LWOL Recap - Feb 24, 2021: Corporate Governance

This week’s LWOL featured a discussion about the importance of Corporate Governance in startups. You can watch the full recording here and the comment log is available on our Slack channel.

The session was hosted by Calgary Community Manager Brigitte and Co-Hosted by Edmonton's Steering Committee Member and Entrepreneur Ruthann! This happened to also be anti-bullying awareness day and Ruthann was showing her support with a pink shirt; she's always a champion for great causes!

Speakers

Michael Robinson
Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the U of C and is the Academic Director for CDL Rockies. 
Melanie McClare
CEO of Swirlex, and an MBA graduate from the Haskayne School of Business.

Conversation Notes

The Rainforest is all about taking risks and learning new ideas and concepts, so take a risk and learn something new today!

• Governance is about how to build a successful corporation and how to protect it
  • Defines culture, roles, and expectations
  • Protects the investment and can affect investability of the corporation
• Governance means different things to different groups (founder vs investor vs board member vs employees)
• Team is critically important (the team the entrepreneur builds not the just entrepreneur themself) and ownership can help attract/retain the best talent
• The ideal CEO might not be one of the founders, and having a diverse team with complimentary skills is vital to startup success
  • It can be hard for a technical founder or inventor to ‘give up control’ but in many cases, they are happier focusing on product or R&D than trying to raise capital or building the team
  • Hire for culture first -> that’s why the Culture Pillar is worth 30% of the scorecard value!
• Startups often fail is because they do not have the structures needed to scale and ensure they are attractive to investors or some kinds of customers
  • Start early, have good USAs and take minutes at board meetings
• The role of a founder is to build: the corporation, the product, and the people that ultimately execute
• Align with a legal counsel that ‘gets’ startups
• It’s more time consuming to cleanup than to build it right early on; your governance model/level of maturity should be one step ahead of where you are
• It’s important to understand when to be cautious and when to be aggressive
• It’s easier and sometimes preferable to have experts as advisors rather than board members. Advisors can be personal advisors, business advisors, or technical/subject matter experts
• Peer supports (in industry, at same stage) are ideal way to learn and share expertise
• Taking a governance course can be very worthwhile
• Joining a mentoring service like U of A’s VMS or VMSA