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Ben Horowitz: Board Meetings Are the Most Valuable Thing Most Founders Waste

By Ben Horowitz · Leadership · 1 min read

Most founders dread board meetings. Horowitz says they're the only time you step out of the forest and look at the map.

Key Points

Board meetings are a forcing function to step back and ask: are we on track?
Present a clear overview and discuss interesting issues -- that puts you in the 95th percentile
The knowledge gap between your team and the board grows over time
The board's real value is telling you what you're 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 Forcing Function

Horowitz: "Probably the most valuable thing that comes out of a board meeting of a startup 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 actually ever 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? The board meeting is that time."

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 95th Percentile Bar Is Low

Horowitz: "As the entrepreneur, do you get your people to get to a set of data that makes you feel like you've got a good overview of where the company is? If you do that and present that at the board meeting, and then have time to discuss interesting issues, you're doing pretty good. Then you're in the 95th percentile."

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

The Knowledge Gap Grows Fast

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 company your VC will have all these really interesting insights. But when you're a year into it and you know every bit of customer feedback, you know the product architecture cold, and they come in with, 'I think you should put a button here' -- all right, great."

The board stops being useful at tactics. But they get more useful at strategy.

The knowledge gap between the people in the company and the people on the board starts out small and gets big over time.

What You're NOT Doing

Horowitz: "Where the board can be useful is, what are you not doing? One of the problems in running a company is you spend all your time optimizing, tuning, refining, A/B testing, getting really good at what you're doing. But then 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 even be, 'We ought to buy this company, because if we had this and that, this becomes a real primary company.' That's a lot easier to see from the outside than from the inside."

A good board can say, 'We ought to buy this company, because if we had this and that, this becomes a real primary company.' That's a lot easier to see from the outside.