Bonus: Arie Abecassis (ICONYC Labs) - The Board of Directors
Arie Abecassis, is the founder and partner of ICONYC Labs and was the chairman of the board at SeatGeek. ICONYC labs is a business and funding acceleration platform customized for early-stage Israeli tech startups looking to accelerate growth and cut time to market. SeatGeek is the largest internet event ticket search engine. Arie also is a venture partner / mentor at DreamIt Ventures and has over twenty years of experience in building technology companies as an operator, advisor and venture capital investor.
A book that inspired Arie personally and professionally is Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull.
*You can check out Arie's article at Entrepreneur here. You can also follow him on Twitter @arieabec If you are a founder and working on something innovative, have a question you’d like to hear VCs or founders answer on the show you can DM and follow your host on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc. For all episodes, please visit theconsumervc.com.*
In this episode we discuss -
- What attracted Arie to technology and startups?What led him to founding ICONYC labs? What does it mean to be an advisor? What is the role of a board member and how should one think about the value a board member will add to a company? What should founders think about when finding their lead investor? How should founders think about structuring their board of directors? Why have a board?
- Examples of good governance vs. bad governance, founder friendly vs. non founder friendly. For first time founders, what has he seen them struggle with the most when it comes to board meetings? At what point do companies need to think about having a board of directors? What’s typically the structure in a board?
- How should founders put their board of directors to work? What’s one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital? What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?