host of reasons and as such, they should be done face to face

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

JeffreyJDavis — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:57:11 -0000

Our company is not in a supremely accessible location (Aiken, SC) , and air flights are not so reliable, so it just seems to work out easier for three of us (CEO, CFO, President) to travel to them then for the whole board to visit us.

I'm sure each situation is different based on portfolio company location and board composition.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

Peter Cranstone — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:10:05 -0000

No worries.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

Venkat — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:44:06 -0000

I know what board meetings are, operationally :) Was wondering about any psychological differences that make face-to-face more valuable.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:53:21 -0000

Board meetings are regularly scheduled (monthly or bi-monthly) of the top managers and investors. Topics that are usually covered are strategy, performance, team, comp, financings, etc

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:53:20 -0000

Interesting that you travel to them. I prefer to go to the company

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:53:19 -0000

Google is at it again

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:52:21 -0000

Google has videoconf everywhere

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:52:20 -0000

I've done it once or twice. I don't like it.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:52:18 -0000

Usually the company pays and that is negotiated upfront. but that's not always the case. I don't get reimbursed for my SF boards at the moment

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:52:17 -0000

Yeah, missing out on 'circulating air' as my son calls it ;)

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:52:16 -0000

Is that true? Wow

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:52:14 -0000

I'm just seeing this now. I got hugely behind on everything this trip

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

iamronen — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:22:46 -0000

This sent me back to a meeting in which I participated 2 years ago and really stuck with me... wrote it about here: http://www.iamronen.com/?p=...

As I collected my thoughts and wrote that I also recalled your earlier post about long-term relationships (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/200... and I think it really complements this one:

Amen on board retreats!

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

Adrian Bye — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:30:24 -0000

that would be great to see.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

Paul Johnson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:37:43 -0000

Agreed. I was amazed by how easy the interaction was at a Mashable event here in Philly. The reason as we had all gotten to know each other already on Twitter/blogs.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

John Minnihan — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:29:24 -0000

Exactly.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:24:31 -0000

Word

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

fredwilson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:24:22 -0000

Well sometimes people need some prodding