Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Unleash the Power of Your Board: Why Independent Members are Key

3 Oct 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:50

A short YouTube conversation (Jason M. Lemkin and another speaker) about maximizing board value by recruiting independent/outside board members with specific operational experience (notably go-to-market cycles, budgeting, sales cycles, and collections). The speaker advises founders to explicitly ask for straight, candid feedback and to use independent members to fill practical experience gaps. The chunk ends with Lemkin asking about recommended frequency for board or investor meetings.

Chapters

If you do have a board and people are not giving you the straight talk, ask them for it and tell them that you want it and if they don't know it they may have colleagues who've lived through also I think independent board members and outside board members are totally underutilized by boards like get someone if go to market is your big risk. Get a great person who's got go to market experience on your board who's lived through cycles and understands how budgets tighten, how sales cycle slow, how cash gets pushed out and how you do collections. All the ticky tacky stuff that you've got to live through the hard way. I think that's the way you get because you have to come up with your battle plan.
Yep. And just I know this almost sounds like a base, like a silly question I've asked years ago but today if people aren't having board meetings or investor meetings, how often should they have them.