Board Meetings

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I’ll be honest with you — I used to have no idea what a board meeting actually entailed.

Like I understood conceptually what it was, but I was totally clueless as to how to prepare for and lead a proper board meeting. And I’m sure I’m not alone; most founders typically don’t share these insights publicly.

So today I’m going to peel back the curtains and share some insights about our board structure, the learning curve we experienced, and how we run board meetings today…

First, let’s start with what a board is (mom, this is for you to follow along):

tl;dr they’re supposed to be the adults in the room to provide value and oversight.

When we first legally incorporated the company, we had to designate someone to be on the board. All C-Corps are required by law to have a board of directors (even if it’s just a single person) … which in our case was me.

The board typically needs to approve things like stock issuance, acquisitions, appointments of new officers, executive compensation, etc.

Back when the board was literally just me, it made things simple. I was just pushing paper and signing things on the fly (i.e. no bureaucracy or explanations needed). And of course we didn’t have board meetings back then, otherwise it’d just look like this…

Part of raising our Series A in 2023 meant that we would actually establish a board, and thus, have quarterly board meetings. Nicole Quinn from LSVP joined the board, along with my cofounder Ben.

A few weeks prior to the first meeting (Q3 2023), they sent over a sample board deck that had the types of slides and data that would make a board meeting useful. I took one look at that deck and was like, “yup, we don’t have any of this.”

It’s probably to be expected at that stage; the templates had metrics like net dollar retention and burn multiple and a handful of other things we had never once calculated or tracked at beehiiv.

Up until that point, we had been building the company off of vibes and refreshing the Stripe dashboard a few times per hour (to be fair, I still do this).

It was a bit of a wakeup call to get our shit together and mature a little as a company. We hired a data engineer and invested in a handful of tools and initiatives to better leverage said data.

It’s important to note — we didn’t do all of this just to have better board meetings. The board meeting was just a forcing function to grow up and equip the company to make better data-driven decisions.

The difference between our first board meeting and the second was dramatic. Here are a few slides from our first board deck (Q3 2023):

And here’s a few slides from our second board deck (Q4 2023):

I also decided to change the format of our board meetings after the first one.

Forcing the board to watch me present one slide at a time for 120 minutes wasn’t a productive use of anyone’s time. It’s both boring as hell and live presentations don’t provide adequate time for people to process information and give more thoughtful insights.

Instead, I now send the full deck to everyone a week in advance so they can review it asynchronously. Most people reply in thread with dozens of comments and questions that test some assumptions and are ripe for further discussion.

I reply and answer the more straightforward questions in the thread, and pull out the meatier questions as topics to discuss during the board meeting itself.

Giving people a week to review the materials on their own time leads to much better questions. The better questions lead to better discussions. The better discussions allow us to extract better insights and action items to take back to the team and execute.

We’ve been running this playbook for board meetings since that second one, and it’s worked extremely well for us.

When we raised our Series B last year, Danielle Lay from NEA joined the board along with my other cofounder, Jake. For those counting at home, that gives us a board of five — the three cofounders and the two investors who led our Series A and B.

Today, board meetings are super valuable for the same reason I’m such a huge proponent of sending a monthly investor update — it both holds you accountable and forces you to reflect on the state of the business.

While I do find the meetings themselves helpful (we’re fortunate to have a thoughtful and experienced board)... the exercise of simply preparing for them might be just as insightful.

The board decks I create today are almost 100 slides and consist of every core metric, trend, and datapoint across the entire business. There’s also a section for each lead to share what their team is prioritizing, what’s working, and what’s not.

The final product is both a 10,000 foot view of the entire business, as well as the most detailed and granular datapoints and initiatives across each department.

If creating a 100 slide deck sounds absolutely miserable, you’re correct. I’ve actually passed the bulk of the responsibility to each team lead to create and update the slides for their respective teams. This does a few things:

1. Gives ownership to aggregate and present data and insights.

2. Gives them a direct line of communication to the board.

3. Forces team leads to reflect on the progress and performance of their org.

4. Prevents me from having to spend weeks preparing slides by myself.

I encourage all team leads to be brutally honest in their assessment and own any shortcomings and issues. The board meeting isn’t meant to be an opportunity to impress (they already invested). Instead, it’s an opportunity to shine a light on what’s not working so we can discuss solutions and get better.

After the board meeting I share the unfiltered and unedited board deck to the entire team, along with the key insights and topics we discussed.

It can be uncomfortable at times. Occasionally specific teams are underperforming and it’s noted very clearly in the deck. But accountability and constructive communication is what separates high performing teams from mediocre teams who are afraid of feedback.

A good gut check on whether or not you’re hiring the right people — are they open to and thankful for receiving constructive feedback?

They should be; it makes them better. It also makes the entire company better.

By the way: if you’re interested in seeing that second board deck I referenced above… I’m happy to share (for a tiny cost). Simply refer just 1 person to subscribe to this newsletter using your referral link (https://mail.bigdeskenergy.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER) and I’ll send you a copy next week.

You’ll also receive our Series B deck 😃.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/board-meetings

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