Greg Shove

A few weeks back, I watched Maggie Hott, GTM leader at OpenAI, confidently navigate her first board meeting at Unify. Having worked with her through Emergence Capital's Operator in Residence (OIR) program, seeing her immediately contribute valuable insights made me think about how most board members receive virtually no training for this critical role. At Emergence, we've built our firm around developing board excellence. We grow all our partners from within and have established a culture of mentorship focused on board service. Junior investors aren't thrown into the deep end—we pair them with senior GPs to observe effective board dynamics firsthand. My initial experience was at DroneDeploy alongside my partner Kevin Spain, where I got great mentorship before taking on independent board responsibilities. We extend this methodology to our OIR program, where operators learn how to be effective board members. Based on my experience mentoring directors, here are the fundamental principles I share with first-timers for how board members can best support founders: 1. Reframe the purpose: Problem-solving, not reporting If your board meeting is primarily reporting, you're wasting your management team's time. Information sharing should happen asynchronously, with board members engaging with materials before the meeting. This enables the live session to leverage collective intelligence on critical challenges. This rarely happens because many directors overextend themselves across too many boards—another reason we maintain a disciplined investment pace. 2. Master the Socratic approach The most valuable contribution often comes through thoughtful questions rather than declarative statements. Your objective is to enhance the decision-making capability of management. I enter each meeting with 1-3 specific areas where I know I can add value, focusing questions on these topics. 3. Follow-through separates professionals from amateurs Diligently document your commitments, establish clear action items, and execute them. It's crazy how just doing this proactively makes a board member stand out. 4. Understand your unique contribution to the board ecosystem A high-functioning board resembles a great basketball team—you need complementary skills, not redundant ones. In every meeting, I stay conscious of my distinct value relative to others in the room, whether that's SaaS expertise, AI knowledge, or a particular relationship dynamic with the CEO. I calibrate my role based on needs—sometimes assertively addressing areas where others have less experience, other times asking probing questions where fellow members have deeper expertise. -- To my knowledge, Emergence is the only VC firm with a formalized program dedicated to board excellence. It's an investment that yields returns where they matter most—in bending the odds of success for our founders. Founders, I'm curious: What board member behaviors have you found most valuable?

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I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

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The hardest companies to build are often the ones the world needs most. Resilience Tech—spanning hardware, software, deep tech, and infrastructure—demands more than just great ideas. The real test isn’t proving the technology works—it’s building it into a company that can scale and last. At B Capital, Karly Wentz and I distilled what we’ve learned into a 10-factor framework for growth investing in this space. It’s how we separate promising pilots from companies that can scale into lasting platforms. Our conviction: the companies that matter most over the next decade will be those that fuse breakthrough science with business fundamentals—and deliver measurable resilience at scale. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gv8jaMPK

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I am amazed at how much time is wasted on boards discussing topics that are not strategic and core to the business. Founders are asked to answer informative questions, which can be addressed during a catch-up call with the founder, rather than at a board meeting. I’d love to learn some best practices to get the most out of board meetings. 💡 From my perspective, preparation is the absolute key. Founders spend hours pulling together materials. The least we can do as board members is read them before walking into the room. It’s an absolute pet peeve of mine to sit in board meetings where half the board hasn’t even reviewed the deck - it’s so disrespectful to founders spending hours on preparing the deck in advance. Some other good practices I’ve seen: 📊 Using a live metrics sheet – that is constantly uploaded, and we (investors) can review at our own time. This helps avoid wasting time reading through financials during the actual board meeting. 🎥 Record a short video – I love what Matthijs Welle from Mews does. He summarises the highlights and lowlights ahead of the session, so everyone arrives aligned and with up-to-date questions. 🧠 Use the time for checking on strategic discussions – the board should be the founders’ sparring partner, not a silent audience. Focus on how the board can help and support the business. Board meetings don’t have to be painful or performative. With the right prep and practice, they can be high-value and high-trust sessions that actually move your business forward. I’d love to hear what other best practices you’ve seen in your board meetings. I am tagging a few founders and investors - I would love to hear what works and what doesn’t for you on boards Chris Tottman, Kamil Mieczakowski, seth m phillips, Dan K., David Sutter, Jeff Handler, Niklas Radner, Maxime Eduardo, Côme Dartiguenave, Tom Le Bras, Harrison Rose, Avinav Nigam, Hugo Fdez.-Mardomingo, Henri Tilloy, Oriol Juncosa #VC #Startup #BoardMeeting #Founder #StartupAdvice #Leadership

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Today we’re announcing Greylock Partners' investment in Tin Can. The landline was the original social network. It taught us how to be present with another person, without feeds, infinite threads, or constant context switching. Parents today want that same kind of connection for their kids, without handing them a smartphone. Tin Can is a screen-free communication device designed for kids, and it’s becoming something bigger than a device. It’s a network. Adoption spreads in dense clusters (neighborhoods, classrooms, teams) because the product gets meaningfully better when your child’s friends have one too. And the demand has outpaced all expectations. I’m excited about this as a rare case of using technology to counter the negative effects of technology. The product is intentionally constrained. The network it unlocks is not. Huge credit to CEO Chet Kittleson and cofounders Max Blumen and Graeme Davies for building a brand that feels both nostalgic and necessary. More in our announcement below:

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This week, Gloo also updated the general Flourishing AI (FAI) Benchmark. Originally launched in July, it showed leading frontier LLMs struggled to support holistic human wellbeing across 7 key dimensions (Character, Finances, Faith, etc.). The new data is promising! It shows that models made steady gains in core reasoning, safety alignment, and pragmatic guidance. But also confirms earlier patterns -- strong in fact-based dimensions, weak in personal viewpoints and values. Essentially, LLMs handle pragmatic guidance well, but struggle with nuanced, value-aligned reasoning. Still work to be done in supporting holistic human flourishing and wellbeing. www.gloo.com/fai 

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Thinking a lot about how to help Buoyant Ventures portfolio companies stay focused amidst all the national turmoil. This also applies to me and my team. The pace of bad news is overwhelming and seemingly by design. Here are some thoughts. 🤿 Put your oxygen mask on first. Get good sleep, try to eat healthy, cut back on substances. Create and protect a healthy morning routine so you start the day grounded. You need to be clear-headed to be a good leader right now. More clear-headed than ever before. Your employees, investors, customers are counting on you to lead and are looking to you for motivation. They may be scared, reactive, depressed, spiraling. Show them strength and compassion. 🙏 Find something to be grateful for every day. Your health, your family, your friends, nature, music, books. Get outside for fresh air and sunshine and exercise. Find some joy every day. We are all lucky to be alive, and we don't know when our time is up. ✋🏼 Ask for help. Be brave enough to be vulnerable and ask for help from your team, family, investors, community. You will most likely be happy to learn that many people want to help and want you to succeed. Asking for help is a sign of strength and also a way to give those around you something positive to contribute. 🩷 Live your values. Many of us working on climate solutions are doing so because we care deeply about creating a future that is more sustainable, resilient, heathy than today, for future generations. I am disheartened by some firms and companies changing their missions and values to reflect current economic and political stresses. Climate change is the same urgent global crisis that it was last year, and the devastating effects of extreme natural disasters will not slow down just because we stopped talking about them or scrubbed data from federal websites or cancelled grants. In fact, the opposite will happen. Things will get worse faster. To my fellow VCs, entrepreneurs, and LPs, what other advice do you have for coping with this turmoil and uncertainty? Abe Yokell Joshua Posamentier Gabriel Kra Chanel Damphousse Ernst Theodor Sack Emily Kirsch Jane Woodward Clay Dumas Sierra Peterson Sarah Sclarsic Tom Steyer Dawn Lippert Andy Karsner Michael Bruce Brandon Middaugh Erika Basham Aaron R. Sanjeev Krishnan Lyndsey Boucherle Tom Ferguson Kareem Dabbagh Ph.D. Rick Zullo John Balbach Joe Aguilar Michelle Carr Nikhil Vadhavkar Eddie Obropta Yanzhi (Ann) Xu Patrick Finch Hudson Hollister 🏢 Christopher Naismith Matt Zimola Kate Sanner Forest Frizzell Rob Cirincione Saleh ElHattab Adam Rimmer Chris Gladwin

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