I’ve led and been a part of many board meetings over the years. I recently put together a primer for the CEOs in our portfolio on how to run an effective early-stage board meeting. I thought I would share it here with other founders as well.

To set some context, here are a few things I believe to be true about board meetings and early-stage founders:

• Board meetings, at early stages, are viewed as a major hassle by founders. I've been there — we're busy, we don’t have a team of people to help prepare board materials, and there are lots of messy parts of the business that make us feel vulnerable.
• Founders often over-prepare for board meetings, and much of that preparation comes in the form of a beautiful deck that tries to overshadow the messy parts of the business, turning the board meeting into a sales pitch / pep rally.

So this for the early-stage founders who have better things to do than make decks.

Board meetings at the earliest stages (pre-Series A) are about honesty and transparency, and they require almost no preparation. You don’t need a deck. You don’t need polish. We know you’re working hard — not everything is going to be perfectly buttoned up, and you don’t have a team of people to prepare board materials. You just need to let your board members inside the business. Here's how to have a totally sufficient board meeting with zero prep:

1. Start with Money

• How much is in the bank right now?
  
• Screen-share your online bank account. Look at your balance today, 30, 60, and 90 days ago.
  
• If you’ve done any financial modeling, great—show it. If not, we can back-of-the-envelope your burn rate and runway. That’s fine.
  

2. Revenue, Customers, & GTM

• How many paying customers do you have?
  
• How much are they paying you?
  
• What’s your MRR / ARR right now? Show us on a per-customer basis.
  
• What does your sales funnel look like? How are you reaching out to new customers? What’s working and what’s not?
  
• However you're tracking revenue and customers (spreadsheet, Stripe, Post-its)—just show it to us. No need to tidy it up.
  

3. Product Snapshot

• Let us see what you’ve built. Tell us about the next feature you’re going to deploy.
  
• Open your app. Show us what’s new.
  
• Let your CTO or whoever owns product walk us through it.
  
• Click around, show a feature or two, give us a peek at the backend if it’s useful.
  

4. Engagement

• What methods and metrics do you use to track customer/user engagement?
  
• How often are they logging in?  What are they doing once they’re in?
  
• If you know, how much time are they spending in the app?
  
• What are they saying about the experience?
  
• Is your product making people’s lives better? Is there anyone who would be mad if you took it away? Don’t be afraid to say “no”. Product market fit takes time. 

5. Co-Founder Dynamics

• How do your workdays look? Do you sit next to each other? Work remotely? Text? Slack?
  
• How do you set goals? Do you use OKRs, some other system, or just jam each week? If you have something to show, great!
  
• How are you getting along? Founder dynamics are tough, and if they are bad, your board can help!
  
• Simply tell us how you operate as humans trying to build something together.
  

6. What’s On Your Mind

• What are the top 2–3 things you’re spending the most time thinking or talking about?
  
• What’s keeping you up at night?
  
• This helps us understand what stage you’re really in.
  

7. What (If Anything) Do You Need From the Board?

• Intros? Hiring help? A sounding board on pricing?
  
• No asks? That’s fine. We’re busy too. Just tell us that.
  
• This is your chance to make use of us—if you want to.
  

8. Finish with the Future

• What’s the next most exciting milestone?
  
• When will you run out of money?
  
• What needs to be true before for you to be fundable or profitable?
  
• Great question for the board: “What do you think we need to accomplish before our next round?

That’s it. Just walk through this list. Show us what’s really going on. That’s all we want.

You don’t need to prepare slides—you need to open the hood and let us look around. We think you’re awesome, and it’s early. We won’t get too carried away with your wins, or beat you up about your losses. Show us the data!