Most boards are useless.
Not because the people aren’t smart.
Not because they don’t want to help.
But because they’ve been designed to observe, not build.
Most boards in private equity aren’t boards. They’re quarterly compliance checks with catered sandwiches.
You get the same format every time:
- 100-page deck
- 20 minutes of numbers
- 2 hours of armchair quarterbacking
- Everyone says “great progress”
- See you in 90 days
Meanwhile, the CEO is buried in ops, the GTM strategy is broken, and your CAC just doubled. But hey, at least the minutes were approved.
The truth is:
Governance is table stakes. Value creation is the job.
Especially in lower mid-market and growth equity deals, where the difference between 3x and 10x isn’t leverage, it’s execution.
If I were building a board from scratch, I’d ignore 90% of the usual suspects.
No retired auditors. No ex-investment bankers. No generalists collecting a fee and contributing a quote for the press release. Nobody that was successful 20 years ago and has sat on boards ever since.
I’d want:
- An operator who’s scaled the same kind of business
- A CMO or CRO who lives and breathes revenue
- A technologist who can pressure test your product roadmap
- And one very financial adult in the room
Boards should operate like internal SWAT teams, showing up between meetings, solving problems, and being held accountable for results.
If you’re not adding value in between the meetings, you’re not a board member.
You’re an audience.
And most companies don’t need more spectators. They need help.