The Secrets of Boardroom Leadership with Paroon Chadha, CEO of OnBoard

Dan Balcauski welcomes special guest Paroon Chadha, the co-founder and CEO of OnBoard. Paroon shares his insights and experiences on board governance and the importance of effective board meetings.

Paroon dives deep into the challenges of keeping discussions focused, the role of AI in transforming boardrooms, and its impact on information processing and decision-making. He also highlights the importance of proper preparation, alignment, and building the right board culture for successful meetings.

Paroon shares his journey as a CEO, including valuable lessons learned from advisors and mentors, overcoming cap table issues, and the importance of determining the scalability of a business. He stresses the significance of having a forward-looking agenda, assembling the right board of advisors, and staying ahead in the governance journey.

He reveals his organization's mission of inspiring organizations focused on crucial pursuits, partnering with nonprofits, and leveraging technology to drive significant impact on human progress.

Guest Bio:
Paroon Chadha is the co-founder and CEO of Onboard, a leading provider of board meeting software. Paroon bootstrapped the business for 10+ years and raised over $100M in PE capital through strategic growth and M&A cycles.

Paroon's leadership extends beyond OnBoard. He serves on several distinguished boards at Peace Tech Labs, Indiana University's Simon Cancer Center, and TechPoint. Paroon is also an active angel investor and a founding member of Youwecan.org.

OnBoard earned a place on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing businesses in America in 2008. Purdue University inducted Paroon into their Hall of Fame as a 'Purdue Innovator' in 2013. An influential voice in the industry, Paroon is a frequent speaker and contributor on topics around governance and entrepreneurship.

Guest Links:
@paroon on Twitter
www.onboardmeetings.com
escribemeetings.com
paroon@passageways.com

Transcript

Dan Balcauski: 0:05

Hello. Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that dives into the trenches with leaders of the best scale up. B2B SaaS companies. I'm your host, Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today I'm excited for a conversation with Paroon Chadha, the co-founder and c e o of onboard, a leading provider of board meeting software. Paroon bootstrapped the business for 10 plus years and raised over a hundred million dollars in private equity capital through strategic growth and m and a cycles Paroon's leadership extends beyond onboard. He serves on several distinguished boards at Peace Tech Labs. Indiana University's Simon Cancer Center and TechPoint Paroon is also an active angel investor and founding member of YouWeCan.org. Onboard earned a place on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing businesses in America in 2008. Purdue University has inducted Paroon into their hall of fame as a Purdue innovator in 2013, an influential voice in the industry. Paroon is a frequent speaker and contributor on topics around governance and entrepreneurship. Today we're fortunate to have him share his journey, insights, and the secrets to his scaling success with us. So without further ado, let's dive in. Welcome Paroon to SaaS Scaling Secrets.

Paroon Chadha: 1:09

Thank you. Hi, Dan. Pleased to be here and thank you for having me.

Dan Balcauski: 1:14

I'm very excited for our conversation today. Given the areas that you play in and the success that you've had for our audience that maybe isn't familiar with you Paroon, could you briefly just introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your journey in the SaaS world.

Paroon Chadha: 1:27

Yeah, absolutely. I'll start at the end where we are today and work backwards. Just to headline this. So currently we are trying to get to that. 50 to 70 million run rate. That's the phase that we are targeting. As I think about end of this year, end of next year we are an organization that inspires and enables boards to do their best work. So think about board of directors board of trustees board of Regents. City councils, any board actually, public company, private companies, we enable them through our software. All the workflows of a board meeting, that's what we support. We work with 5,000 boards and we continue to accurately add about I'd say 1500 to 2000 boards in any 12 month period. So there's a lot of recency to our volume. Now I venture back to multiple private equity firms that I've had the pleasure of working with. This all started about four years ago, and prior to that we were bootstrapped working outta Lafayette, Indiana and Indianapolis in Indiana. So there's lots of different parts that you can actually pull from. And I'll be happy to actually walk you through all of that.

Dan Balcauski: 2:38

What sparked your interest or inspired you to focus on board meetings as a problem area?

Paroon Chadha: 2:45

Absolutely. It's a great question. So I started this company under the name of Passageways in 2003. We were in an employee collaboration business. So it was accurately sort of the employee portal and in working through the employee portal discussions where I had mostly I was working with the banks and credit unions and insurance companies, financial compliance driven industry. That's where I grew up. A lot of people are using our product for their board meetings, just as a free way to do this. That's when we started to get serious about doing the board meeting use case, because iPads and, collaboration is very different. Security has to be very different. We formally switched into this in 2012. Mainly when every boardroom started to use iPads and there were no board software that was actually purpose built for that, form factor. Now of course, we still get I should say about two thirds of our customers are using board software for the first time. So it is still early innings. But at this point, if you look at the Fortune 5,000, for example, everybody's using a digital software. So we got interested because it's the same dynamic of. Taking information and presenting it to a group of people. It's about secure collaboration. It's not just collaboration, it's security and collaboration. And we learned all of that through employee collaboration. It's just a very specific use case with the much easier dollars that are available. It's an easier conversation when you talk about somebody's board meetings and we feel like we are actually now obviously Helping organizations at the tippy top of that pyramid. The chief executive board of directors, some advisors, and then some external people that typically you work with, like your lenders and such. And that's become our focus that the tools are similar to what we've started out in 2003.

Dan Balcauski: 4:55

So it sounded like. There was this B Y O D that affected the rest of it, of people bringing technology into the boardrooms. That was the initial push. Were there other technology dynamics that are technology that affected board dynamics over the past decade, or was that sort of the main push of this B Y O D interface, or did you see other things developing as well?

Paroon Chadha: 5:16

happen as well, so you know percent of my customers in 2008. That's, that was not a good place, fun place to be when all your customers are in the vertical. That was ground zero. We were forced to start to think about what else we could do. So we first tried to take that same product into other sectors, healthcare higher ed, and we realized that this is a very involved sale. So when it got to the extranet use case, That was a much simpler sale. And then surprisingly, every single board works about the same, unlike how every organization's communication architecture is so different boards tend to actually have exactly the same cadence. And that's where we got interested in actually can we start to write this. So it coincided with the advent of cloud software multi-tenants. And then also then B Y O D and then, lastly, I would say there was a real need for everybody to think about. Can we actually start to get more out of the advice that we get because of 2009, 2010, when that crisis happened and for us, we realized there was a lot of regulation that came down the pike right after that. So healthcare, higher ed financial erv, all of these got a lot of, compliance requirements that were added. And suddenly this had become something that the C F O would want. This. This also became something that the c e O was pushing for CSOs got involved, so there was a real moment that happened where this particular product category jumped the shark, if you will.

Dan Balcauski: 7:03

I'm so excited to talk to you because this is a topic around board meetings and proper governance that I just don't think gets a lot of airplay, but I imagine spikes the blood pressure of every c e o listening to this, given you spend day in, day out, thinking about boards and board meetings and governance. What do you think most CEOs get wrong about leading effective board meetings?

Paroon Chadha: 7:28

What a great question. I would say I think most CEOs dread the fact that there's a board meeting and you gotta prep for it. You gotta get your team ready, you gotta get the right insight, but it's actually quite the opposite. The board works for you instead of you working for the board. And that dynamic has to be established. Now, it's not easy to establish that because there's a lot of boards that do this routinely and they actually come in with their request and you gotta act really cater. If you really spend some time building the relationship with all your board members and committee chairs and you really spend some time chairing the board meetings intentionally, you'll get so much out of it. It is the most important meeting in your calendar bar none I. You just gotta make it one. Instead of reporting and catering to others, you gotta actually use it as a way to, I'll give you an example of how I recall my board meetings. There was a board meeting where they were saying we gotta get to a hundred million in run rate. In the next, no, 3, 4, 5 years. And we were discussing this, I vividly remembered this was in Kansas City. I was sitting inside the offices of a private equity firm and I actually looked around the room and I said, okay, good. That's awesome. That is actually in line with my ambition. But there is one problem. We don't have a single person in this room who's ever scaled the company a hundred million in one rate. How are we gonna fix that? And there was awkward silence. Then in that meeting itself, I got three, four names and from that one of the gentleman's act really helping us even till this date, three, four years moved. So that is your inner sanctum as the c e o. Once you realize that this is your inner sanctum where you can discuss. All the ambition you may have, all the risks that you carry and you start to solve for that. These board meetings become a lot more fun. They do become real vector in your progress. And I think that's the first thing I would encourage every listener to do, am I asking the toughest questions, the most nebulous questions? Or not, and do I have the right room? Because engaging the board with tough challenges is actually a lot of fun. They live for that, all of them. I know that you can be in a lot of board meetings that with one eye chart after another and nobody cares for those. Or you could be in a meeting with the deck is very it's not a substantive deck, but the questions are piercing through the real moment that the company's facing. And I think those are the best board meetings. And I think if everybody took the moment to actually say, what would an ideal board meeting look like? Can I deliver to that? That's really what it comes down to.

Dan Balcauski: 10:20

There's so many things I want to touch on there. If we think about this audience of scale up B two B SaaS leaders I imagine their board composition looks very different than a Fortune 500 company. Their board composition looks very different than when they were at a seed stage. Maybe they didn't have a board, or it's just them and their co-founders where the board. How do you think about how a board and a governance changes as you hit that scale up stage and maybe it ties into some of this direction that you're also giving and just does the direction you're giving your board at those stages change.

Paroon Chadha: 10:55

I think this is a journey, this is not a destination to actually have the right board. You'll continue down this path. I will say that the moment you actually really get to see that there is a business, then you need to actually just start to pull in the advisors who will take you to the next stage and the next stage and the next stage. That's the basic principle. So you know, the product market fit. Initial part that's a lot of, calls and moxie and luck and just sheer bullheadedness and you get through that phase. Once you start to get to some repeatability that repeatability now requires great advice to scale. Some businesses actually really have to get the advisors one at a time. Some are lucky enough to accurately say, Hey, we are gonna constitute the right board. Maybe appoint some independence, get institutional investors to be on the board. I would say for most founders, most CEOs, when that scalability starts, you gotta ly start thinking about the future state of the organization. Think two years out, three years out, and see, I. If the room there is the best room you can pony up to solve for that stake. And if it's just five people, that's okay. If it's I need two people outside just advising me towards this, but five actual board members, that's okay. You should always have a bench for advisors outside who will come in at the next level. And they already have the context. When you get to 20 million, 30 million, you have a very repeatable business. And it's often. Efficient business, but then you pull in know when you actually really put real money on the balance sheet, you go from what I call it's interesting that you are very efficient business but it's not scalable to suddenly you become scalable, but you don't you're not efficient anymore. Everybody's actually going through the next year or two to try to get back to your CAC and get back to your efficiency numbers. Because when you put a lot of capital on the books and you say, no, let's open a London office and a Melbourne office and let's acquire these competitors and let's add 20 more A and 10 more SDRs. When you do that in quick succession, your efficiency takes a dip. You need to have the right advisors to then go through that cycle to come out on the other side where you are both scalable and efficient. Once that starts to happen, then typically what happens at that stage is this is what we are going through right now. You need different advisors now because you're going from growth at all costs to efficient growth to now actually let's get to rule of 40 differently. You're trying to accurately get to maybe a little bottom line. And you start to talk about when will we become cashflow positive? Can we be cashflow positive in these different arenas where we are settled? Maybe a few where we are still leaking money. That's a different set of advisors you bring in. And then it becomes a constant game of where we are making money, where we are making future investments for each one of these stages. Your governance structure. Has to be a year or two developed in advance where you're getting advice from people, you're getting free advice in the hopes that they'll actually eventually be great board members. And most people today are very generous and gracious. If you accurately approach it with intention, they'll start working with you and they'll eventually accurately get involved in the structure. One thing I will say, as founders if you talk about a governance structure, remember you also have to be ready to listen. And I'm gonna accurately just say that that is a very important part, at least in my journey. But I was hearing a lot of people, but I was not talking to a lot of people, but I was not listening to the advice that was coming through. I was not crystallizing it. The moment I started doing these, these advisors became great friends and then, I earned the the right to actually pull them in into any conversation, push back sometimes, and go with my own gut. And that there is this healthy dynamic that started to form. But there was a distinct point in time where we all talk to a lot of people naturally. Most leaders do that, but do you really dial into the advice that they are giving you? And if, especially if you're hearing from multiple places, Even if it is to confront your worst fears, I think that's something you should accurately first think about before you start building the board for the future state of the organization and stay two, two steps ahead in your governance journey.

Dan Balcauski: 15:46

What changed for you? What was, you said there was a moment there where you really switched from just hearing to actually listening. What was the shift for you? Was there something going on in the business overall that really, or did someone I. Pull you aside and say, Hey, Paroon here's really try to get this through to you. Here's a thing that you really need to act on. What happened? What was your journey?

Paroon Chadha: 16:09

Great question. I had a co-founder in my business. If you notice my title says Co-founder. My co-founder actually worked with me for many years in the first business. And, when we got to the 2008, 2009 dip in our business, we flatlined for a while. We were bootstrapped. And when you start to go sideways, you can lose interest in the business. That's what happened actually. And I was fighting the fight internally where I wanted to hard pivot it into the board space.

Dan Balcauski: 16:41

Mm.

Paroon Chadha: 16:42

And the advice I was getting from others was, first, you guys gotta accurately figure out if you wanna do it as a lifestyle business. If you make some good money every year, which you've been doing every year, that's a good business. But if you want to accurately be a business that scales and deserves venture capital, that has a different shape to it. I had to confront that moment to see if I had the right partner in the business or not. And if I didn't, then I had to buy him back. And I did we had to work through a phase where I was using accrued capital to buy him back. So you needed a real emergency in the business where he wanted to go off, do something else. I had to go into this cash conservation mode. Then I had to turn the business into a two product business where second product, which is the smaller, the two product, became the flagship of the company. Eventually, I sold the first business off three years ago. Now we are only about both portals and I think the crises happened when my aspirations to grow the business. Didn't line up with the way my partner wanted to accurately grow this. And we had to figure out that we have to, we have, we we grew apart. I'll tell you the exact exercise we do because a lot of businesses start and end up with this. We actually sat down and wrote down, 20 things about the business three years from now, what will the business look like? And we had to write down 20 things. I did the same thing. My co-founder did the same thing without Con consulting each other first five are very easy. I'm gonna act, really have global offices. I'm gonna act, really have this, that when you get to 10 it becomes difficult. 15 is very hard. 15 to 20 is a, you are in la, la land actually. But you are, we forced to write that down and then we put it up on a screen right next to each other and we sat and we looked at it and we realized, oh, we've grown way apart. Actually, there's only two or three things that are in common with our vision. So we literally had to sit down and do that. And we realized, okay, you know what? This is, this makes sense. So I had to first confront that. So if you have cap table issues where you founders, Or some key employees, you're gonna resolve all of that before you start because the advisors will tell you that. And if you really are committed to building something scalable, something that you know that can be used far and wide, I. Then you really accurately the governance structure around that is very different. If you're building something that is a lifestyle business, you want to actually keep it very efficient. You may not need all the governance work streams to be to be contended with.

Dan Balcauski: 19:26

There's there's so many threads we've opened here that I wanna explore and I just I think we might need to. I get you back for episodes two through 10'cause you open up so many topics I wanna touch on. It, one thing I got there was that there was a crucial decision on the long-term part of the business. And it reminded me also early in the conversation where you were talking about how do we scale this your current company to a hundred million and just kinda these poignant moments of which the direction we're heading. Either, either the people we're with are not the people who are gonna go with us, or we don't have the right people in the room. I bring my mind back to them because I think they're just such poignant examples that you've mentioned in our conversation of areas that I assume these are the conversations that make for really good board discussions if you're gonna maximize your effectiveness of the board. Hey, here's what we're trying to do. We've got We've got two founders with different visions of the business. And maybe that's a side conversation. Maybe you're not doing it in the board meeting itself, but with those trusted advisors or like you said, like we're looking around the room and we're, our plan is to get to a hundred million and no one here has got it a hundred million. We need to bring someone else into the room. And then all you've, all these other advisors you've been working with in the, on the side. So where do you see boards and companies where the relationships break down and I guess yeah. Why don't we just start there?

Paroon Chadha: 20:47

I think first thing I'll say is it breaks down with the c e o Chief Executive Leadership team themselves. And let me actually, tell you where, because that's what is in your control often very easy. So I'm gonna talk about that. Then I'm gonna talk about the board culture as a second follow up on this. I say this often that there is often a board meeting that you, there are three different board meetings. Actually. There's a board meeting You have in mind, there's a board meeting that you actually deliver, and then three days later there's a board meeting that you should have fucking done. These are three different things. It really is important for everybody to realize, hey I, this is the board meeting coming up. I'm gonna accurately this is the agenda, this is what we are gonna do, we are gonna discuss these topics. This is the dinner topic. And then you end up having another board meeting where it gets derailed on slide seven and then you act really, Because you prepped for it. You come back and you take, give them the data and you said, yeah, that's not a problem. We are gonna do that. Some follow ups after the meeting, you realize, oh shoot, I should have started with this and I should have delivered this meeting. Then it would've been good for all of us, and I could have gotten to the key questions that I was seeking input on because it's not a reporting forum. There is oversight, but this is a strategy discussion. This is your inner sanctum, so i think for you know CEOs my advice would be to actually think about that board meeting on a phone call with board members even ahead of time. Here's the board deck. All of this is available. This is the agenda. Be very intentional. This is what I do. Three, four weeks in advance and the board meetings approaching. What are the key topics? One or two. That's it. There's no time in a four hour meeting. There's no time for more than that. If you have more elaborate meetings. Maybe the dinner before the night before. We do tend to have dinners. These are quarterly meetings. Keep a topic in hand. We are not there to just chit chat. This could be AI investment. This could be a competitive takeout. This could be m and a, whatever those topics are. But pick a topic and use that time judiciously because this time is precious. Once you have the agenda, you start talk as the materials being prepared. You start talking to different board members call it a time, and you ask them, Hey, what's your, and through that discussion, you'll get what they're looking for, what they would be wanting us to discuss, really refine it. Then go back and make sure your material are actually in line with that. And then if you have the luxury of rehearsing this with your team, do that. I. And play the role of a board member because you are on the board. Your leadership team actually really can play this, and you can ask the be the devil's advocate, steelman some of the discussions and try to simplify the deck. Less is more. Once you do this, then your board meeting that you had in mind, the one that you actually delivered and the one that you should have done, all three of them become one and the same. That's what is in your control. That's thing one. Thing two. Board culture, I think that's the main thing to actually think about. Do you have the right board? I think it often starts with that. And then it's, are you discussing the right topics? So do you have a board agenda for the entire year? It sounds so difficult to do. It sounds like, oh my God, I don't wanna be running a company where there's a forward looking agenda for a year out. No, just broad strokes. It's important to say we are gonna discuss competitive analysis in Q one meeting because we have a full year's data. We are gonna ly in Q two look at our, m and A pipeline. And that's gonna be a topic that we are gonna it's a good follow up from the competitive discussion. Anyway, in Q three, we're gonna look at some macro trends and, long-term plan. Q four, it's gonna be focused around the budget. When you know the broad strokes, this is how the year is gonna fall in place. Then any topic coming at you, you can file it away in the right meetings and the readings can be organized. Once you do that, the board knows that there is intentions around this is how the board the calendar will go.

Dan Balcauski: 25:13

mm.

Paroon Chadha: 25:13

Topics that become very heavy, you start to put committees in place for those. So executive comp is a good if. During the time of pandemic, hiring employees had become difficult. Inflation had started to show up constantly. So we have a comp committee now. We have an m and a committee now, and then of course we have a security and compliance committee. Within the secure collaboration business, there are three underlying committees. We don't have an audit committee yet that's coming at me. I know that but those committees actually do some of the busy work, and there's just a report that's shared with the board. Once you start to think about the information architecture, you will have more clarity on do you have the right board members? And you could do an empirical analysis. For example, in our software and onboard, there is a skills and experience matrix that you can actually draw where every board member says I am I bring financial analysis and compliance and international expansion to the table. Somebody else may say, I'm an expert in AI Their skills. Their experience in different sectors and geos can be mashed up into a spider chart and you could see here is what I have on my board. You can also define the future state of the organization and see where the gaps are. Then you can actually go ahead and start to think about. Who do we need on the board and who's actually been a good steward but may not be needed in the future. Maybe actually I can serve on a committee. When you start to get strategic like that and you say, look, I'm in the pursuit of truth. It's got nothing to do with any one individual. It's a very empirical analysis to where we are and where we are trying to get to. This is a journey from point A to point B. So of course the governance is also. Gonna have its own roadmap. Just like you have a product roadmap, I think you should have a governance roadmap that you share with them. And that's the approach that I would recommend for most organizations. And I think that creates a culture that creates, it's not me, it's actually this com. It's this company's unstoppable, this chief executive is gonna take us there and I'm gonna actually play a role. And when I have I'm done, then somebody else is gonna come in. That dynamic is worth creating.

Dan Balcauski: 27:33

That's amazing. So I heard there's a ton of gems there, but I think everything from having. Overall control of the agenda at the micro level, there's gonna be two topics at the board meeting plus gonna be a topic at dinner. These are the topics we're covering balance with because what I think my initial reaction when hearing that is like, oh my God, there's so much news to cover at a company. How do you keep it just to two topics? But you answered that question directly. Well, we've got a calendar of topics across all four board meetings across all year, and that also, I'm sure engenders trust from your board of we're not ignoring those things. Those things have a slot they're scheduled for. Then if we continually bounce between topics, which I'm sure happens to a lot of CEOs where they get pulled into derailed in slide seven as you said. And all of a sudden we're, we were talking about competition and now we're talking about Asia expansion the Asia expansion plan was for next quarter, but we spent that meeting well that's the board meeting we want, didn't want to have, and we end up having. So I think that having that trust, Hey we're in control of the vehicle. I can also resonate, I'm sure a bunch of CEOs who really love being in the moment, who are like, have that sense of dread of like, oh, I don't wanna plan a content calendar. But I think it just the dynamics and that precedent. Puts you, I think, in the driver's seat, it also creates that trust and it helps everyone get prepared for the conversations that need to be had for that moment. So many, oh my god, so many good things there Paroon, I really appreciate that. I think it wouldn't be a. Conversation on this podcast. I think we had touched a little bit in our pre-call around obviously you have a perspective on AI and how that's gonna affect the board world. So briefly, do you see a, this ai cycle we're going through now impacting governance in, in boardrooms?

Paroon Chadha: 29:29

Absolutely I do. I should say, look from the way I look at it technology is always accurately continued to come at us, right? And it's been an enabler. So this is a significant change much like maybe internet or, cloud, so this is a this is something that's gonna accurately redefine the way information is processed by all of us, and we are gonna have an assist. It's gonna go from. Currently where it's assisting, the general council assisting the chief of staff, assisting the chief executive, the board members, to then actually augmenting what they're doing. And it's not just small hey pull up the minutes which one of the outstanding tasks have actually been tackled. You can do all of that, but I think soon enough you'll get to. Actually be able to say, give me the trend lines on gross margin for the last three years, which may not even been the deck, but now you are actually asking AI to look through all the previous board decks and coming up with, here is where we are gonna end up. And that's powerful and that's gonna happen. Now, it may surprise you, but we are already there by the way. So what you are seeing there is essentially For example, on our software not to talk shop. But you know this as an example, if you are not using software for your board meetings and you're just emailing PDFs and attachments, that used to be okay actually because it was fine. It's just a document. We are gonna go through this over zoom. The fact is that you're taking on a lot of liability. Because your directors, if there's ever a lawsuit, which happens more frequently than most people realize, their entire mailboxes are gonna be part of discovery. When your mailbox is a part of discovery, that's how we know so much about WeWork, because SoftBank director didn't realize, used an email, which was actually waiving privileges when emails is scanned because your, it will typically scan your email, you are waiving privileges that you have as a director because you're letting it being scanned by somebody else. By that token, everything is thrown into the discovery process. Very expensive. Now with ai, what you're gonna see is this has always been the case, collaboration and efficiency. And security have been drivers of adopting technology. With ai, you're gonna see there is sheer intelligence that is actually becoming available to you. And why would you not use that, especially in the boardroom. So in our software as of today, you can just say, can you summarize? The highlights across all the slides. So it could be marketing highlights, sales highlights, product highlights all the different highlights that are there in a hundred. Page deck summarized into one slide. You could take a look at a big report that is submitted by a committee, and you could say, give me the top three risks. In the business and it'll accurately do that. That is already available in onboard, and it's gonna be coming to most softwares for the first time. Being able to crystallize what's being said by what I call AI as the collective human intelligence of everything we've published and processed. Having access to that is very powerful, especially in board meetings because there's, by definition, there's cognitive overload. There's so much information being thrown at people and you're supposed to know all of that and remember what happened last meeting in the meeting before, and then be able to ask the most relevant questions. So AI is gonna actually not just assist in summarizing, but it's gonna augment next, which is you can ask the AI agent onboard ai what are the top three questions I should be asking? And it's gonna give you the question that as a board member, you should be asking. And it's gonna be based on your experience, your skills. And that's gonna be different from another board member because she may be coming from the M and A world. The answer to every problem is go acquire them. Very different than what your answer may be, right? Let's hire a expert domain expert. So AI is gonna act, really personalize, customize, and augment what your core work is to ask more meaningful questions. Board members don't have to get advice. I often talk about nose in and hands out. You have to ask the right questions. That's the help you're bringing to the table. For anybody who's serving as a board member by shooting on the c e o, you're doing them at disservice. You can't say you should do this, you should do that by actually asking thoughtful questions. That's where you're adding value. Now AI can assist you in coming up with the right questions and how wonderful would that be? And the next stage would be AI would also accurately be helpful. It'll, first of all, it'll also help execs before you upload your marketing slide, it could say, these are the questions to anticipate. The chief marketing officer is gonna say, oh shoot, these are the questions. I got these, I think I'm answering these on different slides, but this one I should accurately prepare and maybe keep an appendix slide ready. But the next stage is gonna be where you can actually, ask more substantive questions based on past performance. How likely are we to actually hit this plan?

Dan Balcauski: 34:59

Mm.

Paroon Chadha: 34:59

And that's that's a a few years out. But certainly I can see that's gonna happen. So my Current if I was a betting man, I would bet that every board meeting will be transformed. Everybody, I al already believe that every board can be high performing with ai. We can shorten that cycle significantly. I think that's something to keep in mind as you think about adoption of AI in the boardrooms of America and all over the world, I should say. We work with about a more than a thousand banks, financial institutions, more than a thousand of them. There have been very early adopters. We work with about 500 hospitals and hospital systems. We work with large universities like m i t and Caltech and Purdue my alma mater, they, these are customers. We work with lots of tech companies, really large tech companies like Etsy and Robin or these are using our software for their board meetings. So how it's gonna be adopted by each one of these industries is also something that you'll actively have to watch. In your industry, if you're in manufacturing, it may be a different, path it may take than if you are in heavily regulated industry where, you know, or if you are a global entity. You can come up with a change and a policy and you could actually ask the ai does this pass the muster in EMEA in uk, because UK is now no longer part of EU does this po It used to take so much time. Now directors are gonna have that ability. To bring that questioning to the table and it's actually really for the greater good. So there'll be an adjustment period here, but adopting technology to really make that room the most powerful room you've got. I think time to start there would be, now I know I am biased. I'm just painting the picture. Why and all of what I'm talking about is actually 2, 3, 6 months away. Most of what I'm talking about summarizing and, cleaning up the document before they show up in the board meeting. Those are already possible in our software

Dan Balcauski: 37:13

Yeah, that's a, those are amazing points and. I, my new open tab on Chrome opens G P T four, it doesn't even go to Google anymore. You know much sure to the chagrin of the Google folks, but the, I think the adversarial preparation case and again, that I use adversarial in the best possible way, which is Hey, I'm gonna send this email like, What am I missing? If you were an expert in m and a in Europe, what are the questions that you would ask based upon what I've presented you so that I can make, improve my own thoughts? It's presents such an opportunity for any leader. Even at the individual contributor level but definitely for leaders because We don't have to worry about the AI being like making us feel stupid. It's this ever patient person who say, Hey, I want you to adopt a person who's really a, an expert in eu trade compliance and poke holes in what I'm trying to do here. And be like, well, you haven't thought of this, this, and this. Okay, great. I'm really glad I got that fixed in my deck now before I'm up in front of my, one of my board members who happens to be has a background in that

Paroon Chadha: 38:23

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. I'm also excited about, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about our greater mission, right? Inspiring organizations. That are actually really there for the most relevant pursuits of our time. Inspiring and enabling. As part of what I get to do, we work with, more than a thousand nonprofits Malala Foundation Khan Academy. These are examples of organizations I get to work with. I believe that there are some key pursuits that are going on. That are gonna have a material impact on the progress of our species. They're probably a handful of them. We came head to head with one a couple years ago where the pandemic needed a quick fix and there were some companies, some groups of people trying to figure out how fast we can go there. But I think reversing the damage to the planet cure to key diseases like cancer, becoming a a multi-plan species governing of ai. Nuclear non-proliferation. All of these are examples of key pursuits and there's often a board or two that has the ball for the species that we talk about here. If I can actually partner with them. And the key organization like Han Academy is a great example. They're helping education foreign and wide free of cost to take it to, continents that are not as, they don't have the resources. If we can enable these organizations through our platform, through ai. I think this is a moment that's about to happen that will improve the future by order of magnitude. Our goal is to actually inspire them to get to the right boards, the right rooms, the right discussion, and right results. My goal is also to accurate, in an encourage others that come in my world and my radar regard to continue to adopt. Technology, not just for your organizations, but other organizations in your community because you're often a leader in those boards as well. So you can bring out the best. In each one of these groups, and I, this is one of the areas that I'm most excited about in my world, where there is a mission to actually get to, whatever valuation numbers. But I think we uniquely have a chance to think about elevating governance, to really make being a high performing board something that we can all accurately partake in. And I think technology's gonna enable us there. And I believe this is a huge moment, a point of inflection where you'll see that board technology and AI is coming to a boardroom near you. And that's gonna actually change the trajectory of the organization because we'll be asking the right questions. We'll have the right people in the room, we'll have the right decisions being made, and that's just gonna accelerate things even further.

Dan Balcauski: 41:30

That is a fantastic mission and I definitely support you Paroon in achieving that. I do wanna ask you a couple of final rapid fire questions just to wrap up our conversation. I could talk to you for days and maybe we'll have to have you back in a future season of SAS AIC Secrets. But to wrap things up, none of us as leaders gets here on our own. Is there been a close mentor or another leader who has helped you on your journey?

Paroon Chadha: 41:52

Yeah, so you know, I talked about different advisors, different stages. Let me actually tell you who they were. My Purdue Professor Patrick Duparcq. He encouraged us to actually, me and Chris we actually were students at Purdue. He was the first advisor, pro bono, completely always available for advising us. Then Bob Falk, who's the chief executive at Purdue Federal Trade Union, they were, I. They were the first customer and they wrote the first check. We actually really, worked in their organization. So credit union, non-traditional financing. Bob's a great friend. I love to actually really get a good old beating on the golf course with Bob, 20 years later we. We've actually really had so many boards, so many conversations, so many different pursuits that we've actually done together. Then along came Armando Pauker. Armando is actually running a AI fund outta Chicago, Tensility ventures. Absolute amazing guy. I met him at a conference sat right next to him and then turned out he was from Chicago. I used to be in Chicago at that time. And he took on my call and then advised me for several years till I finally actually got to the point we were venture backed. And when we were venture backed, he could not act because this one was actually about ai. He didn't have the time to get on my board, but he actually told me how to put together the right investors and all that. And now Eric Schnadig is my executive coach. The question I posted earlier, who has done a hundred million or more where is that person? One of my board members, RA MU's close friend no longer on my board. He suggested, Hey, you should connect with Eric. And I did follow through on this. Eric has become a great friend. He's actually now advising me on all things business and some things personal as well. We actually have really enjoyed this relationship. Now these are the main advisors. This is my personal. Board of directors, if you will, to have gone through all of this. And I do believe with the right advice, you'll actually wake up just as energized and you'll be able to do it for a very long period of time. And I think the true compounding happens in the out years. If you get the right advisors, right mentors, I think it can act really just, really take you to. A much higher level in your field. So big supporter, big advocate for finding the right advisors. And the other ones are still friends and we meet once a year for sure. But I think your current advisor probably gonna meet at least I would say, every two, three weeks. So they really know your context.

Dan Balcauski: 44:42

That's fantastic, Paroon. So we've learned so much about boards. How can folks learn more about onboard or follow you? Do you have a social media or any place folks can follow your interests or learnings?

Paroon Chadha: 44:57

Absolutely. So you could go to www.onboardmeetings.com and it's, there's a free trial offered. You can actually pull up a, you can build a board meeting for yourself for your next board meeting in very quick time, five, 10 minutes. So that's number one. Number two you could follow me on Twitter now X at Paroon. So my first name at Paroon is the handle. I do actually talk about things that I do things that I'm actually pursuing in my work, my greater mission of supporting all these nonprofits. If you want to get started as a board member of nonprofits in particular, I would be more than happy to engage with you guys On that particular topic, on LinkedIn or Twitter, those would be the best places to actually hit me up, I should say. If you're a person of color, if you're a minority, if you're a woman, there's a big need in the boardrooms for some of you folks to actually quickly. Come through the ranks and start serving on these boards. The diversity at the board level is a very big topic. It's an important topic. I believe. Diversity is not just a company value. It actually adds value. And if you are somebody who can actually bring that to the table, you should dial into governance. You should look into how can I support the local nonprofit? Serve on the committees, get on the board and start your governance journey. Even outside of your organization because it'll make you very good. Once you're a director somewhere else, you'll become that much of a better director in your own company. So more than happy to engage with folks around this topic, even outside of this call.

Dan Balcauski: 46:44

Excellent Paroon. We will make sure to include all of those links in the show notes for our listeners. That wraps up this episode of SAS Scaling Secrets. Thank you to Paroon for sharing his journey, insights, and invaluable tips for our listeners, if you found this conversation as enlightening as I did, remember subscribes, you don't miss out on future episodes. Until next time, keep innovating, growing, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible.