How to build a high-functioning board as a founder: culture is what matters
A guest piece by Tom McGinn, General Counsel of Northzone

This piece is a guest piece written by Tom McGinn, General Counsel of Northzone, a global VC firm investing from Seed to Growth that raised $1.2bn in 2022.
Initial reactions are telling.
If a founder leaves a board meeting energised, with a renewed sense of purpose and a clear strategic vision, their board is strong. If the feeling is somewhere between drained and relieved that a quarterly obligation is ticked off, chances are that it isn’t.
The truth is, too many founders and investors experience the latter. The founder has just spent two days preparing and adhered to all the usual advice (“small board = good”, “distribute the board pack well in advance”, “lead with a high-level CEO update”, etc.), but the return feels minimal. Investors too feel disengaged, guilty about having squeezed the pre-reading in between back-to-back calls. For many, the meeting feels like an obligation turned time sinkrather than what it could be: an opportunity to get the main stakeholders together to focus on the key strategic issues facing the business and align on how to tackle them.
The key to unlocking this potential lies not in structural adjustments, but in the founder fostering a culture of transparency, accountability, frankness, and mutual respect. Here’s how to cultivate that environment:
Setting the culture
Build trust 🩵: be vulnerable with your investors - let them know what’s going well, what isn’t and where you need support; management providing full and timely information is what prevents backchannels from developing
Expect preparedness 👩🏫: ensure that your board arrives informed and ready to tackle pre-identified issues – digesting the board pack should be table-stakes
Put your board to work 💼: assign directors specific tasks and follow-up - the more specific, the better, and keep them accountable (e.g., by memorialising the status in the post-meeting summary)
Demand honesty ❌🤥: groupthink is a key impediment to a dynamic board; encourage constructive dissent - no subject should be taboo
Seek out diversity 🦜: the more diverse the perspectives of your board members, the easier encouraging dissent will become; shockingly, 45% of European boards don’t have a female board member - a figure that’s ripe for change
Manage egos 🤹: militantly stick to the agenda, this is your time (the investor’s time is the pre-reading) - inquiry should come before advocacy
While the right culture is what propels a board from good to great, operational improvements can amplify its effectiveness:
New round = new board 🌱: use each fundraising as an opportunity to evaluate and enhance the board instead of just rolling the existing structure forward with the new investor added - start these discussions early, ideally at the term sheet stage; the new money can be a forcing mechanism to achieve this refresh
Pre-reading 🤓: distribute the board pack at least 48 hours in advance - consider adding a Loom voiceover summarising the business update and the key issues you would like to focus on
Power in numbers 💪: diversify your touchpoints across your investors (e.g. by regular check-ins with the platform team) - the more people that emotionally buy into your mission, the more support you’ll receive (and the less likely it is that you become orphaned if your key contact moves on)
Self-evaluate 📝: regularly assess the effectiveness of your board, e.g. by running candid 1-1 interviews led by an independent director or chair and by consulting industry benchmarks
Closing summary ✔: post-meeting, share with the group a clear summary of what was decided and the risks associated with each decision - this will help maintain clarity and momentum
Streamline attendance 🤏:: limit attendance to those who bring value to discussions - be frugal with observer rights (just because someone doesn’t have one, doesn’t mean they can’t attend) and consider inviting observers to dial-in off camera
Beyond boardroom 🤝:: beyond formal meetings, cultivate a sense of community through informal get-togethers (like pre-meeting dinners to which the company’s key customers are invited) and social platforms (like a board Slack group)
There is no one-size-fits-all model for how to create a high-functioning board. The right set-up will depend on the founders' experience, vision, industry, and where the company is in its life cycle.
Good investors help founders navigate these factors and select the right board members. The best ones understand that boards are dynamic social systems. They support founders in creating a board that drives the company’s strategic direction and whose meetings end with a shared sense of “wow - I love being part of this team. Let’s go get ‘em”.
I shared some further thoughts on this topic at TechChill earlier this year.
