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The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less

review.firstround.com · 3,123 words · saved by 1 readers

Jeff Bonforte, former CEO of Xobni (now SVP at Yahoo), provides a step-by-step guide to running a painless, productive board meeting. Join the 200K+ other builders who subscribe to our free newsletter. Already a First Round member? Sign in “When I was a young entrepreneur, board meetings were by far the worst days of my life,” says Jeff Bonforte, the veteran company-builder who just sold his latest, Xobni, to Yahoo. “Board meetings are the height of insecurity for a CEO. Basically it’s a group of people who can both judge you and fire you based on that judgment.” He’s had his fair share of bad experiences. At his first company, iDrive, he'd find himself every quarter standing in front of the room, sweating bullets, struggling to get through his meticulously-prepared slides. “It was a mess,” he says. “They’d just sit there and tell me how insufficient I was, how I needed to bring in someone more senior, or smarter. Then it just hit me. I don't need this. I don't need people to attack me

“When I was a young entrepreneur, board meetings were by far the worst days of my life,” says Jeff Bonforte , the veteran company-builder who just sold his latest, Xobni , to Yahoo. “Board meetings are the height of insecurity for a CEO. Basically it’s a group of people who can both judge you and fire you based on that judgment.” He’s had his fair share of bad experiences. At his first company, iDrive, he'd find himself every quarter standing in front of the room, sweating bullets, struggling to get through his meticulously-prepared slides. “It was a mess,” he says. “They’d just sit there and

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