SV Icons: Brooke Seawell, NEA
IPO guru for the founders
Brooke Seawell is a Venture Partner at NEA, a position he has held since 2005, bringing 30-plus years of experience in technology, finance, and operations.
Seawell believes that investors need to bring a specific value-add to their portfolio companies — his value-add is preparing companies for IPO and helping them scale. Companies need to time profitability with their IPO. Companies should start generating free cash flow (FCF) at least two quarters before the IPO to demonstrate they are on the road to profitability. Furthermore, Seawell talked about the copious preparations companies need before going public. One huge part is the supporting infrastructure, such as finance, HR, etc., which many founders typically ignore. Delegating responsibility in a late-stage company is essential for sustainable growth. Most successful CEOs keep this number at less than 10.
For over 25 years, Seawell has worked with Jensen Huang, co-founder and the CEO of Nvidia. Seawell talked about Huang and his ability to manage over 40 people directly. Seawell believes that one of the keys to Huang’s success in managing a large number of reports is getting up super e
arly every day and spending a few hours strategizing the company’s future before going down to the daily duties and routines, including managing his reports. Given his tech background, Huang is a natural salesman and excellent at product development. In areas where Huang is less experienced, Seawell supports Huang in operational areas so that Huang can focus on the R&D and sales.
A key to running a successful company is having a strong board. Seawell talked about board membership and how to remove ineffective board members, a politically fraught yet often essential maneuver. First, you need to have the support from the rest of the board and raise the removal of the board member as a time commitment issue. Second, time the removal of the board member when their membership is ending and the member is up for board re-election, thus enabling the removal of a board member without causing unnecessary animosity.
Career mistakes: Seawell believes that people optimize for titles but should instead optimize for good companies to learn best practices. He was a CFO of a great company but went for COO and CEO positions with good companies. In retrospect, this switch for the title was a mistake because he didn’t have the background for those roles and did not learn as much in companies that were not the ideal fit.
Brook had a life-changing medical condition that made him reassess his life. Being asked if he wants to stop working, he immediately answered, “he doesn’t even think about it because he loves what he is doing, and that keeps him energized and motivated.”
Organizer: Georgi Koreli
Host: Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov
Chief Editor: Jacky Lin
Contributors: Rongfei Lu, Div Garg, Julia Di