Amy Banse: On Board Dynamics and Listening Through Company Stages.

Apr 8, 2024

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(0:00) Intro.

(1:12) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(2:00) Start of interview.

(3:10) Amy's "origin story."

(6:23) Her time leading Comcast Ventures, and how Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) has evolved.

(9:08) Why SF/Silicon Valley as a tech hub for Comcast Ventures.

(11:19) Her first public company board experience (with Adobe).

(13:15) Differences on serving on public and private (venture-backed) boards. "Much more hands-on in private companies."

(15:27) Differences between young and old public companies. Her experience on the board of On Running. "[M]y one advice to future board members or existing board members is to learn how to listen. And you're listening for different things, again, depending on the stage of the company."

(19:42) On "adversarial boards."

(24:10) On OpenAI's board fiasco. Trust in CEOs and boardrooms. Private companies and founder misbehavior. "You never fire fast enough." "You know when things are off."

(32:35) On the current AI investment cycle.

(36:16) On the state of San Francisco as a city and tech hub.

(39:35) On women sports, and her involvement with Bay FC, a pro women's soccer team based in SF/Bay Area.

(43:09) Her thoughts on the debate and politicization of ESG and DEI.

(46:41) Books that have greatly influenced her life:

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clay Christensen (1997)
These Truths by Jill Lepore (2018)
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Harari (2018)

(47:52) Her mentors: Ralph J. Roberts (founder of Comcast).

(49:02) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by: "Old men ought to be explorers" (T.S. Eliot) and "A house divided against itself cannot stand." (Abraham Lincoln)

(50:20) An unusual habit or absurd thing that she loves.

(51:07) The living person she most admires: Liz Cheney and Taylor Swift.

Amy Banse is a Venture Partner at Mosaic General Partnership, a VC firm based in SF Bay Area. Amy has over 30 years of experience starting, investing in, and building businesses at Comcast and as a board member on numerous public and private companies, including Adobe, Clorox, On Running and Lennar Corporation.

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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