A new service called Podlinez allows you to dial in to a phone number and listen to a Podcast on your phone.

You just have to provide the RSS feed for your podcast URL, and you are ready to go.

The VC-InsideOut Governance Series can be accessed at 510-495-6322.

The VC-InsideOut Entrepreneur Series can be accessed at 510-495-6323

Podlinez keeps the most recent episode on the line.  Pretty cool.

“Achieving Investor Alignment in the VC Boardroom”

Continuing the VC-InsideOut Governance Series, Kip Sheeline of Levensohn Venture Partners interviews Kevin Compton of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers on venture board alignment issues.  Kevin thoughtfully and candidly discusses his decision making process when evaluating competing term sheets with different economic terms, how he values human capital compared to dollars in the boardroom, and how he addresses conflicts of interest posed by co-investors with differing risk profiles.

To access the podcast, go to www.vc-io.com

Eric Olson posted some interesting comments about the VC-InsideOut "Founder Discount" podcast– Entrepreneur Series- Episode 2.  Eric’s summary of the episode also speculates on the possible negative personal pressures that below market cash compensation can have on the business decisions made by an underpaid founder who becomes risk averse.   

I am aware of a non-VC backed company whose founders bootstrapped the initial development with their personal capital and chose to underpay themselves for several years as good "company stewards" often do.  The good news is that they succeeded in building a very interesting software services business that held great promise.  They had raised over $5 million from friends and family and one strategic partner, and they were now anxious to follow this capital by raising their first insitutional round from VCs.

But the business held sufficient promise that another strategic partner noticed and preempted the VCs by making an offer for the entire business.  The offer was difficult to pass up for entrepreneurs who had lived with the pressures of the "founder discount", so they took the bird in the hand.  We will never know how much money they left on the table, but I suspect it could have been a big number. 

Our guest for the second episode of the VC-InsideOut Entrepreneur Series is Professor Noam Wasserman of the Harvard Business School. 

In this interview, Pascal Levensohn questions Professor Wasserman about survey data revealing a widespread discount in cash compensation between CEO-founders and non-founder CEOs in private technology companies.  The discussion raises the potential for misalignment between CEOs and investors and  distinguishes between CEOs who act as “stewards” in comparison to “agent-CEOs”.

This podcast previews Professor Wasserman’s newest paper, which will be published in the October issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

Developed and produced by the investment professionals at Levensohn Venture Partners, a total of three VC-InsideOut episodes are now available for streaming and downloads on the web at www.VC-IO.com.

The PriceWaterhouseCoopers Start-Up-Show, presented by Entrepreneur Magazine Radio and broadcast live last Thursday has been posted as a podcast on the wsradio site. Steve Bengston of PWC devoted the entire one hour program to a four part interview of Pascal Levensohn and Stephane Dupont, Executive Vice President of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

To access the podcast of the show– downloads are also divided into four segments– click on the link below:

http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/PricewaterhouseCoopers-Start-Up-Show.html

In addition to commenting on the larger implications of the Hewlett Packard boardroom scandal, the podcast guests answer the following questions:

What do you mean when you refer to the need for greater director accountability and board effectiveness in the VC industry?

What is the state of formal VC director education?

How much value do boards really add?

Shouldn’t private companies have more latitude in how they conduct board business since they are private—why does everything have to be so formalized? Many startups just have two or three non-management directors who are also the largest shareholders, not large public companies with a wide group of shareholders?

Is the venture capital industry doing anything proactive to promote director education and accountability?

Can you share some of the conclusions of the venture industry Working Group on Director Accountability and Board Effectiveness?

What are some of the basic responsibilities of VC directors?

Are there any characteristics of effective VC boards and ineffective VC boards that you have identified?

Are the basic responsibilities of VC directors the same as those for management directors and for independent directors?

I always knew that my interest in playing and recording music would be useful in business someday, but I didn’t know I would find Protools and Digidesign’s Mbox2 to be perfect for Podcasting. 

The first two episodes of VC-InsideOut, a podcast program on the Venture Capital industry developed and produced by the five investment professionals at Levensohn Venture Partners, are available for streaming and downloads on the web at www.VC-IO.com. We are initially developing two distinct series– one on Governance and one on the Entrepreneur.

Our first guest is serial entrepreneur Neil Day, who speaks about the importance of testing out ideas and learning from early third party feedback before you go meet with VCs.  Neil is a veteran of 3DO, Walmart.com, and Velosel– he is currently a co-founder of digital media company MediaMaster, which is still in stealth mode.

VC-InsideOut opens a window into the venture capital industry through constructive dialogue and interviews with leading VCs, entrepreneurs, and other influential leaders involved with the VC world. We believe that Levensohn Venture Partners is the first and currently the only VC firm to have a dedicated podcast program.

VC-InsideOut episodes feature original content developed and produced by Pascal Levensohn, Keith Benjamin, Kip Sheeline, Steve Reale, and Jeff Karras on a range of subjects relevant to the venture capital industry. Typical episodes run between 10 and 12 minutes. You can stream the content from our website, or download it to iTunes or your favorite media player. By clicking on Subscribe, you can be notified of new episodes when they are added to the VC-IO.com website.

VC-InsideOut kicks off with two separate series, the Governance Series and the Entrepreneur Series.

About the VC-InsideOut Governance Series

How and why are VC boards different from other boards? What are some of the common problems faced by VC-backed company boards? Are there early warning signs of trouble in the board room? What are some of the signs of effective and ineffective venture boards and directors? VC-InsideOut tackles these and other important governance questions head-on in this series of interviews and editorial commentary on the state of VC boards. Each episode makes clear recommendations about best practices that can be useful to VCs and entrepreneurs in the field.

About the VC-InsideOut Entrepreneur Series

Is my idea good enough to attract VC funding? How do I make a real business plan out of inspiration? What should my pitch to VCs include? What are some common mistaken assumptions that entrepreneurs make about VCs? What do VCs need to know about entrepreneurs but are afraid to ask?

The VC-InsideOut Entrepreneur Series is focused on enabling entrepreneurs to gain access to the information, insights, and tools needed to build successful technology companies. Leading entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other service providers share their experiences on the “ins and outs” of creating an idea, business plans, hiring teams, raising capital, and building businesses that scale.

This coming Thursday, September 28, I will be interviewed by Steve Bengston of PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the subject of current initiatives in the VC industry to promote greater director accountability and board effectiveness.

News stories today report the challenges concerning director accountability and board effectiveness of public corporations. Private venture-backed companies face similar challenges as well as industry-specific governance challenges related to their development stage. As you are aware from this blog and my other writing on VC trends, I am passionate about private company governance.

The show will be broadcast live on wsRadio.com, the largest internet talk radio station in the world (www.wsradio.com).  Steve Bengston is Managing Director of Emerging Company Services at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The one hour discussion will include:

–The state of formal director education in the venture capital industry

–The organized efforts in the venture capital industry which are addressing these shortcomings in basic director education

–The baseline-knowledge of venture-backed company directors about the expectations and legal requirements of board service

–The minimum expectations for directors: the criteria for management directors, VC directors, and independent directors

I hope that you will have the opportunity to tune into wsRadio.com on September 28 from 10-11AM PDT. To hear the broadcast, go to the website (www.wsradio.com) and click on the How to Listen instructions.

Welcome to VC-InsideOut, the podcast produced by the investment professionals at Levensohn Venture Partners. VC-InsideOut opens a window into the venture capital industry through constructive dialogue and interviews with leading VCs.

VC-InsideOut Episode I–

Six Early Warning Signs of Trouble in the VC Board Room

To Listen to this podcast, click on the link below:

Download vcio_episode_1.m4a 

Content duration: 13:20

Summary and Selected Abstract of VC-InsideOut Episode 1:

Pascal Levensohn comments about the recent Hewlett Packard boardroom scandal and relates the communication problems faced by mature company boards that cannot agree on maintaining confidentiality to the miscommunication that underlies many board problems in early stage venture-backed companies.

"… I’m pleased to introduce you to the first episode of VC-InsideOut’s series on corporate governance. In the future, you will also hear from my partners, Keith Benjamin, Kip Sheeline, Steve Reale, and Jeff Karras on a range of subjects relevant to the venture capital industry.We are kicking off VC-Insideout with this series of episodes focused on best practices for VC-backed company boards.Today we are going to focus on the touchy subject of CEO Transition, which is the bete noire of VC’s and a topic that is widely misunderstood by observers of the venture capital scene."

VC-InsideOut: Bringing You Inside Venture Capital and Bringing Out VC Industry Best Practices

Based in San Francisco and investing in IT ventures for over ten years, Levensohn Venture Partners proactively advocates best practices in governance and has published groundbreaking articles on the subject since 1999.

Two well known collaborative white papers on VC governance topics are freely available for download on the Levensohn Venture Partners website at www.levp.com/news .