Board members serve companies by empowering CEOs to make final decisions
Dayna Grayson · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · Apr 8, 2019 · at 31:07
Dayna Grayson, Partner at NEA, addresses the debate on whether venture board members serve the CEO or the company.
0:00 / 0:40exact quote · 40.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“When I said we're there as a board to serve the CEO, I call that sort of one in the same as serving the company because the CEO is the ultimate leader of the company. Yes, you could say hierarchically, I guess the CEO works for the board, but the CEO is guiding the board and their management team on the critical decisions they have to take so much advice, both from their management team and the board, and really steer us back to what is the most important decision to make. Now, we all have informed decisions, and we all can advise the CEO, and we should be advising the CEO, but as long as that person is in place, we're there to kind of help them hone their decisions, but empower them to make the ultimate decision.”
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 Dayna Grayson
Valuation does not matter for Series A venture investments
“I subscribe completely to the mentality that price does not matter at the Series A. At the Series A level, we as venture investors, anyone with more than a 25 or fifty million dollar fund should be looking for these outsized exits. They should be looking for c…”
Generalist venture capital investing is not dying
“I do not think we're seeing the end of the generalist investor.”
SaaS business models will transform the manufacturing industry
“So you can actually employ this software-like, SaaS software-like business model. As we know, totally transformed the software world over the past two decades, and I think can now have an effect on the manufacturing world.”
New VCs should maximize meeting volume to calibrate founder judgment
“I would say if you're just starting out in venture, and even if you're not Definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like, not in terms of the idea and the business necessarily, but in terms of the people.”
Comparing venture capital fundraising and investing to dating is silly
“One saying that I really do not like in venture and in entrepreneurship is the idea that raising capital is like dating or investing in entrepreneurs is like dating. That's quite silly if you think about it. A VC and an entrepreneur should be quite up front”
NEA's Scott Sandell decides on investments within 15 minutes
“I've seen some of the greatest investors Do just that. Meet with an entrepreneur. Within the 1:15 minutes, they're either excited or they're not. If they're excited, they're investing. Scott Sandell at NEA is a great example of that. It's very much his style.”