Surfboard Founder and CEO Chuhan Wang on Cultivating Board and Investor Engagement (EP.232)

My subject for today is governance, a pet peeve of mine. The lack of governance this funding cycle hasn’t been a good thing. We’ve got a lot of young people who’ve received capital and don’t know how to structure governance, prepare a board deck, or interact with their advisors and investors. Most of us learned from doing, and this generation will learn too; but when you put a lot of money in people’s hands you need to have governance, something we’re seeing more of with the WeWork breakdown and the FTX fraud.

To stem this, we have to create tools and software that makes the process of governance tenable. My guest is Surfboard (Social Leverage Fund IV) founder and CEO Chuhan Wang. Her mission is to help founders, boards, and advisors stay in the loop with a better system for communication, board deck access and retrieval, and compilation – the overall world of corporate governance. Chuhan’s vision is to empower founders for success by responsibly harnessing the power of their boards and investors. With founders emerging from all corners of the world, and remote work being a trend, her modern board and investor experience will spark innovation in the next generation of founders. 

Guest - Chuhan Wang, Founder and CEO at Surfboard 

howardlindzon.com, surfboard.team 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @therealchuhan, @TeamSurfboard, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/chuhan-wang

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction (00:42)

Welcome Chuhan (08:22)

What is Surfboard? (09:21)

Weighing in on FTX (13:04)

Running a Board (14:11)

Empowering founders (17:40)

Finding Social Leverage (18:31)

Working with Social Leverage (19:48)

Valuing at seed (22:43)

Starting a board early (24:31)

Signing up for Surfboard (25:43)

The Surfboard team (28:50)

A good time for governance (30:02)

Brad Feld (34:14)

Now is the time to build (36:36)

Wrapping up (37:09)

An opportunity to start again (36:31)

Closing thoughts (40:56)