I’ve seen an unexpected benefit to founders, of Homebrew’s ability to serve on your Board from Seed A — until B Round. You get an easy opportunity to add an outside Director earlier than most startups.
Let Me Explain
If you have a seed fund and you have the founders — who aren’t interested in creating a board together — you’re likely waiting until Series A to add an investor. That traditionally means a three person Board, two founder seats and the Series A investor.
The startup then raises a Series B and you’ll see the board expand to a five person board with the inclusion of the Series B fund — and a common seat that will likely be awarded to an independent.
I think this way of adding is suboptimal and handicaps the founders
We’ve already written about why a good board can be of help to even a seed stage venture, but now a few years into Homebrew, there’s an interesting side effect — you get to a five person board faster with Homebrew, which eases the addition of an outside Director.
Take the math from the paragraph above and just advance it a stage — three person Board at seed and five at Series A.
