I sit on the board of a small travel start-up here in Toronto. I really love the space these guys play in and their take on creating value for consumers and suppliers. Today, I attended my first board meeting. It was super interesting on the product side but they missed on some business basics. So my advice to anyone running a board of any kind:
1. Have an agenda for each meeting that is distributed before the meeting and run the meeting professionally against that agenda.
2. Take minutes at every meeting and distribute them to the board.
3. Set objectives in terms of what you want to accomplish at each meeting and get the board to understand their role. Is the board a source of capital, expertise (business, vertical, functional or otherwise) or something else?
4. Be quantitative!!!!! Enthusiasm and passion are what drives great entrepreneurs and businesses but they cannot replace quantitative decision making. I need monthly financials. I need monthly trending on key operating metrics.
That is my rant for the day.
