Advice from Jerry Colonna & Using Board Meetings to Your Advantage

Author

Benjamin Friedman
July 29, 2025

Morning beehiivcommunity!

This newsletter turns experience into lessons you can apply to your startup. As a growth partner for visionary founders, we help sharpen leadership skills and unlock growth potential.

Boards: Elevate Your Engagement

"Board meetings should not be for the benefit of the board. They should be for the benefit of the CEO and the senior team." – Fred Wilson

Board meetings can be a source of anxiety for many founders. But exposing your hard work to the scrutiny of people you respect can be stressful.

These meetings might feel like performance arenas, but there's a better approach. This post will show you how to structure your time productively, prepare thoroughly, and leverage your natural strengths. When you focus on being the most effective version of yourself as a leader, you get the most valuable input and feedback.

This guide will show you how to run board meetings that actually get results, while also earning you trust and respect in the process.

Startup Lean Coffee: Where Founders Find Useful Ideas and Real Conversations

Since 2019, Startup Lean Coffee has sparked valuable conversations and delivered breakthroughs for over 1,000 founders, advisors, operators, and investors.

Each session features a dynamic exchange where participants bring and discuss pressing questions based on their diverse experiences and transform insights into actionable next steps. Come ready to challenge your assumptions, discover proven tactics, and stretch your thinking.

Our sessions have addressed critical topics including fundraising, social equity, zero-budget marketing, idea validation, and co-founder matching. Startup Lean Coffee is the community where real results happen and meaningful connections are formed.

Our next event is on August 13, 9-11 AM, in Midtown. You can register HERE.

Expert Tips for Startups

Stop Pretending It’s Business as Usual—Real Leadership Starts with Speaking Up

You can hear it on the streets and in the boardroom—the job of being a leader has changed.

In tense rooms and businesses around the globe, the default is to discuss "business as usual." But when tension fills the air, that approach fails. You can't meaningfully talk about scaling, purpose, and growth without speaking up.

Your voice as a leader is a gift. Use it. Silence is not an option.

Jerry Colonna is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io. He is a venture capitalist and renowned executive coach known for pioneering radical self-inquiry in leadership development and supporting entrepreneurs to lead with humanity and resilience. 

Jerry’s books “Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong” and “Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up” can be found HERE, and you can read his full post on leadership HERE.

Launch and Grow Winning Startups

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Need Some Help?

What if the quietest person in the room is the one who changes the world?

Build Scale Grow provides expert strategies and clear metrics for social impact, EdTech, and health tech startups, with a focus on introverted founders. With five successful M&As in ten years, we’ll help your startup reach its full potential and beyond.

Book a free 30-minute call HERE to see how we can help.