Executive Briefing
Louis Lehot, Silicon Valley Corporate Attorney
In this executive briefing, I feature Louis Lehot, a Silicon Valley corporate attorney, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, and one of the newest board members of the CFO Executive Forum. The point of the briefing is not his resume, strong as it is. It is something harder to measure: Louis is one of the best-connected people in the Valley, and he gives without keeping score.
What Louis Lehot does
Louis Lehot advises founders, management teams, and investors from company formation to liquidity. His work spans venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, and IPOs, the full arc of a company’s life. Before joining Foley & Lardner, he founded the Silicon Valley boutique firm L2 Counsel. Chambers ranks him in venture capital and emerging growth, and Inc named him one of its most inspiring leaders to follow.
He also writes a widely read weekly Silicon Valley docket, sits on boards and councils at the center of the tech and finance community, and connects founders, investors, and operators across it. That reach is the reason he belongs on the board of a room built for senior finance leaders.
Why connectors make the best board members
The clearest takeaway from this briefing is simple. The best board members are not just experts. They are connectors. Louis brings both. He has closed hundreds of the deals CFOs care about, and he gives introductions and judgment without keeping a tally. That is what the Give and Take philosophy looks like in practice, and it is the idea Open Future Forum is built on: the people who give the most to a room are the ones who make it worth attending.
The CFO Executive Forum board
When you build a room for senior finance leaders, the first thing to get right is the people whose judgment sets the standard for everyone who follows. That is why the forum starts with a board.
- Christina Bui, VP, Managed Business Solutions, Robert Half, co-chair
- Murray Newlands, Founder, Open Future Forum, co-chair
- Louis Lehot, Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP, board member
- Ellie Yashiro, Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank, board member
Between them, the board covers finance leadership search, legal, and banking. Recruit a small, trusted core first, then let it vouch for the rest. A community with a credible spine grows on warm referral. One without it grows on cold outreach, which is slow and brings in the wrong people.
Where the CFO Executive Forum fits in Open Future Forum
The CFO Executive Forum is an invitation-only group for senior finance leaders. It is part of Open Future Forum, the Silicon Valley executive community I founded in 2019. Open Future Forum runs two tiers. Forum Select is the private, invitation-only tier: off-the-record dinners in San Francisco and Palo Alto for C-suite executives and board directors, organized around peer rooms so a CFO sits with CFOs. Forum Events is the open tier: larger public gatherings, including panels, for the broader AI and technology community, and often the natural first step before Forum Select. Dinners are the heart of the CFO group, with no agenda, no recording, and no pitch.
Questions people ask
Who is Louis Lehot?
Louis Lehot is a Silicon Valley corporate attorney and a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP. He advises founders, management teams, and investors from company formation to liquidity, across venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, and IPOs. He founded the boutique firm L2 Counsel before joining Foley, is ranked by Chambers in venture capital and emerging growth, and serves as a board member of the CFO Executive Forum.
What is the CFO Executive Forum?
The CFO Executive Forum is an invitation-only group for senior finance leaders, part of Open Future Forum, the Silicon Valley executive community founded by Murray Newlands in 2019.
Who runs the CFO Executive Forum?
It is co-chaired by Christina Bui of Robert Half and Murray Newlands of Open Future Forum, with Louis Lehot of Foley & Lardner and Ellie Yashiro of Silicon Valley Bank as board members.
What is the Give and Take philosophy?
It is the idea that the people who give the most to a room, through introductions, judgment, and help offered without keeping score, are the ones who make it worth attending. It is the principle Open Future Forum and its CFO dinners are built on.
How do you join the CFO Executive Forum?
Membership is by invitation or personal referral, reviewed by the board. You can request an invitation through Open Future Forum.
Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum, a Partner at IA Seed Ventures, and a Partner at Tilden Family Office Group. He is the author of Online Marketing: A User’s Manual (Wiley), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and his writing has appeared in Forbes, Inc., Time, and Entrepreneur. He writes Murray’s Newsletter, read by more than 50,000 operators and investors.
