Sitting on boards of startups or scale-ups is a highly demanding role! As a founder, investor, or independent board member, you will face specific challenges you don’t find in larger organisations, such as the lack of resources, speed, conflict of interests, financial pressure, and mix of roles of the key players.
You will also often have to fulfil larger organisations’ requirements with fewer resources. Being a board member is dealing with liabilities and duties while protecting the company’s best interest. You have to govern and control the company, but of course, you have to contribute, and startups and scale-ups will require your hands-on experience and added value.
The Startup Board Academy trains participants to become performing board members for startups and scale-up. We propose condensed, practical and interactive courses with real cases to dig into the reality of this fascinating environment. With over eight years of activities supporting startups, scale-ups and SMEs in Switzerland and abroad, with over 2’000 alums, we launch this new international edition designed for existing or future board members of companies, whether founders or business angels, investors or independent board members. We cover best practices in the European and US entrepreneurial ecosystem governance.
Dates: April 18th, April 25th, May 2nd & May 9th (all sessions are online from 2pm to 6pm CEST time)
Read about the full program here.
Startup Board Academy
After years of working with the boards of start-ups and SME, our teams have seen how much the board of directors can impact the health of a company. The board will be definitively a key player in the success or the failure of a small company. We have also found that being a board member of a small structure can be more difficult than in a large company. It requires time and a broad governance expertise in many different aspects of a company going from finances, legal and crisis management. The resources are limited and time to make decisions as well. Sitting on a board of a startup or fast-moving SME is like running a Formula 1. Any decision will have a very direct impact on the company. Startup or SME will naturally experiment several crisis in a very short time. In 2015, together with EPFL Innovation Park, we decided to build a tailor-made program for SME and Startup boards.
