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Sukhinder Singh Cassidy: "People Want The Experience They Don't Have In Their Day Job."
Episode 26
Published 5 years, 5 months ago
Description
- (1:50) - Start of interview
- (2:23) - Sukhinder's "origin story"
- (2:58) - Her start in Silicon Valley in 1997. She characterizes her career as "always building".
- Junglee - Amazon ('98-99)
- Yodlee ('99-'03)
- Google ('03-'09)
- Accel-Polyvore ('10)
- Joyus ('11-'17)
- TheBoardlist ('15-present)
- Stubhub ('18-'20)
- (6:50) - Her boardroom experience (J Crew Group, StichFix, TripAdvisor, Ericsson, Urban Outfitters, Upstart...). "Your job is one of influence, and one of bringing specialization - in my case I brought e-commerce and digital [to my first board]." "Boardrooms are increasingly open to the idea of non-CEO specialists - allowing the possibility to bring more modern and diverse skill-sets into the boardroom."
- (9:35) - The boardroom diversity problem, and why she founded TheBoardlist in 2015.
- Bring more equity to the table.
- Bring all the talent to boardrooms.
- (11:50) - Why diversity is a bigger problem in private (venture-backed) companies than in public companies.
- (13:40) - The evolution of TheBoardlist since 2015. Started as a crowdsourced list of people who could serve on boards, first tapping a group of 30 executives/founders/entrepreneurs such as Reid Hoffman, Michael Dearing and Joanne Bradford - resulting in 600 names added in an excel spreadsheet and a very simple website. Today TheBoardlist has about 17,000-18,000 members, divided in the following categories:
- Nominated director candidates.
- Nominators
- Companies that are searching for board members.
- (16:29) - Since then, there have been ~2,000 board searches in TheBoardList. There has been a 4x increase in board searches since the MeToo and BLM cultural crisis. 75% of board searches are for private companies, 25% for public companies. Within the private companies: equally divided between early, mid and late stage. It's a "discovery platform" (curated list with recommended board candidates) it's not a "placement platform."
- (19:09) - Her take on the evolution of venture-backed company boards (and independent directors). "Often the independent board seat goes unfilled after the Series A or B."
- (22:28) - Choosing between a private and public company board position. "People want the experience they don't have in their day job." (board allows not only to contribute, but also to learn). Her advice to founders: "Often, you might be able rent unto the board the experience you can't afford to hire yet as a day job." You can craft a board seat for 1 or 2 years.
- (26:06) - Attracting more experienced directors to startup boards (as chairs or lead independent directors). Distinction with coaches. CEO reviews. "Every team needs a coach."
- (31:24) - Her take on SB-826 and AB-979 (California board diversity laws). "SB-826 has moved the nee