Foundry is a premium business intelligence publication featuring 551 articles from the best founders and investors. Topics cover leadership, strategy, fundraising, growth, AI, and more.

What topics does Foundry cover?

Foundry covers leadership, investing, AI and technology, product development, founder stories, mindset and career, marketing, hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. Articles feature insights from founders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang.

Can I submit a story to Foundry?

Yes. You can submit a story at thefoundrybrief.com/submit. Foundry publishes articles featuring insights from founders and investors across all industries.

Ben Horowitz Says Board Meetings Are the Best Thing Most Founders Waste

By Ben Horowitz · Investing · 2 min read

You are in the forest chopping down trees. The board meeting is the one time you step back and ask if the game plan is right.

Key Points

Board meetings are a forcing function to step back from day-to-day execution
The knowledge gap between company and board grows over time — do not let the board do product strategy
Boards are most useful for identifying what you are NOT doing

You're in the forest chopping down trees. You're in the war shooting the enemy. You're not looking back and saying, is the game plan right? The board meeting is that time.

The Forcing Function

Horowitz: "Probably the most valuable thing that comes out of a board meeting is it's a forcing function to get everybody in the company to take a step back and say, okay, what are we doing? How are we doing? Are we on track?"

Horowitz: "If you don't have a board meeting, you don't ever actually do that. You're in the forest chopping down trees. You're in the war shooting the enemy. You're not looking back and saying, is the game plan right?"

If you don't have a board meeting, you don't ever actually do that. You're in the forest chopping down trees.

Prepare a Clear Overview and You Are in the 95th Percentile

Horowitz: "The first thing is, as the entrepreneur, do you get your people to get to a set of data that gives you a good overview of where the company is? This is a good checkpoint."

Horowitz: "If you do that and present that at the board meeting and have time to discuss interesting issues, then you're doing pretty good. You're in the 95th percentile."

If you prepare a clear overview and have time to discuss interesting issues, you're in the 95th percentile.

The Knowledge Gap That Grows

Horowitz: "The knowledge gap between the people in the company and the people on the board starts out small and gets big over time. When you start, your VC will have all these interesting insights."

Horowitz: "A year into it, you know every bit of customer feedback, you know the product architecture cold. They come in out of left field with, 'I think you should put a button here.' You don't want to put yourself in that position where the board is trying to do the product strategy."

A year in, you know every bit of customer feedback, you know the product architecture cold. They come in with 'put a button here.'

Where Boards Actually Add Value

Horowitz: "You spend all your time and energy optimizing, tuning, refining, AB testing, getting really good at what you're doing. But there's a whole world of stuff you're not doing, and one of those things may be something you should do."

Horowitz: "A good board, if you give them the right context, can say, 'We ought to also do this.' Sometimes it might be, 'We ought to buy this company, because if we had this and that, then this becomes a real primary company.' That's a lot easier to see from the outside than from the inside."

There's a whole world of stuff you're not doing, and one of those things may be something you should do.