YouSaid · the spoken record
Cathy Hwang
- lines on the record
- 42
- first
- 2017-08-04
- most recent
- 2017-08-04
- sittings or episodes
- 1
- sources
- podcast
Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections
“Like they have to constantly reinvent themselves as a leader. So, the only way they're going to do that is if in a way they have some self-accountability and desire to take on those blind spots head on. To your point, the way I approach it is by bringing data, by bringing perspectives into that discussion so that you can bring perspectives from the people that the CEO counts on and trusts. And then that forms that self-growth plan.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But along those lines, what could I find out on their behalf that will surface? What are they doing well? What are their blind spots? Where are they falling short? And then I distill that so that the CEO basically has a game plan or how to improve. No CEO founder started perfect day one and they weren't perfect year one and they weren't perfect year five. Like they have to evolve with their companies. So for them to be successful.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you do that balance between determining when a CEO really needs support and Or she needs somebody to really shake them up and move them in a different direction and have that honest conversation and how do you best judge because especially as a board member, you want to support them to grow the company, but you also need to nip things in the bud before they show up in the press as a crisis. So one of the great things about when CEOs, and I think in the valley now, many CEOs do hire coaches. I'm probably in your portfolio you see it. Important part of that CEO is hiring a coach is that ability to do a 360. So with my CEO clients, one of the areas I really focus on is saying, look, I'm here for you and to make you the best CEO you can be. It's part of that, let me call and speak to some of your direct reports and some of your board members. I'm not asking them to fill out a performance survey. I'm just asking to have a question about what they think of their mother.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The deal is, you're sort of asking what happens to the relationship in a tough situation, right? I mean, you don't build a relationship there. You build the relationship before. It has a lot to do how you approach it from the beginning. And once there's trouble, it's too late to build the relationship.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You actually can really see a lot about a board in a time of stress. And so I can just hear from personal experience that in moments when things got tough, I think a board really knows how, can really know how to come together and problem solve. I think what you see in a moment like that is different directors, their sort of what they were brought to the board for, their strength. It's almost like you're a baseball team and you know who's playing what position. And in a moment when there's a challenge, it's like you look around the team and you're like, you've got it, you've got it, you've got it. Go.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When things are positive on the board and some of the issues are getting played out in the press, how do you continue to work together as a board and how do you prevent public perception and ego from entering the boardroom?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm only going to do this if I can try and make it legendary. And so I'm not going to make it legendary with people who are just there to tick boxes and aren't part of a bigger thing. And, you know, you learn to do that work up front because you're going to have some very tough value-based decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with math at all.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're listening for a sort of a mission, a values connection. It's more than the checklist of what's on the resume, but it's like, is this person going to be able to share my mission, my approach, my way think?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I need to figure that out if I'm going to sit at 70 board members' meetings with you and talk about really tough stuff. What are your basic value set and how do you deal with the tough things in your life or the good things in your life?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're wasting both of our time, right? I mean, it's like, why are we doing this? My favorite question, it's in a New York Times article that did to me is, what did you learn from your mom? Now people come in, prepare. Are you going to ask me about my mom? So that's a little unfortunate. But it still works, particularly if you ask it while you're busy talking shop like metrics and what was your background, what's my background. And you all sudden slotted in what you learned from your mom. Because you bring that to the boardroom. And so”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get very good at it. You know, it becomes very efficient. So fix your blind references. I try to ask questions that aren't expected because everybody's so rehearsed. And typically the reason you can't call the reference you're given is they're just the person is fantastic. What's their one issue? They work too hard.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's really powerful. We're seeing that always in our partnership, that when one of us go in and looks at the company, we see completely different things. And these are our peers. We've done the same things. We know the same things. And so I think for the board member that comes in and reads all that stuff, and that's a great way to get to know each other. And you're like, well, I'm not hired yet. How would you possibly think? But I think at that stage, you should be comfortable under NDA giving somebody this stuff because it's such a great test for both of you. The other thing I do a lot is blind reference checking. And I just both the CEOs and board members, I think the direct reference.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we do is just give them all the last board packages. And that also shows a lot in their realm, whether they actually care about what you're doing. If they don't get through that when you talk to them, it's like, why are you here? So I liked a lot the comment you had about. People coming with those fresh eyes.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As that onboarding happens, and then you think about just kind of the day-to-day of the actual board operation, are there best practices that either of you have seen in your experience that help make both the board itself successful, but also make sure that you can absorb the changing dynamic that comes with having people who are independents”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Show me who your team is and who's under you. So, like, you have a sense, you know, another area that could be a great way to add value as a new director immediately is Asio as a new director. So who are you hiring for? What are your key open spots? Not that you're going to go fill those searches, but then you're immediately aligned. Like, let me collaborate. Let me know what are the pain points you're trying to solve for.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not on anyone's list, you know. And so, and there's this sort of dynamic if you're a new director. Like, can I ask for anything? What can I ask for? You know, like start with asking for like, can I have an organ chart? Can I actually have an org chart?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eight quarters public. And this person sort of just. Gets shot out of a cannon and is trying to be part of what we're doing. I don't even know how the hell they were supposed to do that. Can't imagine what it must have been like to be them.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The product. So maybe if it's a consumer product you've used it, but often directors hear about the product, know about the product, but they're really not getting their hands-on with whatever the company's building and making. So find a way as part of your onboarding to go to the factory floor and get exposed to the people building the actual product, technology, software, so that you really understand the product. So those were just two ideas that we felt were really important in the boards that I've been on.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I have found is that most boards don't think about their onboarding process because it really doesn't fall to it being any of the directors' responsibility. The nominating corporate governance chair, like my job is to go find the directors, but nowhere does it say like I actually have to onboard them. And it's not the CEO's job either. And so it sort of falls through the cracks. So it's one of those processes that really, I would say you need to almost advocate for yourself as well. There were a couple things we did on the Zoom board when we onboarded two directors that were just tip cell pass along. One was we really wanted the new directors to go through orientation like a new any employee would. So if you're going to be a director of the company, why not go through and go through orientation as the employees do? You'll then see a whole part of the business in that way. The other is directors don't often get to get really exposed.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like that a lot. Or combative. Dynamic in that boardroom. I was so focused on getting the people who had been big in my industry before so that I could advertise that now I had them, I'd much rather have the one who wasn't the biggest today, but the one that was the right fit with me that wanted to go and fight the battles we had.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Component So, how could we think about marketing and consumers? How could we think about someone from a different area and a different market who could just bring a fresh perspective in? So it was the opposite of looking for industry domain recruiting and it was much more driven to this I'd say orthogonal thinking as well as people who shared a common core values. So we actually can name like these are our core values as a board and then when we went out to the search firm the search firm then had that criteria in their mind when they started introducing candidates. So that's just, you know, some boards are high ego, some boards are low ego, some boards are combative, some boards are collaborative. Like what kind of board? What's the dynamic in that boardroom?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the Zoom board, I chaired the nominating corporate governance committee, and so that job is you're supposed to, you have to recruit and hire in independent directors. So we went about our recruiting process in a different way, which was we started by, I did a 360 and I interviewed all the board members. I didn't outsource that to a search firm. I actually took that on myself because I wanted to hear how each board member described their view of the culture and their view of what would make this a higher performing team. And what came out of that were actually criteria that I don't think anyone would have on their own realized we were looking for. It would be great to have board members where we could think about the functional needs of the business. So we thought about it in terms of how security is really important. So then we went and we recruited not from someone from our domain or our sector, but just someone who could bring into the board from a security compliance perspective. The other area we thought of is the business had a strong consumer.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anyway, and so that was just a mistake I made. And I think I softwit for it. I would have much rather taken the time. The time. I didn't take the time. It was literally like, I hope I'm going to close this person. And then I have my board and then I can go bottling. Because honestly, I didn't really want to go publicly, but my board wanted to go public. And so I was at a great sense of duty of doing things that, I mean, obviously I got a lot of runway, building your own company the way you wanted. And so I felt the return for me to them, the tax was that I listened to them when they wanted to go public. And they wanted to do that a lot earlier than I did.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so, I mean, they make it easy for you, and one of them audit committees, so they have to have a finance background, right? So that's a no-brainer. So I hired two exfos for that. I wish I had listened more to the advice I'm giving and think more about how they would fit into the board. I hadn't taken a company public before. I thought that I was going to just be with my venture capitalist board members forever. Didn't really occur to me that there was another world of having people. And then once we got to that position, we're going public Then I listened to all the advice I got. You should have somebody who has a finance background. Okay, sick, and you should have that, that is not the way I would build the board today. Today I would build the board with how do we work together. This is our challenge. These are the things we're trying to do. This is what's important for us. This is my biggest fear. How do you feel about those fears? Like I would ask somebody, those real fears very bluntly because they're going to come out in.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's just assume that we get over all these hurdles and we say, great, like, we're going to add a person. How do you think about how you interview that person and what you're looking for? So are you looking for industry expertise? Are you looking for somebody who maybe has a skill gap that you don't have? How do you think about the constellation of things that might make an appropriate independent board member?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A board role. Someone said To know that CEO well. Particularly if it's your first board, it's very easy to fall in love. This must be it. Now I'm getting that and it's your ego drives your decision making even you won't admit it. Now I'm on my first board. This is exciting. Maybe not so fast, you know, it's a 10 year marriage, and you might want to take some time to have some additional meetings. Some background checks that are maybe blind and not just say, here it is, that's my board opportunity, but is this actually the one that's right for me? And am I going to be my best self on this board?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you just mentioned a way that could be a great avenue into auditioning for a board role. Someone said they give a lot of free advice when they were looking at board roles. So I think one way in is start as a board advisor, get to know the CEO. I mean, you mentioned that the trust relationship is so important. So how do you get to know a company? How do you get to know a boardwell? How do you get to know that CEO well and build, can you do a project? Can you work on something? Can you start as an advisor?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not just make that person an advisor, for example, or why not make that person a board observer? Like, I'm just, I just want to just, you know, from your perspective, does it change, does it matter what the title is and whether they're actually a board member and have a voting interest? Or can you get all the benefit of the independent by saying, hey, be my advisor, be my coach, let's do stuff, but let's do it outside the context of a board meeting.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think the way you can sort of sell this or position this is ultimately CEOs are great at wanting to optimize all parts of their business. The board is another part of their business they just need to optimize and they're going to have a lot more fun working with their board if it's running well. Ultimately, a board, the factory of a board is it is a decision-making body. The CEOs are doing their best to put together a board package of 150 slides or less. But the reality is they're trying to tell a story and a bunch of people around the room are trying to take that story and come up with some decisions.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's very true. I think if an entrepreneur, I was one, they don't like working for anyone. And so now there comes a person all of a sudden and it takes away the sense of control that they had in this whole big gamble they did in their life of taking a chance, actually taking a risk on building a company from nothing.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Imagine that's not going to help sales Not going to help customers. I need to go raise another round. That's the dynamic. And so it's very much survivalist. It's too strategic and long-term to think like that. New strategy is execution. That's the philosophy.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But how do you deal with whatever kind of institutional intransigence there is against that, either from the founders themselves saying, hey, look, I don't want to potentially dilute my control over this thing or the VCs in many cases, you know, selfishly saying, hey, look, again, we're here, we like the fact that we control this board. The idea of an independent kind of does in some cases either of a voting perspective change the balance of power or changes the nature of the conversation. So how do you overcome that agenda and help people understand the value of the independent and convince either a intransigent CEO or a difficult VC member that there's actually value in bringing in a new perspective?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pretty intimidating to be around your VCs. You've thrown your whole life into this. They haven't. And so it's bigger risk for you personally than it is for them. Whereas my external board members, I can't really explain reason. I took them less serious and I wish I had taken them more serious. But over time, I saw that they had because I spent a lot of time with them. And in particular, the trust that they began building with me. how they understood me. It's important there's some respect, there's some understanding. There's some trust. But you have to have a relationship where it's okay for you to say, this is not okay.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It takes very long time to find a very good person for you. And so you don't want to rush that the way I did it right before the IPO. You really want to take the chance to get to know them. And it doesn't mean that they become your best buddy. It just means that they're going to be functional for you. I don't think that you can have somebody be independent if they only love you. I think they have to be in love with your business. But I think it's dangerous if they're smitten by you and sort of bowled over because then they don't become independent. And then the final thing, which be worth listening to, you know, like speak up with your experience and show that it matters. I still remember my second board member saying stuff in a board meeting that stunned me because I'd just been completely in the family with the previous board members. He's a PhD in physics. He basically said, I don't think we're listening to what's being said here. We're just bowling over it. Could we just hear it one more time? And it was a fundamental transformation of the board dynamics that one.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you've got a minority person here on the independent side who basically has a vote that maybe in many cases doesn't matter if at all, given some of these constructs. So I'm just trying to get a sense of if you assume that your vote is not really the reason you're there, how do you go about doing these things? How do you take that leadership role on the board, given that you don't really have the hammer anymore of I can actually swing votes or make a difference from an actual corporate governance perspective?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Solicit around the room, understand what's going on, be that trusted point person back to the CEO. Like what's on your mind? Why are you worried about the growth rate? Why are you worried? Why are you not worried about the growth rate? So those would be two tangible things”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“question here is like so what is the independent doing that's of value in that boardroom what's very valuable for the independent is they can actually help surface a lot of this sort of hidden assumptions in the boardroom so if you have multiple investors at multiple cost spaces and multiple rounds you know maybe one investor wants the company to grow faster and burn more money and the other board member wants the company to slow on the brakes because they haven't they don't have enough reserves in their fund. I mean, there's a lot of hidden agendas. The other thing the independent can do is be there to provide real feedback to the CEO on how the CEO is doing. Because often what happens in these boardrooms is the venture capitalists and in the closed discussion, the CEOs are just not getting a lot of feedback. They're not getting feedback after every board meeting, maybe in bits and pieces, but an independent can very skillfully.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it really allows the CEO to have a trusted additional partner, hopefully the venture capitalist is the trusted partner. It's a different scenario. What the venture capitalist has at stake versus what an outside director has at stake. An outside director can truly be objective. Now, many founding CEOs don't want that objectivism But I think they learn over time how valuable that could be if they found the right outside director.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is this forcing function at IPO, which by regulation, you're forced to change your board and bring in independence. What would be the reason to bring an independent on? And then what would the role that you would want to see that individual serve as a member of a board that is probably largely going to be a founder and VC-dominated board in many respects in terms of number of seats?”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No board. No board. I was just having board meetings with myself. They're very dynamic. And then, yeah, I took it public seven years later, and I was the CEO for the company Wallace Public for 17 quarters, four and a half years. And then I sold it to SAP for $4 billion, and I was on their board. I made the mistake, I would say, of having all investor similar to what you said in the beginning, board members.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right before the IPO, maybe three months before an additional audit chair. And then after the IPO, we also substantively changed the board to again move VCs off the board as well. You have to think of it as a lifecycle almost like you would a company.”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were two founders CEO, and I was a third VC board seat. So it went through being a private company board for seven years and then for three years I served as an independent director and chair the nominating corporate governance committee. So over those 10 years, you think of it almost like an organization that had to mature and develop, almost like it was a startup board. And that meant that we operated like a startup board, the materials, the discussion, the dynamics in the meetings. And then as the company matured, we as a board had to also evolve and grow up and mature with our processes. And that involved bringing in other independent directors, which we did as, you know, I'd say it was two years before an IPO and then”
2017-08-04 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Independents on the Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source