Boris Wertz: As a Board Member, You're a Coach

04/14/20 • 34 min

Boris is the founding partner of Version One, one of the leading seed stage venture funds in America and Canada. He previously founded JustBooks, which he sold to AbeBooks and became the COO, leaving when the company was acquired by Amazon. Afterwards, Boris moved into investing, first as an angel investor, and now with Version One. Today, Boris is recognized as one of the top tech investors in North America and focuses blockchain, marketplaces, SaaS and everything network effects.

In this episode, we chat with Boris about interacting with boards as an entrepreneur and how to navigate an exit. We touch on how he transitioned into angel investing, and how he approaches being a board member and his investment philosophy at Version One. Boris also discusses his thesis around crypto, blockchain, and DeFi, as well as the implications on governance surrounding these business models.

If you want to know what Boris is up to, you should follow him on Twitter @bwertz. For more information about his firm, follow @versiononevc on Twitter or visit their website https://versionone.vc/. For more podcasts on how to build better Boards, join us at www.boardsnetwork.com and follow us on Twitter @boardsnetwork.

Previous Episode

Kate Mitchell: Be Open, Be Honest (Part 2)

After a career in banking, Kate co-founded Scale Venture Partners that went on to back high growth companies such as Hubspot, Box, and DocuSign. She attended hundreds of Board meetings for more than a dozen private and public tech companies.

In this episode, Kate, Justine and I reflected on the difference between public and private boards and discussed the difference between diversity and inclusion. On diversity, we also discussed the mission, vision, and purpose of the Venture Forward initiative that Kate co-founded. Finally, we reflected on the pipeline issue that some argue is the main reason for the lack of diversity at board level. Kate shared creative ways to bring diversity at the Board level and we can only conclude that the pipeline issue is not a good excuse!

If you want to know what Kate is up to, you should follow her on Twitter @KateDMitchell. For more information about her firm, follow @ScaleVP on Twitter or visit their website https://www.scalevp.com/. For more podcasts on how to build better Boards, join us at www.boardsnetwork.com and follow us on Twitter @boardsnetwork.