Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland, and we are here in front of Elliott Bay in Seattle, Washington, at the Zillow headquarters.

This is another segment in our boards series with us to help talk about all things boards.

Private and public are Don LaPore, former chairman and CEO of Drugstore.com.

She sits on the boards today of AOL, Real Networks, and Coupons.com, has been on a lot of other boards, including eBay and Walmart.

Also joining us is Amy Batinsky, CMO of the Zillow Group here in Seattle, and she is our host.

She sits on two private boards, Hotels Tonight, and Avo.

And our final guest today is Michelle Wilson. She's a long time SVP at Amazon and General Counsel,

and sits on the board of a Zendesk down in the Bay Area. Welcome to you all. Thanks for having to be here.

So let's talk about boards, and I want to start with the sort of difference between

private boards and public.

First off, let me just back way up.

Why do it?

Why did you choose to join a board the first time out?

Don, maybe let's start with you.

So I spent 21 years at Charles Schwab and I felt that since I was growing up inside the company,

I needed to get some, just learn some things outside of the people that I interacted with

every day. I wanted to learn about new industries. I wanted interactions with other people,

especially CEOs. You just learn a tremendous amount. And that was part of my own kind of development.

So I worked really hard.

It took a long time.

I networked for a long time, got on my first public board in probably about

1997, 1998.

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