When we founded Standard Metrics, we used a classic startup “stack”: Gusto for payroll, Slack for communication, and Notion for documentation — standard tools that were recommended to us by peers. But after talking to hundreds of startup founders, we realized that no one’s created a standard for investor relations.
Board meetings in particular are an obvious mismatch of knowledge and experience. Investors have dozens or hundreds of board meetings under their belt, while first-time founders often don’t understand what’s expected of them and how they can best use the time together. Even experienced founders we spoke to were interested in learning about different styles for board management.
To start tackling this problem, we’ve teamed up with a group of world-class investors and operators to codify best practices for board meetings. What makes these investors special is that each of them previously founded companies like Palantir and Yammer. Now, they’re sharing their personal insights through example board decks you can download here:
Joe Lonsdale: The 1 hour board meeting
Joe’s developed a unique perspective from 500+ board meetings both as a founder and investor. For companies from seed to pre-IPO stage, he’s sharing the best of what he’s learned from world-class entrepreneurs and investors.
Nabeel Hyatt: The OKR Driven Board Deck
Nabeel’s worked at scrappy small scale, in hyper-growth mode, and at large public company scale several times over the last couple decades as a CEO, COO, and head of product. He now spends time at Spark Capital partnering with ambitious founders.
David Sacks: The Sacks SaaS Board Deck
David Sacks is co-founder and general partner at Craft. He has been a successful tech entrepreneur and investor for two decades, building and investing in some of the most iconic companies of the last 20 years.
Investor relations are a two-way street: companies share information with their investors, and investors provide help, insights, and guidance. This makes board meetings one of the most important ways for founders to receive value from their key stakeholders, prepare for the challenges ahead, and reflect on what’s working and not working in their business. We’re just getting started and hope that what we’re sharing today will demystify the board meeting and speed up founders building the world-changing companies of tomorrow.
We’re collaborating with some other amazing investor/operators, and we’ll be publishing more soon. Who would you want to hear from next? What other useful tools would you like us to build around investor relations and board management? Drop us a comment or feel free to reach out anytime with feedback.
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