In order for you to understand how and why Telamon utilizes public company best practices to organize its board and plan for the future, I must start our story from the beginning.

The Origins of Success
Telamon was founded in 1985 by Albert Chen, a first-generation immigrant from Taiwan.
In 1968, upon completion of his undergraduate degree from National Chengchi University, as well as the requisite two-year military stint, Albert came to the United States to look for work. He had a contingency plan in his back pocket in case he was unable to find work: an acceptance letter to Portland State College (now University) for a master’s degree. At 26 years old, he found himself at the University of California, Berkeley, sleeping on the couch of a family friend who was in the midst of the school’s Ph.D. program. Albert had no job, no money and no housing. After looking for work in the Bay Area for two months, his meager savings having run dry, Albert was fruitlessly answering want ads in pretty much any industry just to make ends meet. Having failed to find a job, he moved to Portland, Ore., to go to school.
The rest is basically history.
What is important about Albert Chen’s humble beginnings, and how do they apply to Telamon’s board evolution? The humility of starting from nothing, from knowing that there are processes available that are better than what you can accomplish on your own and people you can call on for help, is a major reason why Telamon has been so successful in instituting a board in the first place, let alone transitioning to emulating the best practices of public boards.
Insider to Outsider
Albert started off with an insider board of directors, as many privately held companies do. He wanted some peer guidance to assure him that what he thought would be a great path forward for the company was not an exercise in futility. To accomplish this, he invited some trusted friends and acquaintances whom he highly respected to form Telamon’s first board. Members included a professor of entrepreneurship at a local university and a research scientist turned patent attorney, who also happened to be a close family friend. To be fair, this was not what most would call an actual board. However, it served as a platform for Albert to test whether or not decisions he was making for the business were sound and fiscally responsible in both the short and long term.
Telamon’s board has always had three or more insiders, one being Albert himself, along with other shareholders or TelaÂmon executives. Currently, Telamon’s board maintains three inside directors, with one seat held by Albert and the other two held by his two children, both of whom are in the business. The outside directors increased from two to three, and finally to four, which is where the organization sits today. The current outside directors include two local family business owners, an individual with private equity experience and financial teaching experience at the collegiate and post-graduate levels, and an individual with significant start-up experience.
The Benefits of Best Practices
Telamon finds and recruits appropriate directors in a way similar to many high-functioning boards: We start with a list of attributes and qualifications that we believe are important to have on our board. Shareholders and directors individually rank the list, which is then consolidated with the most prevalent characteristics at the top. Then, we go to market to look for personnel who fit those criteria, a common practice in best-in-class board recruitment. We are extremely diligent in this process, waiting to find the right candidate rather than just settling upon a good candidate for the sake of filling a slot. Because Telamon is privately held, we also have the luxury of not living up to Wall Street, even though we like to abide by best public company practices.
In addition to recruitment best practices, Telamon’s board also follows a prescribed annual cadence, whereby specific items are addressed at specific intervals. This ensures that major initiatives are never missed and ancillary items can be added if necessary.
One unique characteristic of Telamon’s outside board is the way they are compensated. They are provided an annual base compensation with an accelerator based on company performance, which focuses the fiscal responsibility on increasing shareholder value and taking hard looks at what management may want to pursue versus what is best for the shareholders. The two concerns are not always in lockstep with one another.
Additional benefits of adopting best practices early in your organization’s existence include gaining familiarity with the types of analyses that are beneficial for future transactions. Our outside-led board not only asks difficult questions but also demands to see the proof of our answers, often via sensitivity analyses. This enables our management team to see, defend and prove the good, better and best outcomes for quarterly or annual objectives, as well as potential acquisitions, divestitures or other major organizational events. These analyses also help our CEO determine the initiatives that are important enough to warrant further conversation.
Living Up to the Vision
Perhaps the most important reason that Telamon strives to meet or exceed the best practices of public companies is our vision statement: We strive to be a load-bearing support across generations, viewing ourselves as stewards of an asset, one that was entrusted to us, and that we also hope to entrust to others throughout generations. Good governance gives us the best chance to fight nepotism, cronyism, entitlement, laziness, distraction and all the other vices that creep up in family businesses. As the largest minority business in Indiana, we hope that ingraining these best practices early on will give future generations the foundation to not only grow, but also continue serving as that load-bearing support for generations to come.