SVASE Event: 'Portfolio Forum: Herding Cats: Managing An Early Stage Board Of Directors' September 18, 2007

Event: 'Portfolio Forum: Herding Cats: Managing An Early Stage Board Of Directors'

The Forum Luncheon (Forum)
SVASE
Date: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 At 05:30
Duration: 3 Hours
Contact Info:
Location: Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, 94304 Laura Weigant Email: [email protected]
URL:svase.org/index.php?option=com_extcalendar&Itemid=149&extmode=view&extid=965
Developed at the request of Venture Capitalists to augment the support they deliver to first time funded executive teams in their portfolios, the Portfolio Forum program provides exposure to best practices on key operational and funding issues, in a confidential “round table” format .

CEOs rarely get to choose their boards. More often, they must play the hand they are dealt. Boards come in all flavors. If lucky, a CEO gets to work with a well-connected and experienced group of directors who serve as mentors and advisors. If unlucky, a CEO must manage a conflicted and dysfunctional board having one or more ego-driven personalities.

The typical venture-backed board is somewhere in between: having a few highly motivated value-added VCs working along side of inexperienced members or directors with their own agendas. How should CEOs manage their Boards? And how do you as CEO deal with rock stars, newbies, "drive-by directors," prima donnas, the "smartest guy in the room" and others who distort Board conduct and performance? What are the strategies in using Boards to maximum advantage—leveraging their strengths while minimizing their defects?

Beyond fundraising and mentoring, Boards are tasked with significant legal responsibilities and governance as well as conflicted roles as shareholders as well as directors. As interpersonal dynamics give color to a Board's relations with management, legal agreements also provide a governing context. A Board/management relationship that ignores any significant element of the human or legal underpinnings of effective Board conduct is unlikely to generate a positive result.

This lively & interactive round table discussion will expose participants to current best practices, illustrated with real life examples, and panelist opinions on topics including:

• responsibilities of the board
• the role of the executive team in board relationships,
• how to prepare for board meetings (and prep the board before the meeting)/expectation setting,
• structuring appropriate agendas,
• what a regular financial and business report to the board ought to look like,
• what decisions to bring to the board,
• how to report bad news,
• the role of the audit and compensation committees.

The Panel:
• Bill Reichert, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
• Eileen Gittins, Founder, President, & CEO, Blurb
• Peter Yared, Founder & CEO, wdgtbldr

Moderator: Jim Fulton, attorney, Cooley Godward Kronish

When: Tuesday, Sep 18
5:30 – 6:00 pm: Registration & Networking
6.00-8:30 pm: Panel discussion and Q/A

Location:
Cooley Godward Kronish, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, 94304

PRE-REGISTERED RATES (All Rates Include Hors D’oeuvres)
SVASE Members - $65; Non Members - $95

WALK-IN RATES: Add $20.00 to the listed price

NOTE: To allow an open exchange of information in a confidential environment, Porfolio Forum events are exclusively for CXOs of Angel or VC funded companies. Please do not register if you do not fit this profile, to avoid disappointment.

This event is co-sponsored by Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, www.cooley.com

Program Chair: Ron Weissman, Apax Partners

Advisory Board:
Bill Reichert, Garage Technology Ventures
Heidi Roizen, Mobius Capital
John Steuart, Clarement Creek Ventures
Sechin Maheshwari, Opus Capital
Susan Mason, Onset Ventures
John Occhipini, Woodside Fund

Panelist Bios:

Bill Reichert
Bill Reichert has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and an operating executive. Since joining Garage in 1998, Bill has focused on early-stage information technology and materials science companies. He sits on the Boards of CaseStack, WhiteHat, ClearFuels, and cFares. Prior to Garage, Bill was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology startups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank. Bill earned a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Peter Yared
Peter Yared is the Founder & CEO at wdgtbldr, a venture funded, stealth startup. Peter was most recently the Founder and CEO at ActiveGrid, a commerical open source company delivering the LAMP stack to the enterprise. Previously, he was CTO of Sun Microsystems' Liberty Network Identity initiative. Peter was also CTO of Sun Microsystems' Application Server Division. Before its acquisition by Sun, Peter served as CTO of NetDynamics, which pioneered the then-leading J2EE application server. Earlier, he was Founder and CEO of JRad Technologies, an enterprise Java company acquired by NetDynamics. Additionally, Peter was Chief Architect of client/server products at object-oriented tool maker Prograph International and the architect of several mission-critical systems deployed by U.S. government agencies and the GED Testing Service. Peter holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

Eileen Gittins
Eileen says this is the most fun company she’s ever run, which is saying a fair amount as she has lived and worked all over the world with Kodak and as VP at Wall Data before and after the IPO, CEO of Personify (behavioral segmentation and analytics) and Verb (context search), outside Board Director at Qbiquity and Popular Demand, and even a stint at a boutique investment bank.
Eileen never stopped photographing since her days studying photography, and that’s how Blurb got started. She wanted to create a beautifully designed and produced photo essay book – something that looked like a book you’d buy at the bookstore – but she only needed 40 copies. This turned out to be remarkably painful, expensive, and time-consuming – and she thought that was just wrong. So she founded Blurb.

Official Website: http://svase.org/index.php?option=com_extcalendar&Itemid=149&extmode=view&extid=965