Continuations

One of the nearly routine items at startup board meetings is the discussion and ratification of option grants for new employees and possibly refresh grants for existing employees. Too often unfortunately this information is presented to the board in a way that requires way more time than should be necessary because critical pieces are missing. Here is what you should always include as a bare minimum when presenting option grants to the board 1. Employee name 2. Title/role at company 3. Absolu...

Six years ago I wrote three tips on making your board effective (tip #1, tip #2 and tip #3). Since then there is a lesson that I keep on relearning and so I am writing this tip #4 as much as a reminder to myself as anything: your board cannot be effective if it only talks to you, the CEO. Instead, you should make sure that members of your board also have relationships with execs on your senior team. Now I have a feeling that quite a few VCs/board members and also CEOs will disagree with this....

The Internet has experienced an epic set of attacks over the last few months. This has ranged from massive compromises such as Sony’s Playstation Network to the smaller but potentially equally impactful breach of Mt. Gox (a bitcoin exchange that is still trying to recover). The affected entities have included both companies and governments, as in the recent hack of the CIA’s web site. It would be naive to believe that groups such as Anonymous or LulzSec will go away easily or even if they did...