Boardroom Governance with Evan Epstein

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy: "People Want The Experience They Don't Have In Their Day Job."

Episode Summary

In this episode, I talk with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the Founder and Chairman of TheBoardlist, and most recently the CEO of StubHub, the leading global consumer ticketing marketplace for live entertainment. Previously, she was the founder and CEO of Joyus, CEO of Polyvore and co-founder of Yodlee. She also held senior leadership positions at Google and Amazon. Sukhinder has served on the Boards of J.Crew Group, StichFix, Ericsson, UrbanOutfitters, TripAdvisor, Upstart and was an Advisor to Twitter. Importantly for this podcast, Sukhinder founded TheBoardlist, a curated marketplace for connecting exceptional diverse candidates with global board opportunities. They do this by providing a marketplace where CEOs and their investors discover and connect with highly qualified, peer-endorsed URM candidates for their open board seats. In this podcast (recorded on December 15th of 2020) we discuss her career in Silicon Valley, her experience with boards and boardroom diversity, corporate purpose, dual class share structures and many other governance related topics. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can find all the show notes on the website boardroom-governance.com and please feel free to subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com

Episode Notes

  1. (1:50) - Start of interview
  2. (2:23) - Sukhinder's "origin story"
  3. (2:58) - Her start in Silicon Valley in 1997. She characterizes her career as "always building".
    1. Junglee - Amazon ('98-99)
    2. Yodlee ('99-'03)
    3. Google ('03-'09)
    4. Accel-Polyvore ('10)
    5. Joyus ('11-'17)
    6. TheBoardlist ('15-present)
    7. Stubhub ('18-'20)
  4. (6:50) -  Her boardroom experience (J Crew Group, StichFix, TripAdvisor, Ericsson, Urban Outfitters, Upstart...). "Your job is one of influence, and one of bringing specialization - in my case I brought e-commerce and digital [to my first board]." "Boardrooms are increasingly open to the idea of non-CEO specialists - allowing the possibility to bring more modern and diverse skill-sets into the boardroom."
  5. (9:35) - The boardroom diversity problem, and why she founded TheBoardlist in 2015.
    1. Bring more equity to the table.
    2. Bring all the talent to boardrooms.
  6. (11:50) - Why diversity is a bigger problem in private (venture-backed) companies than in public companies.
  7. (13:40) - The evolution of TheBoardlist since 2015. Started as a crowdsourced list of people who could serve on boards, first tapping a group of 30 executives/founders/entrepreneurs such as Reid Hoffman, Michael Dearing and Joanne Bradford - resulting in 600 names added in an excel spreadsheet and a very simple website. Today TheBoardlist has about 17,000-18,000 members, divided in the following categories:
    1. Nominated director candidates.
    2. Nominators
    3. Companies that are searching for board members.
  8. (16:29) - Since then, there have been ~2,000 board searches in TheBoardList.  There has been a 4x increase in board searches since the MeToo and BLM cultural crisis. 75% of board searches are for private companies, 25% for public companies. Within the private companies: equally divided between early, mid and late stage. It's a "discovery platform" (curated list with recommended board candidates) it's not a "placement platform."
  9. (19:09) - Her take on the evolution of venture-backed company boards (and independent directors). "Often the independent board seat goes unfilled after the Series A or B."
  10. (22:28) - Choosing between a private and public company board position. "People want the experience they don't have in their day job." (board allows not only to contribute, but also to learn). Her advice to founders: "Often, you might be able rent unto the board the experience you can't afford to hire yet as a day job." You can craft a board seat for 1 or 2 years.
  11. (26:06) - Attracting more experienced directors to startup boards (as chairs or lead independent directors). Distinction with coaches. CEO reviews. "Every team needs a coach."
  12. (31:24) - Her take on SB-826 and AB-979 (California board diversity laws). "SB-826 has moved the needle." "Tokenism is about how you treat somebody once they get there."
  13. (35:25) - "The one thing that we need and that is missing is a conversation about board terms." Board Refreshment is critical for board diversity.
  14. (36:27) - Her take on dual-class share structures and other control structures.
  15. (39:46) - Her take on the shareholder primacy vs stakeholder debate. "Customer activism and employee activism are real and enduring trends."
  16. (43:41) - Her take on shareholder activism. Conflict between short term results vs long term strategy. "Directors need more courage than ever before." "You need to be both hopeful and paranoid as a director (and willing to put in the work) to help create a company with that bifocal lens."
    1. As a board member, you have to be really attuned to this issue because  there are proven financial returns to activists.
    2. It forces companies to confront issues that they would otherwise not confront in a reasonable time frame.
  17. (47:17) - Her favorite books:
    1. Good to Great, by Jim Collins (2001)
    2. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick, McKinsey & Company (2018)
    3. The Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav (1989)
  18. (48:48) - Her mentors (her dad was her absolute mentor). Group of mentors in Silicon Valley including founders of Junglee, Omid Kordestani (Google), different board members.
  19. (50:49) - Her favorite quote: "You don't know if you don't try"
  20. (51:00) - Her "unusual habit": shopping, knitting.
  21. (51:38) - The living person she most admires: her Sikh spiritual leader.
  22. (53:14) - Her parting thoughts for directors.

Ms. Singh Cassidy is currently the Founder and Chairman of theBoardlist, and most recently served as the President of StubHub Inc, the leading global consumer ticketing marketplace for live entertainment. In February 2020, StubHub was acquired by Viagogo for $4bn, in a transaction led by Sukhinder and her team. She is currently a director of Upstart and Urban Outfitters. Ms. Singh Cassidy previously served on the board of Tripadvisor and Ericsson until 2018. Ms. Singh Cassidy holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the Ivey Business School at Western University.

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License