I was talking to another founder yesterday about a venture investor. I said I like them a lot because I think they are a “shock absorber.” As a founder or exec, you go through lots of highs and lows. Won customer. Lost deal. Closed round. Investors passed. Hired candidate. Teammate quit. And your board is along for much of the journey. The question is how do they react? I’ve found that the best board members, including the one I was giving backchannel on, don’t add to the drama. They instead soften it out. Imagine you miss a quarter. The drama investor jumps in, feels insecure themselves and immediately asks 100 questions as if you weren’t already thinking of them. The “shock absorber” board member is like @ajay_bcv , my longtime board member from @BainCapVC at Gainsight. I’ll never forget when we massively missed an early quarter (I think we were supposed to do $600K of bookings and we did $300K). He said “look - whether you do $300K or $600K is irrelevant. Set yourselves up for doing $10M a quarter a few years from now.” That’s a shock absorber. On the flip side, imagine you closed a huge deal. It’s one thing to be totally “rah rah.” But a great “shock absorber” board member also says “that’s amazing. Now the key is making them successful.” As legendary Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz famously stated: “You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.” It’s good to have folks around the table to remind of you of that and keep the ride as smooth as possible (it will never be smooth though!)