Managing Seed stage board meetings

Board meetings at the Seed stage are simple: they run a couple of hours every 6–8 weeks,  and the agenda usually mirrors the same conversations happening weekly — or even daily — between founders and early investors.

What makes them valuable is not the formality, but the practice. Board meetings give founders the opportunity to step back from the day-to-day and think critically about the company’s strategy, priorities, and progress.

Done right, board meetings are not about reporting progress or “selling” the company’s story. They are working sessions to ask: Are we focused on the right things? Is the plan still the right plan? Do we have the right people on the team? Where are we falling short, and how do we adjust? 

At Seed, these questions lay the foundation for the discipline, intellectual honesty, and leadership that every great CEO will need down the road.

Timing & cadence

• Seed stage: informal but regular. Every 6–8 weeks is ideal. Even if you don’t have a formal board, meet with your lead investors.

• Series A stage: Every 8 weeks. Duration: 2–3 hours. Executives hired attend the open session.

Purpose of the meeting

• To answer: Are we doing the right things? Do we have the right people?
  
• To review: How are we performing against our plan?
  
• To discuss: Is this still the right plan with the right measurable goals?
  
• To get: feedback from people you trust.

Important: This is your meeting. You should lead your board the same way you lead your team. Don’t think of this as a sales session to impress investors. You won’t scare experienced board members with bad news — you’ll only hurt your credibility if you hide it.

Style & leadership

• Lead, don’t just present. Boards evaluate CEOs by what they choose to focus on and how they lead discussions.
  
• Radical transparency. Bring the good, the bad, and the ugly. The only way the board can help is if they know the truth. Give trust to get trust.
  

• Consistency. Use a repeatable format for updates so trends are easy to follow.

Suggested agenda

1. CEO update (10 minutes max)

• Highlights & lowlights in your own words.
  
• State of the company & market.
  
• The 1–2 issues that keep you up at night.
  (If the meeting ended after this section, the board should mostly understand where things stand.)

2. Functional area overviews (1–2 slides each)

• Team: current org chart, open roles, morale, attrition.
• Customer discovery: current ICP Hypothesis, number of conversations, with who, key learnings relative to desperation, and first 10 design partners. 
• Product/engineering: Prototype status or MVP status, clear customer needs, timeline for deliverables.
• Market: Any key news or relevant data that impacts our strategic thinking: timing of launch, criteria to launch, demand generation, awareness metrics, top of funnel.
• Priorities: What are the top 3 things we want to accomplish next?
• Finance: 12-month operating plan, spend vs. budget, bookings.

3. Deep dive on one area
Each meeting, choose one function for deeper discussion. Example: customer discovery conversations, sales pipeline qualification, product roadmap alignment, or recruiting. The CEO leads the plan, reviews metrics, and asks for board feedback.

4. Closed session
Directors only — compensation for new and existing employees, sensitive topics such as fundraising or M&A discussions, and CEO feedback.

Series Seed priorities

• Find PMF.  It’s the only thing that really matters. 
• Value Hypothesis. Can we validate our hypothesis for the Desperate Who?
  
• Customer discovery: volume of conversations. ICP discipline. Avoid “happy ears.” Distinguish interest from desperation.
  
• References: secure 10 early evangelists to make the jump from prototype to true MVP.
  
• Finance: disciplined burn management; measurable quarterly targets, even if not perfect. Run as many experiments as possible with the funds we have.

Final thought

Setting an agenda, framing issues honestly, leading the discussion — these are the fundamentals of managing a board. And the earlier you start to refine these skills, the stronger those muscles will be when the boardroom is more complex and the stakes are higher. 

If you treat these sessions as a chance to align, learn, and sharpen your plan, they’ll become an accelerant — not a distraction.