Board meetings

There are Board Meeting Cadence with 4 official 120-minute meetings per year (once per quarter) about 1 month after the quarter closes, interspersed with 4 60-minute informal meetings that are focused on metrics and cover one strategic topic for a deep dive.

Scheduling is done by sending out a Doodle to ensure it's low friction for all participants.

Calendar invites

Since some of the folks invited alternate meetings they attend, we have two sequences of invites scheduled to recur at 26 weeks (instead of one sequence at 13 weeks). This is important to note since this means that if you want to link something in the meeting invite (e.g. a doc or slides), it must be edited in two places. This is more reasonable than manually adding folks to the meeting in alternating succession.

Calendar invites include all the folks expected to be at the board meeting, including our legal counsel.

The Strategic Timeline

Working from the meeting date, follow these milestones:

• T-minus 2 Weeks: Draft the agenda and create the deck or decks
• T-minus 1 Week: The Dry Run. First draft of slides complete. Present to internal stakeholders/executives.
• T-minus 2-4 Days: Final Board Package distributed (allows directors time to read).
• Meeting Day: Execution and note-taking.

The Meeting

The Dry Run: One Week out

Schedule a dry run meeting with all internal stakeholders a week prior to the actual meeting date. Key Objectives:

• Finalize slides: Which slides require more support
• Audit the Data: Double-check the numbers
• Time Management: Ensure the presentation fits within 60-70% of the allotted time, leaving the rest for Q&A.
• Craft storyline and identify focussed discussions to resolve key challenges for the company.

Prewatch

Three business days before the meeting, the CEO will send a 5-10 minute prewatch video giving Board Members an overview of the metrics and topics for discussion. Since meetings are generally scheduled for Tuesdays, this means the prewatch needs to go out on Fridays.

In most circumstances a 5-10 min prewatch can help make the time together even more productive, as you get to move contextualizing to before-the-meeting and it gives people time to let things bake in their head, improving the quality of conversation.

In the email where we send the pre-watch, we should also include the key metrics in the text of the email.

Structure

The 120 minutes of each meeting are structured in the following time blocks:

• 30 minutes Metrics and Company Performance - The company presents key metrics, comparing against the plan and updates projections. The figures will be distributed well in advance, and as such the discussion should be focussed on the reflections of the numbers.
  • 15 minutes (of this 30) on Plan vs Actual Performance
• 60 minutes Strategic Discussion - In the Strategic Discussion portion, we will focus on one to three (but no more) key topics of focus for the business for discussion. Prior context is shared through the prewatch.
• 30 minutes "Routine business" (Closed portion of meeting) - Providing an open forum for board members and observers to raise additional topics. In this Closed portion of the meeting, we will always cover:
  • Stock Option Approvals.
  • Approval of previous meeting's minutes.
  • Compensation matters related to team members over 200K USD.

It would be highly appreciated if topics to be discussed are shared in advance with the rest of the board.

It is the CEO's responsibility to manage time in the meeting.

Stock Options Approval

Board approval is required for every new employee's options grant. For each applicable employee, the slide must include:

• Employee name
• Title
• Current option allocation (if applicable)
• Options to be offered
• Fully diluted total ownership post-grant
• Vesting schedule All information must be based on the final, executed offer letter. Employees included on this slide must have completed onboarding prior to the board meeting.

Metrics

Key Metrics to include:

• Revenue
  • Current ARR
    • Sales Led cARR
    • (Self-Serve MRR * 12) aka Self-Serve ARR
  • Current YoY Growth
  • End of Quarter Projections
    • Sales Led cARR (Closed & Goal)
    • (Self-Serve MRR * 12) aka Self-Serve ARR
  • Churned revenue
• Customers
  • Total Subscriptions
    • New Subscriptions
    • Renewed Subscriptions
    • Churned
    • Upsell/Upgrade
    • Downsell/Downgrade
• Company
  • Runway in $
  • Runway in time
  • Cash Burned, planned vs actual
  • Cash on hand, planned vs actual
  • Headcount, planned vs actual
• Deal Board for the Quarter (Pipeline broken down by stages)
  • Discovery
  • Diagnose
  • Solution
  • Closing/Committing
  • Closed Won
  • Also, Key Deals Highlights
• Product Metrics:
  • Managed NR Runtimes, including self-hosted
  • Self-hosted platforms reported via telemetry

Board Deck

FlowFuse provides a board deck with high level business overview items, the inspiration for slides is taken from this template. The template is updated to fit the FlowFuse business.

Slides are stored in the "Investors" folder in the "FlowFuse Admin" Shared Drive.

Sending out the deck

2-4 Days before the board meeting, save the document as a pdf file and share it with the board members for review. Include minutes from last time and other assets in the same email.

Managing the Two Slide Decks

1. The Open Session Deck (General Team)

This deck focuses on transparency, high-level performance, and culture.

• Purpose: Celebrate wins, align on company goals, and share the "vibe" of the business.
  • Highlights/Challenges/Focus
• Content:
  • OKR updates
  • Marketing highlights
  • New hires
  • Product roadmaps

2. The Closed Session Deck (Executive/Board Only)

This contains sensitive "Closed Matters" that require legal privilege or high-level strategic oversight.

• Purpose: Deep-dive into governance, sensitive financials, and high-risk decisions.
• Content:
  • Compensation: Exec salaries, equity grants, and bonus structures.
  • Legal: Pending litigation or regulatory updates.
  • Strategic Moves: M&A discussions, fundraising details, or layoffs.
  • Financials: Detailed burn rates and runway audits.
  • Approval of minutes of the last BoD
    • Link to the finalized minutes from the previous board meeting which are stored in the FlowFuse Admin Shared Drive, under Investors, in the appropriate year folder.

Post meeting action items

Within a week after the board meeting, the CEO will distribute assets related to the board meeting.

Assets will always include:

1. A link to the final board deck with metrics in the shared Google Drive
2. A link to the pre-shared materials for the Strategic Discussion
3. List of action items

Once everything has been finalized, share the high-level wins and strategic direction from the Open Session with your broader leadership team at the next Strategy meeting.

Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes are compiled by our Counsel and shared after the meeting. They are stored in the FlowFuse Admin Shared Drive, in the Investors directory, under the correct year.

Monthly Investor Updates

FlowFuse investors get a monthly update sent to them through Carta, which contains the KPIs we track and editorialized information from the CEO on company performance. For transparency, the company includes financial performance data from QuickBooks, and reports on 3 key metrics: ARR, Burn, and Runway.

The subject is structured as: FlowFuse <Month> <Year> Update, for example: FlowFuse May 2025 Update.

This update should be sent on the 10th of every month, unless there is a delay in the financial review with the controller.

The template to use:

Dear FlowFuse Investors,

<Progress made over the past month in 4 sentences max>

KPIs (Per end of May)
* ARR:  $[XX]M, up from $[XX]M end of [Previous Month] and up from $[X]M last year ([Y]x YoY growth)
* Burn 3m AVG: $[XXX]k/mo
* Runway until: [YYYY-MM] (Cash at hand / 3m average burn)

[Topic one]
[Topic two]
[Topic three]

Best,

ZJ

Major Investors

Major investors have access to more data on company performance through Carta.

The company must deliver the following deliverables to all Major Investors:

• Unaudited financial statements within 120 days after each fiscal year.
• Unaudited financials within 45 days after each fiscal quarter.
• Cap table is available through Carta
• Approved annual budget and business plan for the next fiscal year as soon as practicable, at most within 30 days of each fiscal year.

One investor in particular wants this worksheet to be updated every quarter. It's set up to be mostly automatically imported from the Ops Plan.