Hacker News Reader

Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

> David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development, joined the Uber board of directors in 2013, and has served on it ever since.

Not super related to this story, but I always have to wonder: why do powerful people join boards? What's in it for them? It seems like an awful lot of work, responsibility, and potential for conflict of interest. What do board members get out of it?

View on HN

in this case, David Drummond was presumably the steward of Google's 250M+ investment. The reason investors join the board is so they can help the company succeed and make sure their interests are being protected

If Drummond got 0.1% Equity as a Director, it would've been worth $3.4M the day he joined and if he wasn't diluted, it would be worth $40M today. (I realize that both of those assumptions are unlikely, but it's still interesting as an example)

It's pretty unlikely that Drummond got any Uber equity. He isn't an independent director, he's representing Google as an investor on Uber's board.

This is a good point -- I was thinking of our process to secure independent directors.

Influence, and they also get paid - as much as $500k/year for public corporations, and equity at startups.

It's much less work than you'd think.

>Directors of Fortune 500 companies received median pay of $234,000 in 2011. Directorship is a part-time job. A recent National Association of Corporate Directors study found directors averaging just 4.3 hours a week on board work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors

Reply on news.ycombinator.com