Board members should highlight trade-offs rather than simply agreeing
Jason Brown · 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally · Nov 29, 2019 · at 21:43
Jason Brown is the founder and CEO of Tally. He describes how investor board members can foster constructive decision-making during board meetings.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.1s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“As a board member, when another board member says something, do not agree nor necessarily disagree, but try to point out either the other side of the probability distribution on what they're suggesting, because no matter what, there's no way that what they're saying is either without risk or without some opportunity cost.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jason Brown
Brown: Candidates sourced through executive recruiters suffer from adverse selection
“There's just a huge adverse selection out there. Any candidate that is coming to you through a recruiter is they might be good, but they're not the absolute best candidates. The absolute best candidates are never looking for a job. Those are the people that ge…”
Brown: Founders should assume VCs offer zero baseline value
“My starting point is you have to have the mindset that VCs are going to provide no value. They will all go on and on about the value they'll provide, but what you're shooting for as a base starting point is zero value. And what you're trying to avoid is negati…”
Jason Brown: Venture-funded companies are not as overpriced as perceived
“I would actually argue that given those constraints, venture funded companies aren't as overpriced as you might think.”
Jason Brown: Generic pattern matching by board members is unhelpful to founders
“When the company is facing issue X, do not say, oh, I saw another company that had a similar issue, and they did Y. And the reason is, is that that is not contextualized to your company, your industry, the resources you have, the capabilities, your knowledge, …”
Brown: Top consumer fintechs achieve a 5:1 LTV-to-CAC ratio
“Five to one is a good number. Most fintech is below that because CAC is higher, but the best fintech firms are definitely in that five or higher ratio.”
Brown: 'Move fast and break things' fails in highly regulated industries
“So, so I think it's completely flawed for any business in a highly regulated industry. You know, this is obviously healthcare, a lot of FinTech. These are areas where the regulators have a huge say in what you can and can't do.”