DavidVivero.com

With some music playing and a fresh cup of coffee poured, I'm currently preparing my sixth or seventh board package for RentJuice. I'm actually having a lot of fun. In the spirit of all this reflection, I started thinking about board meetings themselves.

When you're exploring the idea of starting a company, you tend to do a lot of research and make the kinds of presentations and pitches that let you stay focused on the forest rather than the trees. You're a visionary. But as soon as you get started building your business, it's way too easy to lose sight of your general direction as you try to keep up. That is, until it's time for the next board meeting.

If this is your first startup, you may be asking the following questions:

At seed-stage companies, what are board meetings for?

Board meetings accomplish two objectives: handling board-level approvals (like stock option grants) and providing an update on the performance and direction of the business. In some ways, the role of the latter is to be nothing but an artificial deadline you inject into your schedule to enforce accountability and higher-level thinking. Under a pile of tiny decisions, bill payments, emails, and meetings, board presentations are when I get a chance to climb out of that pile and reflect.

Board meetings are not supposed to be when you get all your questions answered, such as whether to hire someone or launch that new feature. Don't expect a good board member to tell you exactly what to do. If you've chosen your board wisely, you are the manager of your business and should be laying out your own plans. Board meetings provide a great forum to validate your ideas and decisions, but you shouldn't rely on board meetings to generate them.

How often should you schedule these "artificial deadlines"?  

In the seed stage of a business, my opinion is that you should get your board together at least every six weeks.

When you're developing your product and understanding its fit with the market, you may be forced to change your approach constantly. You're constantly meeting new potential teammates, and deciding every week how you are going to change your marketing spend or your user interface. You're making important decisions every single day, and your board is there to help you stay focused on the right things.

The above paragraph might imply you should be talking to your board constantly. That isn't a bad idea, but talking doesn't require a meeting. A productive discussion at a board meeting requires a fair amount of preparation and data, and your board is likely to have other obligations. A frequency of six weeks provides you enough opportunity to focus on your business for at least five weeks, and makes it a lot easier on your directors, who almost always have other obligations.

What's the appropriate content to prepare for your first few board meetings?

Shortly after we raised our first round of financing, I held my first board meeting. It included everything: introductions to recent hires, a full product tour, a survey of the entire P&L statement, business development pipeline updates, and more. For a company with three employees, it was long and detailed. During that board meeting, one board member remarked, "This financial analysis is great, but there is just one thing you need to focus on: at what time on what day you will be out of cash."

To keep your board focused, board meeting agendas are tight narratives, with a few discussion points sprinkled throughout. There shouldn't be any surprises, because by then you've already provided them with access to the dashboards they need and had intermittent discussions over the phone or the web between board meetings.

Every board meeting is different and requiires specific discussion topics, but I try to answer the following questions at every one:

• Current cash position and runway. You'll distribute a full set of financial statements but you don't need to review them line-by-line at the meeting. Focus completely on your cash and how your expected burn is affecting your remaining runway. Are you planning a new financing or is one required? Will you need to hire someone soon, and how does that affect your burn?
• Customer pipeline and forecast. Note any new customers, any changes to the sales process, and what you expect regarding top-line growth between now and the next board meeting. In a focused consumer startup, this may be actually be your traffic acquisition or growth in active users.
• Key product milestones reached. Do a product tour that lasts no more than 10-15 minutes, focusing only on its overall impact to your business. In your board package, you might include more detailed screenshots or other product plans currently in the pipeline.
• Focus areas between now and the next board meeting. Demonstrate you have a clear idea of what's important by letting your board inside your head. What do you obsess about right now? Where will you be spending your time in the next 6 weeks and why is that important? How does it affect your sales performance, product quality, or finances?

During each of the above sections, ask yourself: how can my board members be helpful? Board meetings are a great time to make informed, specific requests from your board. These can be introductions, research projects, or validation of your hypotheses.

Who attends and records the board meeting?

If you're lucky you'll have memorized your powerpoint or board package and use it as a guide, letting you be free to take notes on the results of your discussions. In general, don't write absolutely everything down -- just key points that you may want to remember and follow-up on during the subsequent weeks or perhaps at the next board meeting. You're there to engage and show leadership, not to be a note-taking student.

While the permitted attendee list is the board's decision, I believed strongly in having the entire team attend every board meeting during our early days at RentJuice. It's important for your team to get external validation and support from someone they don't see every day. They'll thank you for the access, and the whole company will leave that meeting fully informed and hopefully inspired. (However, if you're deciding between having your team reach a crucial milestone in their projects and their attending the board meeting, let them stay at their desk.) If you're going to do this, manage your team's ongoing expectations: as your company grows and discussions move toward the state of future fundraising, hiring and firing plans, and other sensitive issues, it may be best to go it alone.

The official minutes of the board meeting will need to be stored with your company's records. Many law firms, like ours at RentJuice, will send a representative of their firm (hopefully your partner) to take and file the official notes of the board meeting. These are required for shareholders to have access to. Don't expect to see a lot of details in these notes: they're there just to record that the meeting took place, that a quorum showed up, and that you discussed a few headline issues. Keeping these recorded minutes limited only to headlines and key agenda items is best for your board and you from a legal liability perspective.

More on board meetings to come

At some point, I'll publish something on recruiting, compensating and managing your board. (If you're going to preside over meetings like the ones described above, the profile of a great board member for you might already be clearer.) Someone give me a deadline to get to that: perhaps by our next board meeting.