Brad Feld: Startup Boards and Lessons from Four Decades in VC

(0:00) Intro (1:36) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel (2:23) Start of interview (3:11) Brad's origin story (4:54) Venture Capital Beginnings (5:39) The Rise of the Internet (8:10) His role in Softbank Technology Ventures and later Mobius Venture Capital. Reference to Heidi Roizen E6, E108 and E116 (12:26) Transition to Techstars and Foundry (13:36) Origin and focus of his book Startup Boards. Reference to his blog post: Feld Thoughts. "Boards (and board members) for private companies operate on a bell curve" (some are excellent, some are horrific, and most are average). (15:31) The Evolution of Founder-Friendly Terms (30:06) Effective Board Composition (35:00) Defining a Great Board: the Board as a Team. Reference to Matt Blumberg's Rule of 1s: see E52 (2022) (38:05) "The goal of the board is to get different skill sets around the table" "I think a founder should fight against investors having additional observer seats." (41:13) Why he considers it a red flag when a director claims they're acting out of "fiduciary duty." *Reference to the Startup Litigation Digest (44:50) Governance concerns in the AI Boom (47:37) Books that have greatly influenced his life:Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (1974)The entire pantheon of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson Science fiction written by female writers (as a category)Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (50:05) His mentors: Len Fassler and his uncle, Charlie Feld. (51:55) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives his life by: from his Dad: "If you're not standing on the edge, you're taking up too much space.", from Len: "Brad, they can't kill you and they can't eat you. Suit up." (53:00) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves. "I love philanthropically funding bathrooms." Also, the Banana Lounge at MIT. (55:38) The living person he most admires: his wife Amy Batchelor. Brad Feld has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. He co-founded two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital, and multiple companies, including Techstars.  You can follow Evan on social media at: X: @evanepstein LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/  Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/ __ To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/ __ Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License