Edward Norton discusses software company Zeck, which he cofounded

well actor filmmaker and entrepreneur Edward Norton is now placing the spotlight on leadership teams through a $7.5 million investment led by Salesforce Ventures Norton software company Z is stepping outside the box with board meetings joining us here to discuss is Edward Norton Z co-founder thanks for being here pleasure so Zack is basically a different way to present ahead of board meetings to to disseminate the information that people absorb at board meetings yeah exactly I I mean I think if if you if you look at um you know the way that we've the way that we've transposed a lot of corporate functions you know from fixed tools to cloud-based iterative software tools you know no company no young company manages it's cap table with Excel anymore they do it on Carta right um and you don't get fedexes full of legal documents with signature tabs you get them in Doc you sign and you know this incredibly important function of of organizations and not just corporations but nonprofit organizations is its board right and it's it's supposed to be a very primary relationship a relationship that that's supposed to help Advance the interests of the organization and and yet we still use these incredibly regressive like to tools and and I'll give an example I I recently got on a board I sit on a 90 page PDF that was sent to me you know about 36 hours before the meeting you you slog through through it uh with no capacity whatsoever to ask a question query flag anything you know vote on a on a minute's approval or something offline you get into the meeting and we had the CEO read us back you know across four hours the thing we'd read verbatim because he has no idea what we've read or what we've ingested and this is this is absurd in 2024 and it actually I think it wastes human capital it um it promotes kind of negative relationships between management board and I think I think most management of most organizations will tell you that the the two weeks that they go pencils down to get ready for a board meeting they just want to punch themselves in the face and I think and I think we um we we people a lot of people have said to me like you have a really interesting day job why are you working on a board you know management software this was my interest I was interested every how I mean you're best known as an actor yeah like what what got you interested in a software startup focused on board governance well I I I it's a fair question I mean I you guys know because I've talked with with Yahoo about it I I started a um a media analytics company called Edo that's become a you know a major measurement partner of the streaming services and all of the networks and the buy side marketers we we sit in the in the outcomes and performance measurement um space and and I had started a a company that that did crowdfunding for Charities called crowdrise that that merged with GoFundMe many years ago and across these experiences I ended up I ended up sitting on corporate boards I I ended up I I started companies that had boards with Venture capitalists on them and then I ended up sitting on boards like gofundme's board and I've sat on nonprofit boards for 30 years um my Theater Company my Housing Finance organization I love and conservation organizations and I've watched I've literally lived Within These Dynamics and I've seen really positive relationships between management and boards and I've seen completely terrible toxic ones and I think um my partners and I really felt like this is a ubiquitous paino this is a big elephant in the room that everybody knows is a big problem and nobody is dealing with and so we we tried to Envision like what would this look like if it was working and Zack Zack already I have to say like for something is that sounds as boring and esoteric as board management software we are getting responses to it that are actually emotional like PE the the level of gratitude we're getting for sort of building a better mouse trap for help this process and actually from both sides of the table we've had Capital management groups and and CEOs saying this has radically improved not just the quantitative amount of time we waste getting ready for this or in the meeting itself but it's actually changing the qualitative um aspects of the relationship and making it making the meetings much more forward-looking as opposed to you know reading through what's every what's happened in the last six months you know I mean it's interesting because the cynic in me thinks like maybe some of the friction was by Design in in some cases right I think or I think more of the sort of shareholder uh company relationship and shareholder meetings and the you know that that is still a very ant Antiquated system yes it could it it could be and I won't try to reform that one but the um not yet no but but if you think about it like yes there's a governance function especially for very large companies but fundamentally I think companies should be able to expect a reciprocal obligation with their board boards are there to serve the company and um and think think about how insane it is that in 2024 that I would send to you a a platform of information and documents and things you're supposed to digest and I can't even see I have no access to data on how much my own board has interacted with what I've sent out z z lets management see precisely how many minutes every single individual board member spent in every section they can be queried by that board remember with questions and refinements either privately or within the group you can do governance functions like like vot you know on average in board meetings nearly an hour is spent on governance functions like employee stock option approvals and minutes approvals do you know how I mean these are high quality people with a lot of better use of their time than voting I around a table you should be able to do that from the airport terminal which is by the way we find 80% of most board materials are read on mobile and yet no one's formatted it for that you wouldn't read axios or the New York Times or Yahoo on a PDF that you have to pinch scroll right into you read it in a mobile format and that's how you that's if 80% of your board members are reading the stuff you send them on you know on phones and on tablets obviously it should be formatted for that and obviously and these I think these things are intuitively obviously when you say them but no one had done it so we just decided we're going to fix this I'm mening it because you know um there's a lot of successful actors who now have you know lack of a better word kind of a side Hustle but one that I mean obviously you're passionate about this right but you see it with you know it's Ryan Reynolds and ashon Kutcher it's not a new trend but is it more of a of a do you think it's more of a pronounced one now and and what would it be the reason I can't really speak to that I mean those those the stuff you're talking about is I would categorize more as investing um investing and aligning or making partnership deals I I've done some investing but I I've I I've sort of you know I worked in kind of an esoteric corner of Finance when I got out of college in affordable housing Tax Credit Finance and I've I've I've always been interested in in starting organizations whether it's theater companies or or companies um and some of it is just that I like you know the famous um doctor and Pioneer in in global Health Paul Farmer was a friend of mine and he he used to say the the most fun thing in the world is starving is solving hard problems with friends and I I agree with that and I I think um I think make it envisioning some a problem that needs to be solved and coming up with either a service or a solution it's not as divergent from telling stories in films as you would think it's it is a at the beginning anyway it's a very creative experience and it is a lot of what we're doing right now is is we're storytelling we're we're talking about why why would someone else have empathy with this problem you know or you're you're actually trying to show people you've got empathy with the problem they've got and and that and that draws them into what you're doing and so it's not as for me it's not as hardcore a left brain right brain dichotomy as it might seem um but but you know I I uh I can't explain it it's you know like I never got into the Arts because I wanted it to be a 9 to-5 day job to me that es and flows with inspiration opportunity and it leaves a lot of space for me to do other things I'm interested in like this but um you know and and what's it's funny like I've known Mark benof who founded Salesforce you know the great cloud computing software company and and I've always really liked Mark he has an ethos of corporate he has a corporate ethos that I really admire he talks a lot about stakeholder capitalism as opposed to just shareholder capitalism where you you look at your environment your employees your community equally with share price and and and I I admire that and I never bothered Mark about this but we did cultivate a relationship with salesforce's Venture team because we felt more than any more than any just pure investor we really liked the idea of working with the kingpins of of value added cloud-based software and our our DNA the fact that they've that they've made this vote of confidence in us and given us just some Capital scale with and stuff is is pretty thrilling to us because they we we really feel in alignment with them both in terms of like they have a better understanding of the business these kinds of businesses but they also they also have cultivated I think um what I would call A A they have a more humanistic view even of the way corporations are supposed to function and and and we we're trying to we are actually trying to promote better relationships between managements and their boards and vice versa and so we're we're we're pretty excited to work with them on this um it was it was it was great that they that they um stepped up to this um Mark Mark Ben off and salesports not the ventures but overall is also well known as being very acquisitive do you have an end game for Z where you would sell it to a company like Salesforce or I it's too it's premature in in a way I mean I think we're literally just getting going we have you know it's been a real rocket ship we've we've had um just by talking about this problem not even talking about our product talking about the problem of why board Dynamics are toxic we've been invited into the into lots of forums from YPO to Tech Allstar tiger 20 we've we've gone and the response has just been absolutely off the charts people are really frustrated by this problem and I think um it was it was affirming to a and we had you know hundreds of nonprofits and thousands of companies sign up for this really quickly and we're we're um and that's exciting right right now we're just trying to to get more people aware of it and stuff like that I I think we're a long way from that phase I think but but you know I don't you know I it's funny like some people when we built crowdrise which was a really great social fundraising site for nonprofit organizations and GoFundMe was um was doing the same thing except I'm helping my friend whose house burned down we we we some people were telling us it alone you know it it be your own thing and and I I'm I don't know I have a little bit of like the I think John de Rockefeller was right in some ways about like the power of the combination he used to call it with standard oil and I I think sometimes you know we live in this world that's informed by Alon musk and Mark Zuckerberg and these kind of Titans and this whole generation of entrepreneurs is like you know unicorn or Bust or I'm going to go thing and I don't think that's very mature I think there are a lot of businesses there are a lot of business businesses that benefit enormously at some point from from roll rolling into some sort of a conglomerate structure and and they have made a great product but they may not be literally a a sector under themselves and and I think you know there's there's a lot of people who probably wish they'd sold their companies earlier than they did right before we went through some gigantic down cycle where valuations dropped off and capital dried up you know what I mean so I I think um one benefit of being the age on and having done other things in my life is you don't necessarily H hit your ego to the idea of some in right you know infinite outcome or maximization and I think to your point sometimes you really got to look at it and say are is what we're doing really successful but Niche um you know and so we should align or or have you built something that Standalone I mean GoFundMe is a phenomenal organiz it's one of the most interesting companies I've ever been involved with it's providing this huge Social Service which is moving between and5 billion doar a year in very small increments to charitable purpose without taking any deduction away from it right and and it's not a hypergrowth company perhaps but it's but it's an incredibly great self-sustaining company that's filling a real service and I think so if you can achieve that yeah exactly so so so you know I I don't think you can never say like one size fits all with things and I think um um you just could sort of have to feel it out as you go but but right now right now what I can say that we're excited about um is like I said it's it's actually kind of wild to get kind of a certain amount of emotion and gratitude back like you know so you think software sounds very clinical but I do think we're I do think we're we're taking something that was a I mean none of us set off to say like my aspiration is I'm going to be a great builder of um board deck slides you know what I mean and if you can liberate if you can liberate people from from the part of their day or their week or their month that's pretty honorous I think that's that's nice yeah Edward Norton thanks so much for coming in absolutely for appreciate it

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Id: 5hYYzzkRrnU

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024