A Better Way to Shop

I love Zappos.com.  It’s rapidly becoming the only place I buy shoes.  Their web site experience is ok – not perfect, but pretty good, but their level of service is just unbelievable.  They are doing for e-commerce (shoes in particular) what Eos is doing for air travel.

They’re always great at free shipping and have always been super responsive and very personal and authentic when it comes to customer service.  But today took the cake.  I emailed them when I placed an order for new running shoes because I also wanted to buy one of those little “shoe pocket” velcro thingies that straps onto shoelaces and holds keys and money for runners.  I didn’t find one on the Zappos site and just asked if they carried the item in case I missed it.

Less than 24 hours later, I got an email reply from Lori, a Customer Loyalty Representative there, who apologized for not carrying the item — and then provided me with a link to buy it on Amazon.com which she had researched online herself.

Zappos’s tag line on their emails says it all:

We like to think of ourselves as a service company that just happens to sell shoes.

Does your company think of itself and its commitment to customer service like that?

The Best Place to Work, Part 0

I keep getting questions about a deck I’ve used several times at Techstars, Seedcamp, DreamIt, and the like which is called “7 Ideas for Creating the Best Place to Work.”  So today I will launch a 7-part series over the next 7 weeks to describe my 7 points.  As always, this is not intended to be perfect or comprehensive, but it is a bit of lessons learned over the last 12-13 years at Return Path.  It’s just 7 ideas – not the only 7 ideas.  And there’s nothing magic about the number 7, despite what George Costanza says.  Or Steven Covey.

Here’s the outline:

1. Surround yourself with the best and brightest
2. Create an environment of trust
3. Manage yourself very, very well
4. Be the consummate host
5. Be the ultimate enabler
6. Let people be people
7. Create a thankful atmosphere

Let’s go!  I will create a tag cloud for this series called Best Place to Work.

What Kind of Entrepreneur Do You Want to Be?

I had a great time at Princeton reunions this weekend, as always.  As I was talking to random people, some of whom I knew but hadn’t seen in a long time, and others of whom I was just meeting for the first time, the topic of starting a business naturally came up.  Two of the people asked me if I thought they should start a business, and what kind of person made for a good entrepreneur.

As I was thinking about the question, it reminded me of something Fred once told me — that he thought there were two kinds of entrepreneurs:  people who start businesses and people who run business. 

People who start businesses are more commonly known as serial entrepreneurs.  These people come up with ideas and love incubating them but may or may not try to run them longer term.  They:

– generate an idea a minute
– have a major case of ADD
– are easily distracted by shiny objects
– would rather generate 1 good and idea and 19 bad ones than just 1 good one
– are always thinking about the next thing
– are only excited by the possibility of what could be, not what is
– are more philosophical and theoretical
– probably shouldn’t run the companies they start for more than a few months, as they will frustrate everyone around them and get bored themselves
– are really fun at cocktail parties
– say things like “I thought of auctions online way before eBay!”

The second type of entrepreneur is the type who runs businesses (and may or may not come up with the original idea).  These people:

– care about success, not just having the idea
– love to make things work
– would rather generate 1 idea and execute it well than 2 ideas
– are problem solvers
– are great with people
– are maybe less fun at cocktail parties, but
– you’d definitely want them on your team in a game of paintball or laser tag

Neither one is better than the other, and sometimes you get both in the same person, but not all that often.  But understanding what type of entrepreneur you are (or would likely be) is probably a good first step in understanding whether or not you want to take the plunge, and if so, what role you’d like to play in the business.

Fred beat me to it. I wasn’t at a computer to post this yesterday on the actual 4th of July, so today will have to do. I’ve read lots of books on the American revolution and the founding fathers over the years. It’s absolutely my favorite historical period, probably because it appeals to the entrepreneur in me. Think about what our founding fathers accomplished:

– Articulated a compelling vision for a better future with home democratic rule and capitalist principles. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is really the ultimate tag line when you think about it.

– Raised strategic debt financing from, and built critical strategic alliances with France, the Netherlands, and Spain.

– Assembled a team of A players to lead the effort in Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and numerous others who haven’t been afforded the same level of historical stature.

– Built early prototypes to prove the model of democratic home rule in the form of most of the 13 colonial assemblies, the Committees of Correspondence, and the Articles of Confederation.

– Relentlessly executed their plans until they were successful, changing tactics several times over the years of 1774-1783 but never wavering from their commitment to the ultimate vision.

– Followed through on their commitments by establishing a new nation along the principles to which they publicly committed early on, and taking it to the next level with the Constitution and our current form of government in 1789.

And let’s not forget, these guys accomplished all of this at a time when it took several days to get a letter from Virginia to Boston on horseback and six weeks to get a message across the Atlantic on a sailboat. Can you imagine what Washington would have been able to accomplish if he could have IMd with Adams in Paris?

So happy 4th to all, with a big thanks to this country’s founding fathers for pulling off the greatest spin-off of all time.

We spent the weekend in Hudson, New York, a charming, urban-renewing town about two hours north of the city. My cousins Michael & Marianne opened a wine store called Hudson Wine Merchants on the main drag in town, Warren Street (343 Warren St. to be exact, you should definitely check it out if you’re ever in Hudson).

The store opened for the first time Friday evening, and we had the first full day on Saturday. Mariquita and I, and some other friends of Michael & Marianne’s, helped do everything from stock the shelves, to clean the windows, to use the price tag gun (fun!), to work the register and the very fickle POS software, to watch my cousin’s daughter as she rode her tricycle through the store. It was fun but exhausting. It inspired a few different postings here, which I’ll work on in the coming days.

The first thought I had is that being CEO of a two-person company has a lot in common with being CEO of a 200-person company, or, I imagine, a 20,000-person company:

– You worry incessantly about keeping your customers happy and providing a great customer experience and the right product

– You have numbers running in the back of your head all the time. How much are you selling? At what margin? Are you making money?

– You work your ass off and frequently put business first in order to see it succeed

– You think about the little things, the big things, everything, 24 hours a day

Obviously, there are many differences between running a two-person company and running a much larger organization as well; of course, the biggest is managing, developing, and worrying about lots of employees’ welfare. But it struck me that there are more similarities than meet the eye.

OnlyOnce, Part II

After more than six years, my blog starting looking like, well, a six-year old blog on an off-the-shelf template.  Thanks to my friends at Slice of Lime, OnlyOnce has a new design as of today as well as some new navigation and other features like a tag cloud and Twitter feed (and a new platform, WordPress rather than Typepad).  I know many people only read my posts via feed or email (those won’t change), but if you have a minute, feel free to take a look.  The site also has its own URL now – https://onlyonceblog.wpengine.com.

With my shiny new template, I may add some other features or areas of content over time, as well.  There are still a couple things that are only 95% baked, but I love the new look and wanted to make if “official” today.  Thanks to Kevin, Jeff, Mike, Lindsay, and everyone at Slice of Lime for their excellent design work, and for my colleague Andrea for helping do the heavy lifting of porting everything over to the new platform.

What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?

I think there are two kinds of entrepreneurs, and sometimes, you can be both.  There is the kind that starts businesses, and there is the kind that builds businesses.

The kind of entrepreneur who starts businesses but usually doesn’t like running or building them are typically serial entrepreneurs.  How can you spot one?  They:

• Have an idea a minute and a bit of ADD – they are attracted to bright shiny objects – they can’t focus
  • Would rather generate 1 good and idea and 19 bad ones than just 1 good one
  • Are always thinking about the next thing, only excited by the possibility of what could be, not by what is
  • Are more philosophical and theoretical than practical
  • Probably shouldn’t run businesses for more than a few months
  • Are likely to frustrate everyone around them and get bored themselves
  • Are really fun at cocktail parties
  • Say things like “I thought of auctions online way before eBay!”

The second kind of entrepreneur is the kind of person who can run businesses but may or may not come up with the idea.  Typically, these people:

• Care about success, not about having the idea
• Love to make things work
• Would rather generate 1 idea and execute it well than 2 ideas
• Are problem solvers
• Are great with people
• May be less fun at cocktail parties, but you’d want them on your team in a game of paintball or laser tag

It’s the rare one who can do both of these things well.  But you know them when you see them.  Think Dell or Microsoft…or even Apple in a roundabout way if you consider the fact that Jobs hired Cook (and others) to partner with them to run the business.

Alter Ego

A couple people have asked me recently how I work with an Executive Assistant, what value that person provides, and even questioned the value of having that position in the company in an era where almost everything can be done in self-service, lightweight ways. At my old company (in the 90s), each VP-level person and up had a dedicated assistant – the world certainly doesn’t require that level of support any more.  In our case, Andrea has other tasks for the company that take up about half of her time.

I happen to have the absolute best, world class role model assistant in Andrea, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with for almost seven years now (which is a reminder to me that she has a sabbatical coming up soon!).

This is an important topic.  It’s tempting for CEOs of startups, and even companies that are just out of the startup phase, to want to do it all themselves…or feel like they don’t need help on small tasks.  My argument against those viewpoints is that your time is your scarcest resource as the leader of an organization, and anything you can do to create more of it for yourself is worthwhile.  And a good assistant does just that – literally creates time for you by offloading hundreds of small things from your plate that sure, you could do, but now you don’t have to.

I asked Andrea to write up for me a list of the major things she does for me (although she didn’t realize it was going to turn into a blog post at the time).  I’ll add my notes after each bullet point in italics on the value this creates for me.

• Updates and maintains calendar, schedules meetings and greets visitors – My calendar is like a game of sudoku sometimes.  I can and do schedule my own things, but Andrea handles a lot of it.  She also has access to all my staff’s calendars so she can just move things around to optimize for all of us.  Finally, she and I review my calendar carefully, proactively, to make sure I’m spending my time where I want to spend it (see another item below)
• Answers and screens direct phone line – The bigger we get, the more vendors call me. I can’t possibly take another call from a wealth management person or a real estate broker.  Screening is key for this!
• Plans and coordinates company-wide meetings and events – This is an extension of managing my calendar and accessing other executives’ calendars…and a pretty key centralized function.
• Plans and coordinates Executive Committee offsite’s – Same, plus as part of my theme of “act like you’re the host of a big party,” I like this to be planned flawlessly, every detail attended to.  I do a lot of that work with Andrea, but I need a partner to drive it.
• Collects and maintains confidential data – Every assistant I’ve ever had starts by swearing an oath around confidentiality.
• Prepares materials for Board Meetings and Executive Committee meetings – Building Board Books is time consuming and great to be able to offload.  We put together the table of contents, then everyone pours materials into Andrea, and poof!  We have a book.  For staff meetings, she manages the standing agenda, changes to it, and the flow of information and materials so everyone has what they need when they need it to make these meetings productive from start to finish.  In our case, Andrea is part of the Executive Committee and joins all of our meetings so she is completely up to speed on what’s going on in the company – this really enables her to add value to our work.  She’s also not just a passive participant – some great ideas have come from her over the years!
• Coordinates and books travel (domestic and international) – Painful and time consuming, not because Expedia is hard to use but because there is a lot of change, complexity, and tight calendars to manage and coordinate for certain trips.  And while it takes a while to get an assistant up to speed on how you like to travel or how you think about travel, this is a big time saver.
• Prepares expense reports – Same thing – you CAN do it, but easier not to.
• Manages staff gifts and Anniversary presents for all employees – This is a big one for me.  I send every employee an anniversary gift each year and call them.  Once a month, a stack of things to sign magically appears on my desk…and then gets distributed.  Andrea manages the schedule, the inventory of gifts, the distribution of gifts to managers.
• Manages investor database – I assume someday we’ll have a system for this, but for now, IR is a function that Andrea coordinates for me and Jack, my CFO.
• Assist Executive Committee with project as needed – The person in this role for you ends up being really valuable to help anyone on your staff with major projects.  Good use of time.
• Prepares Quarterly Time Analysis for CEO – This is a big one for me.  Every quarter, Andrea downloads my calendar and classifies all of my time, then produces an analysis showing me where I’m spending time my classifications are – Internal, External, non-RP, free, travel, Board/Investor.  This really helps us plan out the next quarter so I’m intentional about where I put my hours, and then it helps her manage my calendar and balance incoming requests.
• Help with communications – This one was not on Andrea’s list, but I’m adding it.  She ends up drafting some things for me (sometimes as small as an email, sometimes as large as a presentation, though with a lot more guidance), which is helpful…it’s always easier to edit something than create it.  I also usually ask Andrea to read any emails I send to ALL ahead of time to make sure they make sense from someone’s perspective other than my own, and she’s very helpful in shaping things that way.

This may not be true of all companies at all sizes and stages, but for companies like ours, I’d classify a great assistant as a bit of an alter ego, one definition of which is “second self” – literally an extension of you as CEO.  That means the person is acting AS YOU, not just doing things FOR YOU.  Think about the transitive property here.  Everything you do as CEO is (in theory) to propel the whole company forward.  So everything your alter ego does is the same.  A great assistant isn’t just your administrative assistant.  A great assistant is an overall enabler of company success and productivity.  You do have to invest a lot of time in getting someone up to speed in this role for them to be effective, and you have to pay well for performance, but a great assistant can literally double your productivity as CEO.

I was in a Board meeting last week (not Return Path’s), when one of my fellow directors came out with this gem:  “No one will ever thank us for keeping our prices low.”

When I first heard this, as is the case with most great quotes, I was drawn to its wit and simplicity.

But then I started thinking – is it true?  My mind first went to retail.  Having a reputation as being a low-cost provider can be in and of itself effective marketing – if that reputation is strong enough and your selection is wide enough, at least in retail-oriented industries, customers may consistently buy from you even if you’re not ALWAYS the low-cost provider.  Wal-Mart and Amazon prove this one out every day.  That’s the economic equivalent of customers thanking you for keeping your prices low.  Or pick an even more extreme example – gas stations, where there’s even more limited brand loyalty and even more product commoditization.  There’s really no reason to buy gas from a station who charges more than a couple pennies more per gallon than its neighbor.  No, thank you.

But in a B2B environment with smaller numbers of customers and smaller numbers of SKUs, this comment makes a lot more sense.  IT or Marketing departments don’t exactly go to the grocery store twice a week to buy data or software solutions!  I’m a big believer in the diminishing differences between the B2C and B2B universes, but this area may be one where the difference is still sharp.

Low prices might lure prospects to your doorstep, but they’re not going to keep buying your product if it’s not of sufficiently high quality.  Buyers measure quality in different ways, but here are three frameworks to think about as you contemplate the quality of your solutions relative to their prices:

• Is the quality of your product “above the bar”? Meaning, does it work well enough to get the job done that customers are hiring you to do?  If not, you do not have a sustainable business.  If so, see the next two questions
• Is the value of your product strong enough relative to the price you charge? Value-based pricing is increasingly difficult in an era of hyper competition, but if you can offer tailored enough solutions by vertical or of course by client, you can really optimize your pricing model
• Is your price/value equation strong enough relative to the price/value equation of a competing solution? Sometimes a “just barely good enough” solution can beat out a superior solution as long as it’s a LOT cheaper and the job the client needs done isn’t mission critical

The final thought vector in this equation is friction.  Go back to the consumer examples above – your switching cost to buy gas at Station A one week and Station B the next week is zero.  But in a B2B environment, there’s always at least some friction around switching products.  Friction could be implementation cost, time, execution risk.  It could be employee or customer training.  It could be integration with other systems or workflows.  It could even be desire to maintain a halo effect from doing business with you.  The more friction you have with your product, the easier it is to maintain higher pricing.

So my conclusion is that high prices are rarely going to chase someone away in a B2B, low client count/low SKU/moderate friction environment.  And that means my fellow director was spot-on:  no one will ever thank you for keeping your prices low.  All in, this comment was a great reminder for any B2B organization about how to think strategically about pricing.

Several years ago, I blogged about the training program we created for entry-level employees at Return Path, including an embedded presentation that we used to use (which I hope still works on the blog after all these years).

My brother Michael, who is an experienced manager and leader in the digital marketing space, recently sent me this email that I thought I’d share along the same lines to colleagues who are new to the working world. Enjoy!

I signed up to give advice on LinkedIn, and had someone just starting her first job reach out to me asking for general advice. I came up with the attached, and thought it might make for a good blog post on Only Once. If you decide not to publish it, I’m totally cool with that, but thought I would share it. After all, you’re only a brand new employee once too 🙂

1) Listen as much as possible. One of my mentors was fond of reminding me, “God gave you two ears and one mouth!” You should listen at least twice as much as you talk. Get to know your environment and the people around you. Take notes. Observe as much as possible. Learn how others are able to provide value to the organization. Start to anticipate little things that need to be done, and then do them before your manager asks you to. Then bit by bit, use your creativity to start to develop bigger hypotheses about how you can provide even greater value. 

2) “In business, the best story wins.” That’s another quote from a former manager of mine that I have found to be universally true. People in business respond to many things: numbers, bullet points, graphs and visualizations. But they respond to all of those things better when they are wrapped in stories. A great book you can read about storytelling is not about business at all. It’s called “Story” by Robert McKee, and it’s about screenwriting. Despite its apparent lack of applicability, I assure you it will help you think about characters, goals, antagonists, drama, obstacles, and structure — all the elements that go into a good story. When you can present your hypotheses in the context of a story, about your business, your customers, what you want to achieve, how you will do it, and why it matters, you will build consensus and show leadership. Another great book you can read here, again, not about business at all, is “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. It really opened my eyes about how so much of human history and behavior is really just based on stories. 

3) Be lean. There is another book you should read, called “The Lean Startup”, by Eric Ries. This one is actually about business :). As you think about your hypotheses, think of them in the context of how you can get to market quickly and inexpensively. How you can easily perform experiments that will test your hypotheses. Some of your experiments will not achieve your desired result, but it’s not a failure if you can learn something that helps you pivot towards success. Learnings enable you to adjust and refine your hypotheses as you try to find more value for your organization. 

4) “Objections are requirements” and a corollary “ask questions, don’t make statements.” These two gems are from that first mentor in item number one. Even if you can tell great stories, and even if you can devise and execute lean experiments that achieve business results or provide validated learnings, sometimes “haters gonna hate.” There will always be inhibitors to your bold ideas, with reasons not to proceed with your experiments. Inertia is part of human nature. But don’t fear! When an inhibitor comes along, the first thing you do is start to ask questions. “Why do you object to x?” “Oh,” they’ll say, “because of y and z.” Then ask another question “So if we can resolve y and z, then can we proceed with x?” Rather than repeating yourself and making more statements, by asking questions you’ve just turned their objections into requirements. That inhibitor no longer has their reasons not to proceed with your bold idea. You’ve turned them from antagonists into allies. This kind of creative problem solving is critical to getting your experiments into market, and building consensus and showing your leadership without alienating anyone. 

5) Ok I know I said four, but this one is optional (albeit important). Have fun! Do not take yourself or your role too seriously. Show your personality. Be yourself. That sort of general approach to work and life will draw people to you. They will be relaxed and comfortable around you. They will look forward to meetings with you. You will be successful if you are a good listener, a creative thinker with bold ideas, a fantastic storyteller, an agile experiment developer, and a leader who can build consensus and drive value. But if you are all those things, and you’re fun to be around? Then you will be unstoppable.

Thank you, Michael, for the contribution!

Was anyone else as appalled as I am by the contents of Connie Loizos’s recent article, Coming out of COVID, investors lose their taste for board meetings? The stories and quotes in the article about VCs reducing their interest and participation in Board meetings, not showing up, sending the junior associate to cover, etc. are eye opening and alarming if widespread. 

The reasons cited in the article are logical—overextended VCs, Zoom fatigue, and newbie directors. Connie’s note that “privately, VCs admit they don’t add a lot of value to boards” is pretty funny to read as a CEO who has heard a ton of VCs talk about how much value they add to boards (although the good ones DO add a lot of value!).  

For the most part, everything about the substance of this article just made me angry.  

Disengaged or dysfunctional boards aren’t just bad for CEOs and LPs; they’re bad for everyone. If the world has truly become a place where the board meeting is nothing more than a distraction for CEOs, and investors think it’s a tax they can’t afford, then it’s time to hit the reset button on boards and board meetings. 

Here are four things that need to happen in this reset:

VCs need to do their job well or stop doing it. The argument that investors did too many deals in the pandemic so now they don’t have any time is a particularly silly one, since the pandemic reduced the amount of time VCs needed to spend on individual board meetings as well. I used to have four board meetings each year with directors who were traveling for the meetings, having dinners, spending time with the team and sitting in on committee meetings. 

Today, boards are lucky to have one in-person meeting a year (more on that later). And as everything else takes less time, and there’s little transit, any given VC should have doubled the time they spend on board meetings.

Serving on a board post-investment is a central part of the VC role. They have obligations to the founders they back and to the LPs they represent. The entire role is “find deals, execute deals, manage the portfolio.” 

If they no longer have time for the third job, they need to admit that to both founders and LPs before stepping down. If a VC can’t be bothered to focus on minding their investments and adding value, they should work with the company to find their replacement.  

CEOs need to take their job as leader of the board seriously. Would a good CEO just throw their hands up if they found management team meetings boring or a waste of time? No. They’d fix the structure of the team or meetings. If not, they shouldn’t be the CEO. 

It’s no different with boards. Whether or not the CEO is the board chair, they’re the leader of the organization. So, one of the few “must do” items in their job description is leading the board. The board is part of the CEO’s team, just like the management team. 

CEOs get to call the meetings, run the meetings, and insist on attendance. The CEO’s obligation is to make it easy and meaningful for everyone so the board isn’t a tax but rather a secret weapon for the company’s success. As my long-time independent director Scott Weiss used to tell me, boards consume whatever you put in front of them. Garbage in, garbage out. That means paying careful attention to the board materials, to meeting etiquette, and everything in between.

If the CEO doesn’t know how to do that, they should find a CEO mentor who can teach them, observe some well run boards in action through their network, or read Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors, a book I just published along with co-authors and VCs Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani.

Here’s one tip on making Board prep more efficient: work your Operating System and your Board Book formats so you do one set of reporting for the company and management team that is 95% reusable without any changes for your board.

The format for Board meetings needs to evolve. Board meetings need to evolve in our world of hybrid work just as office work needs to evolve. The format that works for in-person can’t just “lift and shift” to Zoom as is, indefinitely.

Here’s how I’m steering my board:

• I insist on one or two “old school” meetings per year, meaning in-person attendance required, half a day long, and including a meal and even an activity. If I’m only going to see my directors together infrequently, I make it mandatory, but I also make it worthwhile and fun.
  
• Remote meetings that happen between the in-person meetings are becoming shorter and tighter. I still send out a lot reading material beforehand, but I make sure to keep the focus on a fixed number of major topics to keep the discussion engaging.
  
• We need a new set of expectations around Zoom meeting etiquette for long meetings. It’s okay to ask people to close their email, browser, and Slack before the meeting starts. If a meeting is more than two hours long, a 15 minute break in the middle is important. Use breakout rooms to mix up topic discussions and working sessions.
  
• I am trying a new meeting format to maximize director conversation and team development. I start every meeting with a director-only session for half an hour that’s not exactly an Executive Session but is more fun and social—usually including a nonwork discussion topic, as if we were sitting around the dinner table having a cocktail. That gets the conversational juices flowing. Then when my team and observers join the meeting, I ask those people to turn their video off, and I ask directors to adjust their Zoom setting to “hide participants not on video” to keep the number of Zoom squares down to the bare minimum. Any time a team member or observer wants to engage in a particular topic, they turn their video on. Then we follow the meeting with Executive Session and Closed Session and a single-director debrief with me. That is a lot of moving pieces to manage, I find that but doing so keeps the meeting fresh and well paced.
  
• Finally, I’m following Fred Wilson’s advice and running a very short survey post-meeting to ask directors basic questions so they can summarize their thinking for me and the team: What are we doing well? What do we need more work on? And did the meeting meet your expectations?

Companies need to Follow the Rule of 1s

The secret to engaged and diverse boards is to mix up their membership more than most companies do. Our Board Benchmark study at Bolster indicates that the vast majority of private company boards have no independent directors at all—only founders and investors—and every year, the vast majority of the “open independent seats” specified in those companies’ charters go unfilled. 

It’s hard work hiring a new independent board member, and it rarely rises to the top of the CEO’s priority list. But the more independent the board is, and the more diverse the board is in every way (in terms of demographics as well as experience and background), the more robust the conversations around the table become, and the more valuable the board is to the CEO.

My Rule of 1s for building highly effective boards is simple:

• Add independent directors to your board on Day 1
• Try to limit your Board to 1 founder/team member
• Then, for every 1 investor on your board,
• Add 1 independent director

A great board is one of a company’s greatest assets. A weak board can kill a company. A mediocre board is just a waste of time. There’s no question that running an effective board, or serving as an effective director, takes serious time and energy and diligence. But that’s not a reason not to try.

(This post first ran on TechCrunch+ and is also running on the Bolster blog)