Startup Board Meeting Template
The pre-read, the decision requests and the minutes, plus the register that says who can actually approve each item.
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Decision Requests
[Company] board meeting, [date]
The agenda, written as requests. Anything that cannot be written this way is reporting, and it belongs in the pre-read.
Decision 1
The decision, in one sentence: Written so that yes and no each mean something specific.
Who approves it: From Authority Map, with the clause. Management, the board, or the board plus the separate written consent of the preferred holders.
Why now: The date or event that makes this a decision for this meeting.
| Option | The case for it | The case against | Who argued for it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | |||
| B | |||
| Do nothing |
Recommendation: Yours, with the reasoning in three sentences.
If the answer is no: What happens instead, and by when.
Reversibility: Cheap to undo, or not.
Time requested: __ minutes. Total the minutes across the decisions and compare them to the length of the meeting.
A board meeting is expensive and most of it is reporting. Ardwick Systems, a fictional sensor company, held four two-hour meetings in a year. Of those 480 scheduled minutes, 374 went on presenting material the board had already been sent. Decisions got 58 minutes across the whole year, about fourteen and a half a meeting. The fix is not a shorter deck. It is one question asked of every item before the agenda exists: who can actually approve this.
There are three answers. You, which means it should not be on the agenda. The board, by a vote at a quorate meeting or a consent every director signs, since Delaware's corporation law makes a majority of directors a quorum and requires unanimity to act without meeting. Or the board plus the separate written consent of your preferred holders. Ardwick checked twelve recurring matters: five were the chief executive's alone, four needed the board, and three needed more than the board.
That third list is in your own certificate of incorporation. The NVCA model charter reserves debt above a threshold, changing the number of board seats, adopting an equity plan and amending the charter, and offers language voiding an act taken without that consent. Ardwick approved $1.4 million of debt against a $500,000 threshold with the board alone. This pack writes that list down once, then builds the agenda from it. The investor update template covers the monthly note to everyone else.
What's in the pack
Authority Map
One row per recurring matter, the body whose approval it needs, and the clause in your own charter that says so.
Decision Requests
The agenda as requests: the decision in a sentence, the approving body, the options with the case for each, and what happens if the answer is no.
Pre-read
Everything the board would otherwise be told out loud, under 1,200 words, sent four working days ahead of the meeting.
Board Narrative
The three or four paragraphs a director should be able to repeat afterwards, with what went wrong above the outlook rather than below it.
Minutes Draft
Written from the decision log rather than a transcript, recording the resolution, the approving body, the vote and any recusal.
Metric Pack sheet
Six to eight metrics with the definition as computed, this period, prior period, plan and variance, held constant between meetings.
Action Register
One row per action with an owner by name, a date, and how many agendas it has survived. A row with no name is a note.
Decision Log
What was decided, by which body, on what authority, whether a consent was needed, and what the decision turned out to be worth.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Install the pack in River so the agent can work from your own meetings, or take the blank Word and CSV files away and fill them in yourself.
- 2
Send the meetings and the charter
River times your last four agendas against what they produced, and reads your certificate of incorporation for the matters that need more than a board vote.
- 3
Route every item, then write the requests
Each matter lands in the Authority Map with its clause. Anything management can decide leaves the agenda, and the rest becomes a decision request.
- 4
Send the pre-read, then minute the decisions
The pre-read goes out four working days ahead. Afterwards the minutes are drafted from the decision log, so they take minutes rather than a week.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. The whole pack downloads as Word documents and CSV sheets with no signup and no credit card. "Edit with AI" is the optional path where the agent reads your past meetings and corporate documents and fills the sheets in. The other packs sit in the template library.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the pre-read, decision requests, narrative, minutes and method document, and CSV (.csv) for the four sheets, zipped together. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets, with nothing to convert.
What does 'Edit with AI' actually do?
It creates a free River account and installs this exact pack as a private workspace. The agent opens ready to read your last few board meetings and your corporate documents, and it builds the authority map and the action register before drafting any agenda.
Is this legal advice about my charter?
No. The pack records which body your own documents say approves each matter, with the clause, so the question stops being answered from memory. Where something has already been done on the wrong authority it says so and routes it to counsel, which is the point at which a lawyer is worth the money. The same charter's investor obligations sit in the information rights pack.
Where does the board deck fit?
The pre-read replaces it. If your board expects slides, generate them from the narrative and the metric pack afterwards so the two cannot disagree, and send them as reference material. Sending both means the deck gets read and the pre-read is wasted.
Who is this template for?
Founders of venture-backed companies with a real board, usually from the first priced round onward. It fits alongside a startup workspace. If you are reading the terms that created the board, the term sheet explainer covers those.
Does an option grant need to go through the board?
Yes. Granting equity is a board decision under Delaware law, needing a specific consent for the recipient, share count and strike price, not just a mention in the minutes. Track the consent itself, the vesting math and exercise deadlines in the option grant administration pack, separate from this pack's own decision log.
Run a board meeting that produces decisions
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River and have your last four meetings timed and your charter read first.
Edit with AI