Vinod Khosla: A good board challenges a founder to think differently

In private companies, a board's job should be to challenge a founder, have them think differently, have them consider issues that aren't natural to them. So I'll even sometimes with founders, take positions I don't believe in only because I want them to think from that angle. So founders can never tell whether I actually really believe something or not, because the job is to have them think multidimensionally. And founders usually come from one background, so they have sort of a singular perspective, as opposed to a multidimensional perspective of lots of experience. And so I try and add that element. I think good boards should do that. Having said that, a board comes in once every six or eight weeks. They're not spending enough time. The founders are there 80 hours a week. There's no way a board can know all the nuances of your business. And so they shouldn't be pretending they can make decisions. Now the only decision boards can do reasonably well is the CEO doing a good job. How to help them do it better. And if sometimes it becomes necessary, you replace the CEO. But mostly that's a bad recipe. If you have to replace the CEO, you've lost the essence of a company. So we tried really, really hard to make a found is successful by surrounding them by people who make up for whatever experience they don't have.