After the wire goes out, a venture investor's job changes. They stop picking and start helping, governing, and deciding how much more money to put in. In buyouts the sponsor controls the company and runs a value-creation plan. A venture investor usually holds a minority stake, sits on a board that founders often control, and works with a CEO who may have no prior management experience. The investor's influence comes from contract rights (protective provisions, board seats, information rights), from the follow-on checkbook, and from being useful. This section covers all three: how venture boards work and what the law requires of directors, how "platform" teams try to industrialize help, and how a firm manages a portfolio through follow-on decisions, down rounds, CEO transitions and shutdowns.
What the study covers
- 1Overview: why post-investment work matters in a power-law business
- 2Mechanics of the venture board
- 3The platform model: industrializing "help"
- 4Portfolio management: follow-ons, reserves, and triage
- 5Key numbers
- 6Landmark cases and episodes
- 7Pitfalls
- 8How an expert thinks about it
- 9Glossary
- 10Related sections
Technical exhibits
Worked examples, checklists and case studies included with this study.
Board Meeting Toolkit and Checklists
Board-deck template, agenda, annual board calendar, consent items, CEO-evaluation and crisis checklists, observer etiquette
Fiduciary Duties and Conflicts Primer
The "dual fiduciary" problem, a computed Trados-style sale-vs-continue example, down-round process protection, Moelis and the 2024–2025 Delaware amendments, interlocking-director and observer issues
Platform Team Design
What platform teams do, how to staff and fund them from fee income (computed budgets by fund size), and how to measure whether they work