Many people think startups should be devoid of most meetings. In large companies, people have meetings just to discuss other meetings. At a startup, it should be all doers and not administrators. Even with doers, meetings are important for alignment, communication, and calibration.
Here are seven ideas for types of meetings in startups:
- Daily check-ins for 10 minutes where each person stands and answers the following questions: what did you accomplish yesterday, what are you going to accomplish today, and do you have any roadblocks
- Weekly tactical meetings where you discuss KPIs, what was accomplished last week, and what will be accomplished next week
- Weekly show-and-tells for product-centric companies where new features/products/ideas are shown, discussed, and cheered
- Weekly company-wide lunches with no agenda other than to hang out and enjoy each other’s company
- Monthly strategic meetings where you discuss big topics that take 30+ minutes each
- Quarterly off-site where the previous quarter/year is reviewed and the next quarter/year is planned, goals are set, and big items tackled
- Quarterly one-on-one check-ins where four questions are answered: what did you accomplish last quarter, what are you going to accomplish next quarter, how will you improve, and how are you following the values?
This might feel like too many meetings but each has a specific goal and is short with most well under one hour. The net effect is that meetings are more meaningful, take up less time overall, and people look forward to them.
What else? What are some other types of meetings in startups?
David Cummings on Startups 
Good summary David. Thanks for sharing. I have found that including the entire company on everything from wins and losses in sales to accomplishments and hurdles in product and technology, in real time, cuts down on meeting time. We spend far less time explaining issues and more time solving them. We have many short and frequently impromptu meetings rather than the aforementioned meetings to schedule other meetings. Very similar to your daily check-ins but a little more frequent.
I live for the day we move away from monthly reviews to quarterly reviews. I guess that’s when you know you have made it!
If you haven’t already I think you’d like “Death by Meeting”, by Patrick Lencioni. It’s a super fast read (fable style) and does a great job highlighting the types of meetings you should be having.
And of course if you need a tool to manage the info coming out of your meetings we might be able to put you in touch with the right folks 🙂 .