A Founder’s Guide to Startup Boards and Why They Need to Evolve With Each Funding Round

The makeup of your board should change as your company scales from a young organization seeking to develop a meaningful product to a more mature startup in high-growth mode. At the early stages, certain board members may be valuable in your quest for product/market fit or your next round of funding. Later, though, you will need board members with o

Adding board members and having a large board come with their own problems. You need to have regular meetings, report on progress, build metrics, and discuss issues with a number of people. Depending on the stage, startups have anywhere from four to eight board meetings per year, which require a lot of preparation on the founders’ side.

Part of the reason that that conception of the board is incomplete is because a board is not just standing as judge and jury. It’s actually people who are collaborating with you. It’s also an extension of your team. The board is a team of people in dynamic collaboration with the CEO, who, in a startup company, is almost always a founder.