Getting a Board member isn't so hard...
Last week, I went to a fascinating event featuring Diane Green (CEO VMware) and Evan Goldberg (Cofounder and CTO, NetSuite). Both their companies went public fairly recently and doing extremely well (except one that just had a bit of a hiccup today). It was also remarkable because they are at the vanguard of two of the biggest trends in technology today - virtualization and SaaS (software as a service). Diane and Evan both had brief presentations and then settled into a moderated discussion that wasnt very formal - Diane struck me as a humble person that doesnt seem to have let her incredible success affect her too much and Evan came across as level-headed and pragmatice about the decisions he had to make. Some interesting things I learnt:
- VMware was founded by 5 people (including Diane and her husband) and they all shared equity equally so that they all felt equally responsible for the success. They didn't raise funds from traditional VCs but did get corporate equity investments (and Diane remarked that they didnt actually need to use that capital).
- Andy Bechtolsheim (cofounder of Sun Microsystems) was a seed investor. Feels like Andy absoutely has the Midas touch - investor in VMware, Google; cofounded Sun, Granite (acquired by Cisco), Kealia (acquired by Sun) and more...
- Diane got Larry Sonsini on her Board by sending via Fedex a letter explaining why he should be on VMware's board (pre-funding). As she tells it, he met with her and accepted a seat on the Board. Something tells me you need Diane's track record to get Larry to even read your letter so I don't think strategy is going to work for all!
- Evan cofounded NetSuite with Larry Ellison. Evan said it was very helpful to have somebody like Larry to back the company through some lean times in the post-dotcom era and suggests getting a billionaire on the founding team!
