How to Be an Effective Board Member (Build Breakout Companies)

There are times when you will have to be the one person in the room that's saying the emperor is wearing no clothes and if nobody else is doing that for them, they will make lots of mistakes. You need to be the person that every now and again goes, I just don't get it. Maybe it's, I don't understand. Can you explain it in a way that I will understand eventually? They normally come to the conclusion if I can't explain it over enough time, it's not right. And I think that's what I learned as a founder. Welcome to Mission one, the Executive Edge. Last week we started a conversation with Nick Button Brown about early stage board advisors. What do they do? What are their responsibilities? How do you go and get a role as a board advisor if you've been an executive for many years? What is the skill shift that's required in that? This week we're going to be picking up that conversation and bringing you part two where we talk more about practical frameworks for founders. How do they think about constructing a board? What's the right timing that you need to bring somebody in to help you out? As well as talking about that shift from being an informal advisor to maybe becoming a more formal advisor and governor on a board, and then also delving a little bit deeper into that mind shift switch that you go from having been running companies and having very direct responsibility through to perhaps being more indirect in how you have to guide and advanced founders or CEOs who you're working with to make the right decisions, but get them to make the right decisions rather than making it yourself. We hope you enjoy. It's been a fascinating conversation with Nick, who again will flag does so much for the British, but also the European ecosystem and the early stage investing ecosystem over here in games. So we are grateful for Nick and we hope you enjoy this. Part two. I think particularly early stage people feel a bit, hey, I may ask for your advisor, what should I expect for that? Or also from the founder's perspective, he's saying, hey, I'm asking Nick to come onto my board. What would be a reasonable offer? Let's say a company's raised between 5, 10 million, 515 million, something like that. What might a small amount of shares be? Is it very variable or would you have a sense of, well, actually it's probably something like between 30 and 50ks worth of shares if it was liquid or something like that. What's your sort of instinct on that? So the example that you gave a company that's raised kind of 10 to 15. That's not a startup. That is a company that has achieved a level of success and has money in the bank. So I put that in the middle. At that stage I think it would be fair to take a director's fee out for your time. If you're going to the genuine pure startups where you're not receiving compensation for your time other than the shares that you're receiving. I mean I've seen people look for 1%, 2% on a pure startup, realistically probably around half percent of the share capital, the valuation of the company at that stage it's a made up number. So you're looking at what percentage you get of the company as a whole. So it's not. I'm receiving £30,000 of shares because that's just. You really are just making up a number at the time that you're talking about it. But I'm receiving a percentage involvement in the company because I'm going to be with you for 10 years until you achieve something amazing. That's a reasonable thing to do. There are some good online tools which give you a recommendation, particularly for founders looking to set how much they should give to their advisors. Just go and search the online tools. Most of them are American based so I'd say they're a little bit higher. They're a little bit more generous to the directors than you would say the directors advisors than you would say in Europe I'd say it's slightly. You get lower numbers in Europe but it's a good starting point. It can be a small amount as well. It depends what you're doing. If you're on an advisory board having an occasional chat that's slightly different to being a statutory director who is at every board meeting, who is signing off things, who has the bank mandate in their name. As soon as you're asking for those levels of commitment, I mean, one of my issues with one of the companies I work with is I'm one of only two signatories and the bank is a right pain in the ass. So they keep rejecting my signature because it doesn't look like my signature. I thought. But it is my signature. You know, those take time. There's a level of commitment every now and again I actually have to go into. I'm not mentioning who it was, it's Barclays. I hate them. No, they're lovely. They do wonderful work supporting the games industry as a whole. Everybody that I've ever talked to there is amazing and fantastic. Can I get some more work? All These things will always take slightly more time than you're thinking. But I'm having a once a month hour long meeting with on an advisory board is a very different level of time commitment to. I am a genuine non exec director on the board and I'm there. The way that I work and the way that I like working is I like to have kind of mentoring time each week with the CEO. So we just have a standard on top of the board meetings and stuff like that. You're going to call me at nine o'clock on a Friday. Now you can cancel it. If there's nothing to be talked about, fantastic, we cancel it. But otherwise we've got this regular slot. We're going to talk about what your problem was this week, what the thing that you're most worried about. Back to Gerard's point, you're going to run out of money in June. Is this thing that you're doing going to help that or make that worse or you've got an issue with a co founder. The co founder isn't doing the things that they said to them. Well, let's talk about it. I can't give you a solution, but I can share. Here is what I've seen in other situations. I think the mentoring is a really important part of what I do. That's why I like working with early stage startups, because I like seeing the CEOs develop, I like seeing them improve and kind of build confidence and build knowledge and yeah, their strategic vision has changed. That gives me the most feedback and positivity. Then at the higher levels when you're working for companies valued 100 million, 200 million, 500 million, you're not mentoring a CEO there, you're ticking boxes, you're making sure you've read the board papers, you're asking questions at the right time. It's still a good thing to do. It can be very helpful, but you decide what you want from it. There's quite a lot of variety right, with these roles you're describing, based on the stage of company, on the founder, on the level of involvement. It evolves as you go along, just picking up on there when you've got that time with the CEO and it's quite a precarious situation by its nature, early stage companies, there's a lot of things go wrong. What do you do when you don't really know what to say to the CEO? Because I can only say from one example, a mistake I once made. I was chatting to an early stage CEO, I look back and this was many years ago. And I sort of look back and I gave him some pretty frontal advice of being like, I think you're doing all these things wrong. And they look really crushed by it. Right. And I look back and I was like, I don't think I really helped that person. Right. I think I just like loaded up stress onto somebody who's already quite stressed. I didn't know any better as I wasn't an advisor, I just chatting to them. But it really made me reflect I gave the wrong advice at the wrong time. Right. And you learn through your mistakes. But what have you learned about giving that kind of advice? Like if you can share some mistakes or, you know, some of that wisdom of. Yeah. How do you think about situations where you don't know what the right advice. You're the advisor, but you don't necessarily know what the right advice is. What do you do that? One of the things I learned quickest on was coaching the girls rugby team because there was. You said anything. You know, they just distilled the essence of, I hate you, I'm turning my back and walking away from you. That changed the way I understood of how to give feedback because, you know, understanding the psychological thing of it's a five to one ratio. You need five positives to one negative. If you give six positives to one negative, everybody feels great. If you give four positives to one negative, they feel shit. So if Gerard, you went in and just gave negatives, they felt pretty shit. I'm sorry. Now, okay, that is a bit of a generalization. Everybody's slightly different. How do I deal with giving people bad news? And you do have to. There are times when you will have to be the one person in the room that's saying, the emperor is wearing no clothes. And if nobody else is doing that for them, they will make lots of mistakes. You need to be the person that every now and again goes, I just don't get it. Maybe it's, I don't understand. Can you explain it in a way that I will understand? And over time they're trying to explain it to you. And you go, I still don't get it. I still don't think this makes sense. Can you explain it again? They try to explain again. Eventually they normally come to the conclusion if I can't explain it over enough time, it's not right. And I think that's what I learned as a founder. It's just they haven't understood it. I can explain with the force of my personality. I can explain it Better. And then over time, you're talking to somebody and they're not getting it. It's like, okay, maybe the problem is me. That is a level of self awareness that not all startup entrepreneurs have. That takes time to kind of build. You've got to work with them to build that level of awareness and confidence and taking. There were two parts to your question. One was how do you give bad feedback? And I think it's gently but firmly. It's not. I have the right answer. This is my point of view. My point of view. Looking at this. And you will get different feedback from other people. Take this as one point of view. If everybody else is saying the same thing, okay. But at the very least, it means when they're talking to somebody else, they'll ask the question in a way. And so they'll ask the specific question, is this right? And if somebody else goes, yeah, I think it probably is, yeah, that isn't quite working. That picture isn't quite right. What you're saying there isn't that they will build up a better picture over time. So kind of giving hard feedback honestly and openly, but also not with ego. One of the things that doesn't know me when advisors have to be right. I'm telling you this, you are receiving the benefit of my wisdom and I am right, because you're not right. Although it is an opinion and it's one of 17 different opinions, your opinion may be right, but it is only an opinion and only hindsight will tell you whether it's right. So, yeah, you've got to go in going, I don't necessarily know the right answer, but I have an answer. This is based on my experience. This is based on what I've seen. What you have seen may be different, but I want to give you that point of view. And all you're doing is giving a point of view and letting the CEO, the leaders of the company, make the decision based on those points of view. If you are telling them to do thing, you're not in the right position. You're not a director at that point. At that point, you're trying to be the CEO. And then even if you get it through, you're not teaching them to be better in the long term. You're teaching them to become reliant on you. I'm going to quote the Arrested Development song, Give a man a fish and elite for a day. Teach a man to fish and elite forever. Nick, it sounds like you've had to maybe learn a different playbook around the way you Influence the way you guide or the way you're providing feedback in a way that's appropriate for the level. Are there any other kind of lessons learned or things you had to unlearn with this transition? Going from executive at marquee companies and startups to board members of early stage and working with different founders? Anything else you had to unlearn or any key lessons maybe that you didn't expect? I definitely had to unlearn certainty. This idea that I know the right answer, you can build that confidence over time and definitely had to take away that. I'm not certain I'm only one of a number of points of view, but particularly because I'm not in the business, I'm not seeing all the inputs they're seeing. I'm not in the meeting where they're talking with their co founder and having that problem so I can give them my take on what that means, but I wasn't there in that. The letting go of being able to fix something is really hard. You've got two co founders that have got a problem. They actually have to sort it out. Maybe you can help them have the conversation and you can get them a framework to talk about that conversation. You can even host that conversation. But those two have to fix it and that's hard to go. Well, it's, well, I'll fix it. No, it's. I cannot fix it. I have to give them the framework to allow them to fix it. That's really hard to. They need to build a relationship with a particular strategic partner. I know that person. I can do this for you. That's not the right answer. The right answer is no. I'm going to give you an intro and I'm going to set you up for a conversation. But you are going to build the relationship with that person because that's more robust and benefits over time. But it's really hard to let go because, well, I can do this in 10 minutes. It's going to take you hours. Why don't I just do it? I made lots of mistakes at the start and I became a blocker to some of the things that were happening within the company. So I take on a task. Here's the list of tasks for this month and one of them would be assigned to me and you know, it might be, well, let's do the next version of the deck or let's update the CRM or that kind of thing. And that was a terrible idea because I forever became the blocker as soon as there was something on me to Do I would. It's not that I failed to deliver it, although sometimes I did fail to deliver it, you know, but I've got other jobs, I'm doing other things. Even if I didn't fail to deliver it, there was always a perception because they didn't have control over it. So it was a problem. So you should never, as an advisor, director, you should never. Okay. Of course there are exceptions. You shouldn't have executive actions on you at the end of a meeting. I do joke with people. That's my kind of director's game, is if I come away with an action point, I've failed. But it's not really a joke if there are things that are on me, I have failed because it should be. I am helping you. I will review your version, but it's your version. If you're an executive or director or someone, someone listening to this, is there a skill set that is learned? Is it at the VP level? Is it at the C level? Is it GM level? Something that is learned that helps translate to the board like. Or did you feel like you learned something in your career at a certain stage that helped you have the skill set for this? Or did it just come happen over time? Adding to that question of Dan, I think again to our listeners, should they consider themselves to be more in the autumn of their career, as it were, before they start thinking about these things? Or do you see people who are still midway through their career or even early in their career going up? Because I think there can be a perception. It's something you do post an executive career sometimes or tend towards the end. So curious again on what you see or advice you'd give that there's a couple of aspects to that. Start with, I think it can be difficult for somebody who's only ever worked in a big company to become a good director. I started at ea. EA was great company. I learned so much from it. If I tried to do it coming out of ea, I'd never had enough of the big view. There was always a couple of very senior people that had the big view and everybody else was just dealing with part of a big view. So I think you have to get to the stage where you're dealing with the larger view. For most directors, what you're bringing is a strategic viewpoint, an analysis viewpoint, and a management viewpoint. And if you don't have that strategic viewpoint, it's hard to be a director. So if you've been a VP of sales, okay, but how have you actually got involved in understanding what the strategy is if you spent the time with the strategic presentations, if you helped write it, that's the way to build up that knowledge is how can I build up my strategic nous? How can I take that and take that knowledge and build it up over top? But it is, you know, read books. There is a fantastic book if you're working in the games industry, called Up, down up, written by Kim Nordstrom. There is a great audio version, but you should read books, you should listen to podcasts, you should get different points of view because all the times you're building. Sorry, yes, I did the audio version of it because Kim didn't want to do it. But there are great books. Jason Schreier writes some really good books. Kim writes books. There are great ways to see different points of view, but see them quickly. And in doing that, you're building your overall strategic view. So you shouldn't be looking to be a director until you have that overall strategic view or that overall management view or that overall data view. I think it sits into those three parts and I've literally just made that up in this conversation. So I'm going to write it down afterwards and maybe I'll write a book about that. So how do you reach the stage of being an expert in one of those three fields? Then you can start to bring that to other people. Can you do it earlier in your career? I couldn't have done. I was a bit of a twat. I needed to learn a lot. I was overly confident. Early on in my career, I'd learned a little bit of humility and I had a particular boss that decided to make me humble by destroying me. But I do recognize that now that it was the right thing to do. So I couldn't have done it early. I needed to learn that humility, that understanding that I don't know the right answer to everything. So I couldn't have done it early. Maybe other people are much better than I was. But I look back in my kind of 20s and 30s, if I tried to do it, I wouldn't have been helpful. I needed to have my own battle scars because in doing that, you kind of got, yeah, okay, it's a lot harder than it looked. Making that hard decision. Getting firing somebody is a hard thing to do. So once you fired people, then you learn, I don't want to hire people unless I really need to hire them, because firing them is so painful. So, yes, you've got to have got those battle scars. And if you're, as a founder looking for directors that can help You I would want to see somebody with battle scars because those are interesting. I don't want to see somebody where it's all gone swimmingly and their very first business has been amazing because they'll believe it was down to their skill rather than luck and they happen to be in the right place at the right time. Interesting look at those battle scars. And I suppose that fits, doesn't it, with the relationship of advisor and able to help people sort of see around the corners and avoid the mistakes and is it moving to that area? Nick of advising let's say there's some founders listening to this podcast and they've recently started their business or they're going to be starting their business next year or so with some colleagues of theirs. Do they need advisors? Is that as an option? You'd say it's a must. In your opinion, when they're starting to think about how many or when. Or maybe it's after a year. What would be some milestones you could just give them for tips to say you don't need one immediately or you should get one immediately and this is how you should think about it as the company grows and scales, when you should formalize it from advisor to board, etc. I think everyone needs advisors. I think being a CEO is really lonely. Even if you're on a team of co founders, if one of you is a CEO, it's a really lonely job. You have days where you just need to complain about stuff and sometimes it's hard to complain to the team because, you know, with all the will in the world and I know many people, I know we're going to be completely open. I'm going to talk about all the problems I've never seen that actually work because it's so destabilizing. It's so scary when. But what happens if this deal doesn't happen? It's like, yeah, well, that's just. Yeah, it's 60% chance. You know, over time you build up that immunity to that uncertainty. But if you're doing it for the first time, it's really, really scary. So although it's good to be open with your team, there's too open. So I think CEOs and founder teams need advisors. They need advisors in areas that they're not as strong. So if you look at a team and go, great, these are all people that make great things together. But I don't really think they understand publishing and monetization. So can they have an advisor that brings a little bit of that knowledge in and you're rounding out the team with advisors that fill in those gaps. But sometimes a CEO just needs somebody to complain to. And the number of times I've been on a call and the end result is, it's a bit shit, isn't it? But next week it'll be a bit better. That's an okay outcome. You know, that's all right. You've done your job when you're doing that, and the CEO at the end, yeah, okay, fine, I'm a bit pissed off, but next week will be a little bit better. So at the start, you should pick general business mentors, business advisors, and specific functional advisors on the areas that your team is weaker at or needs particular help on. They can be very loose. You know, it is. There are a bunch of mentoring schemes. Sign up for mentoring schemes, sign up for accelerator schemes. You get sets of advice, you get kind of help that you want at a very early stage for free, efficiently paid for by an accelerator program. Those are all great. And sometimes people just help you because it's fun. And it is fun being a part of a cool startup, doing a crazy thing. It's like, yeah, I really do want to be along on that journey. As you survive, you need to formalize some of those relationships. When you're raising money, having a few solid, reputable advisors is really important because you're taking their credibility into your round. I've seen that a number of times. It's like, yeah, okay, so Phil supports this. All right, I'll take it a little bit more seriously because I trust Phil. I know that Phil knows what he's doing. You know, I know that Susan understands this sector incredibly. So if she says, this is good within the sector, all right, that's taken away 60% of my concerns. So whenever you're trying to do outward facing stuff, there is a benefit to having advisors, but you shouldn't be overly reliant on them. You know, nobody's going to invest because you've got a good group of advisors. It's just going to take away a couple of the reasons to say no. Now, as you evolve over time, there will come a point where you need a formal board. I would normally say that's the time when you take in the first institutional money. So not the angel money. You can get by with a nice chat with a bunch of people. When you're taking your first VC money, your first investment fund money, that's when you need a board because you need records. We made a decision at this point. You need a way to formalize the decision making process and make sure that it's appropriately written up and tracked and kind of measured over time. Now at that stage it's a pretty small board. Your first institutional money is probably one person from the institution, two or three people that small. Then you move on, you get the second round of money, you get the 10 to 15 million round, then maybe you've got two investors, you've got a founder, two founders, plus a non exec director or maybe two non exec directors. It evolves over time and then the nature of the directors that you need evolves over time. What you need at the start is somebody who's crazy, understands what it's like to live in a crazy chaotic world. By the time you're becoming a listed company, what you need is very, very different. You need somebody that understands formal governance processes that can keep you honest, can track you against those formal governance process processes. At that stage you need audit committees and remuneration committees and things like that. Those are very, very specialist jobs and there are some people who are excellent at it, but those are not the people who are necessarily the best person to have. When you're, when there's five of you in a room trying to make something really cool, the people coming in from outside, you've got to decide where you fit within this. Do you want to do the pure startups, in which case you're not going to get paid money, you're going to get shares and you're going to take a portfolio of bets and maybe some of them work out or do you want to do it to earn money, in which case focus on the bigger companies, focus on the listed companies, focus on building to the stage where you are receiving a salary for each. You have to be aware of your own skill set for that. That's how you make the decision to be honest. Over time it will be made for you. You won't get the job in the later stage companies if you're just startup because it would just. It comes across in that way, but you can save yourself some time by fixing it yourself. Nick, would you say that people should what probably focus on or they're going to, they're going to kind of naturally find roles. If they worked in startups, they're probably going to get a board at a startup, if they worked in mid or late stage companies, they're probably going to be focused on mid to late stage boards. Kind of. It's the experience that you're bringing, it's kind of easy to recognize it. I do think the charity way is a way in, you know, that's where you can break out of your zone of I do later stage, I do early stage. Because you're helping a charity and you're learning more. The other thing I would strongly recommend if people are doing this is angel investing. I think this is a great way to get into companies, to understand how companies operate. For those in the uk, some other countries as well, there are massive tax benefits for investing in companies. Even if it goes wrong, you end up getting 75, 80% of the money back through various tax credits. So I would strongly recommend people that are thinking of doing look at angel investing and if you're in the uk, it's a no brainer. If it goes wrong, you will get. This does not constitute financial advice. If you're investing in an early stage company, the tax credits will help. But in doing that, if you want to get into startups, that's one of the ways to build up that startup repertoire. But also actually you then find companies to work with and help and become part of the board later. If you're looking at that angel process, you're deciding whether to invest, you decided with a bunch of other people. If you feel you hit it off with the person, if you feel you hit it off with the founding team, then it's a really easy, it's a conversation to have going. Do you know what? I'd be open to being a kind of formal advisor or maybe I'd be open to being on the board and they may say no. But actually if they've hit it off and your advice has been valuable to them and you've been helpful, then that's a no brainer for them. They've done the interview is the last three months of work, the last 12 months of conversations. I do some of the startups I work with. I won't commit to a formal relationship at the start and we'll say, look, let's see where we are in 12 months. If we've both enjoyed it, if we both find it helpful, then we'll formalize it later. So I'd encourage people to be flexible. I think a great way in is through angel investing. You're seeing startups. If you're interested in angel investing, there are great angel groups who will show you, who will expose you to a whole bunch of different companies. You'll see them at different stages. There are kind of public facing platforms. There's, there's Cedars, there's Ventures Together, there's Odin, which give you access to a Wide range of companies. But then there are specialist groups. You'll find an angel group in a business sector that you're interested in or region that you're interested in and join them and learn from them and maybe as part of that you'll find somebody where going, actually, I really want to help you. It's not the way to make money. I'll be clear. Being a director, being on a board, director of a startup is not a way to make money. You are taking shares. You might make money in 10 years across a portfolio. But I do enjoy it. It's good, it's fun, it makes my skills much better. I am much better now than I was before I started investing and sitting on board. I like it. Great advice. We think a lot about interviewing and the assessment process in this podcast and advice to hiring managers. When you're interviewing potential board members to come onto the board or founders are asking the questions, do you have any particular questions? You'd say, look, these are really key questions or helpful questions to assess a fit. If you've got to choose between people, by far the most important thing in both directions is cultural fit. So this is somebody you want to have a really open, honest relationship with. It has to be built on a relationship of trust. If you do not trust them, if your gut says you don't trust them, end it both ways. You're just going to have a long drawn out. It's going to be a pain, it's going to be difficult. You have to have that fundamental feeling of trust and it can be built up. It is. Most of the people I work with I've known for a little while. I've been talking to them for a while. I've gone through feedback loops with them. Them. I've seen how they've reacted to feedback that I've given them. They've also seen what's the nature of the feedback that I'll give. Is that useful to them, is it not? So I didn't do that well with the board sites because that was very much a formal process. I have done much better with. I'm evolving with you over time. We're working together, we're trying it out and then we'll see where we get to. No, I think that's great advice about cultural fit, listening to your gut. And I think that was advice I was given by an early stage founder actually about something completely different. I remember them saying that, they said your gut instinct works on a subconscious level, that you may never understand why something is true, but it will do, it'll come out. If you make a decision against your gut, it'll come out in a year or two's time. You're like, oh, this is why it didn't work out. But that's really interesting advice how that consistently comes up. Nick, thanks so much for all this. Is there anything else you'd like to say about any of the investor groups or websites? Anything else you're involved in that you just want to share or shout out on the pod while we're here? Yeah, I mean in terms of angel investing, go and look at UK BAA over in the UK for sure. I can't give you websites and other places, but talk to people that are already doing it, learn from them. I strongly encourage everybody should do some angel investing. You've got a little bit of cash, invest in a company and learn about a new sector. I don't invest outside of games now, it turns out I wasn't very good investing outside of games. I was just dumb money at that stage. So I only invest in games. But I do like investing in. Well, I know a bit about this, but I don't know that much about it. Great. So how do I learn about TikTok in games? Well, I actually invested in a games company that was focused on TikTok. How do I learn about AI? Well, actually I'll work with a generative AI company and start to see how they're producing and seeing the problems that they're going through. That's real learning. I think as, as an industry professional, you should look at angel investing as a way to really widen your viewpoint. So strongly encourage everybody to write a little angel check. Doesn't have to be a lot, it can be a little bit. But then take it seriously and learn from that company. I like it, Nick. I'm inspired to try that myself. Enojra is already in that. I learned a lot about WebGL and WebGPU. Exactly. For that reason I was investing in a company in IT and I didn't know a lot about it and then I became an expert or not an expert in a very short period of time. So I can attest to that. Nick, thank you so much for your time today. I think, you know, there's a lot of dense stuff in there. We'd love to. We'll unpack in the newsletter as well about your advice around becoming a board member who it could be for ways to get your feet wet, as it were, and get involved. So great. Thank you from us on the podcast. But also, and I know you get this a lot, but thank you from the industry. Right. Because your work, which you haven't talked about there in terms of getting the government level sort of funding into the UK game scene, is well known about. And so I think particularly everyone in the UK who's in games owes Nick a big thank you and a pint if you see him or a coffee or something like that. So keep up the good work. Nick, we are big fans of yours from the sidelines. Hopefully our listeners are gaining all sorts of knowledge here and some of them you might see. We hope one day you say, I became a board member after listening to that podcast and being inspired. So thank you, Nick. Absolutely. Thank you Nick. Thank you. And that would be a great outcome if a couple more companies get helped. That would be a great outcome. That's another episode of of Mission One, the Executive Edge. If you found this valuable hit, subscribe and leave us a review. It helps other professionals discover the show, have a question about executive hiring, or want to share your own experience? Reach out on LinkedIn or visit Mission1IO podcast. We read everything and your stories often inspire future episodes. The Executive Edge is brought to you by Mission One, where we specialize in placing senior leaders at tech, entertainment and AI companies. Learn more at Mission1io. Thanks for listening and we hope to see you again soon on the Executive Edge.