How Entrepreneurs Can Use Boards to Help Grow Their Businesses

The earlier series, released in January, features startup thought leader and investor Brad Feld.
Dutia’s insights, “A Board Member's Perspective,” supplement Feld’s videos, which teach entrepreneurs how to build and configure boards that help their companies thrive.
In his six-video Kauffman Founders School series, Dutia recommends that startup companies:

• Designate a board chairman other than the company’s CEO.
• Understand the five key roles of startup boards.
• Select board members with diverse backgrounds whose skills complement the management team’s capabilities.
• Recognize the board’s strategic role in helping the founding team add employees that offer new expertise as the business grows.
• Include focused discussion of strategic goals and action items in board meetings.

Teaching entrepreneurs best practices in areas not typically covered in other training programs, the Kauffman Founders School enables entrepreneurs to learn anywhere, anytime, and to immediately apply the lessons to their businesses. Other Founders School topics include:

• Financing Your Venture: Venture Capital, presented by Jeff Bussgang, venture capitalist and general partner of Flybridge Capital Partners.
• The Lean Approach and Startups, presented by Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Steve Blank.
• Entrepreneurial Selling, presented by Craig Wortmann, CEO and founder, Sales Engine, and clinical professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
• Powerful Presentations, presented by Nathan Gold, founder, The Demo Coach.
• Entrepreneurial Marketing, featuring Anita Newton, a long-time marketing expert and vice president of corporate marketing with Adknowledge.
• The Art of Startup Finance, featuring Bill Reichert, who founded several Silicon Valley-based software companies and now runs Garage Technology Ventures, a seed-stage and early-stage venture capital firm.

The online education program is housed on the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship.org web platform,