BoardProspects Raises $650K to Transform Your Board & Plans Party for Boston Startups
Raising money is one of the hardest tasks when trying to start a company. It takes an incredible amount of both time and effort, and there are no short cuts. Second to raising money is creating a valuable board for your company. Boards can be incredibly helpful or be the demise of your company from the beginning. BoardProspects, which has just raised $650k in seed capital, is aiming to transform how boards are created. Think of it as a hyper-focused LinkedIn aimed at bridging the gap between companies and potential board prospects (hence the name). BoardProspects will also provide educational resources and tools enhancing communication between boards and prospects to improve boardroom transparency, diversity, and service.
Angel investors who participated in the seed round include Mike Verrochi (managing partner at Blue Rock Ventures), Brendan McCarthy (managing director of Goldman Sachs) and Paul Sullivan (partner of Sullivan Tire).
“BoardProspects will help solve the challenges of building, joining and running effective boards by providing an online community for boards and prospects to make connections, and by providing an unmatched level of expert content, best practices, and educational resources for both individuals and organizations,” said Mark Rogers, BoardProspects Founder and CEO. “It is our intention to develop BoardProspects into the premier destination for boards and prospects to publicly and privately exchange their expertise, skills, and qualifications. With this round of funding, we now have the resources to accelerate product development and enhance the site’s functionality to make this vision a reality.”
The market which they are going after is apparently huge and one that I’m sure none of you have even considered.
There are more than 60,000 publicly traded companies in the United States that are required by law to have a board of directors. In the Fortune 1,000 alone, there are more than 1,100 directors currently serving that are over 70 years old, according to GMI Research, the leading independent provider of global corporate governance, ESG and accounting risk ratings and research. The number of vacancies for the nearly 1.6 million non-profit organizations in the United States is exponentially larger, with more than 1.8 million of these seats turning over each year. These dramatic numbers do not include the hundreds of thousands of private companies that could benefit from building a board of directors or an advisory board, recruiting valuable members, or applying best practices to improve board performance.
In addition to the funding announcement, Braintree based BoardProspects is giving BostInno readers a special treat. The first 250 people, who sign up here, will be part of their beta community and receive free admission to their exclusive launch party. The event will be at Space with a Soul on May 10th and will include a band, open bar.
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/02/09/boardprospects-raises-650k-to-transform-your-b...