Board Meetings are vital IMHO. As a Founder I always found them super useful, a stake in the ground each month which you can’t avoid to force oneself to see what progress one has REALLY made — or not.

Furthermore it enforces some discipline (and practise!) to deal with stakeholders in a business; but board meetings are not very popular with some early stage Founders — and even undervalued by some angel investors.

After the first round of external money in to your startup (other than accelerator money) it’s vital you have monthly board meetings; it shows professionalism and helps you act as a real CEO for your 2, 3, or 4 person tin-pot startup.

As an investor, it helps to avoid Founders going off the rails and/or spending where they shouldn’t or barking up the wrong tree.

All that said, boards should be kept small and value-add. An angel investor wanting to go on your board just because they have invested, is not acceptable to my mind. They must be bringing value to the business, not just giving oversight to their cash, because as Max hints at, the wrong board member is as bad or worse than having no board at all.