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5. đ˘ How to Gaslight Your Board with Delayed and Rewritten Meeting Minutes
In this satirical guide to startup governance dysfunction, we explore how to delay, rewrite, and distribute conflicting board minutes to keep your board guessingâand your D&O insurance for startups trembling. If your last board meeting ended with âaction items,â this post will help you turn them into vague memories instead.

From âDid we really approve that?â to âIâm pretty sure I blacked out.â
đ¨ Disclaimer: This guide is purely satirical and intended for entertainment purposes only. Any attempt to follow this advice might significantly increase friction with your board of directors, complicate your startup governance, or void your D&O insurance for startups. Proceed responsiblyâor better yet, donât.
đŞ When in Doubt, Rewrite the Past
Welcome back to The Startup CEOâs Guide to Mastering Boardroom Chaos, the only leadership series brave enough to say what everyoneâs thinkingâbut in a satirical tone that lets us all pretend weâre joking.
Today, we turn our attention to that unsung post-meeting power play: the board minutes.
Letâs be honestâyour investors are lovely people with sharp questions, long memories, and an unsettling obsession with âaccountability.â After every board meeting, they might be tempted to follow up. Ask for data. Refer to things you promised. Heaven forbid, hold you to them.
But what ifâjust what ifâyou could buy yourself a little breathing room? What if your board spent less time scrutinizing your roadmap and more time wondering whether they dreamed that roadmap up themselves?
Thatâs where the minutes come in.
This isnât about malicious intent. Youâre not trying to deceive anyone. Youâre simply reshaping the narrative into something more⌠manageable. A slight delay here, a strategic rephrasing there, and suddenly your board isnât quite sure what they agreed toâbut it sounds plausible. And with any luck, theyâll start questioning their own recollection instead of your decision-making.
In this fifth installment, weâll explore how to delay, edit, and reinterpret board minutes to maintain your most valuable asset: plausible deniability.
Youâre not gaslighting. Youâre just protecting everyoneâs mental healthâand, arguably, your D&O insurance for startups.
đ°ď¸ 1: Delay Is the Best Policy
Letâs start with the basics: timing. The golden rule of board minutes is to never let them arrive while the board still remembers what actually happened.
Ideally, donât send them at all. Just let them drift silently into the same administrative black hole as your Q3 hiring plan. But if someone follows up (usually that one board member who treats governance like itâs a hobby), then and only thenâsend them. Casually. Two months late. On a Friday. At 6:45 PM.
To maximize confusion, vary the format each time:
- A Google Doc with âSuggestionsâ left unresolved.
- A PDF titled final_FINAL_draft_approved_NOT.pdf
- A screenshot of your handwritten notes, taken at an angle that shows mostly your laptop keyboard.
- A Slack message with no context: âAttaching minutes here (pls disregard typos)â.
This tactic achieves two things:
- Your board will spend the first 10 minutes of the next board meeting discussing where the minutes are.
- By the time they finally read them, the moments theyâre meant to document will feel like a fever dream.
Sample Boardroom Dialogue:
Board Member: âDid anyone ever receive the minutes from the April meeting?â
CEO: âPretty sure I sent them.â
Board Member: âTo whom?â
CEO: âI think I shared the Google Drive link in the calendar invite comments.â
Board Member: âThe meeting invite that got deleted?â
CEO: âExactly.â
âď¸ 2: âAs AgreedâŚâ â Your Magical Phrase for Inventing Consensus
There are few phrases in the English language more powerful than âAs agreed.â Itâs short. Itâs confident. And best of all, it makes everyone feel like they missed somethingâbut that itâs probably their fault.
Board members hate appearing forgetful. So when you preface a bombshell decision with âAs agreed by the boardâŚâ in the minutes, most wonât challenge it. Theyâll just assume they zoned out during one of your 27-slide budget walkthroughs.
Pro tip: attribute decisions to absent membersâespecially if theyâre in favor of it.
Sample Boardroom Dialogue:
Investor: âWhy do the minutes say we approved a TikTok influencer campaign?â
CEO: âAs agreed in the meeting.â
Investor: âI thought we said weâd review it later.â
CEO: âRight. And we agreed that I could proceed in the meantime.â
đ ď¸ 3: Fix It in Post â Rewriting Reality One Line at a Time
Now that the board meeting is over, itâs time to shape that chaos into a polished, unanimous outcome.
Welcome to the world of creative transcription, where board minutes become your tool for post-meeting refinement. Omit objections. Condense debate into consensus. Upgrade passing remarks into full-blown strategy.
Also, always remember to use passive voice:
- âIt was decidedâŚâ
- âConsensus appeared to emergeâŚâ
These phrases are your safety net. No fingerprints. No accountability.
Sample Boardroom Dialogue:
Board Member: âThis says we unanimously supported the new sales commission plan?â
CEO: âYes, after a robust discussion.â
Board Member: âI said it was a terrible idea.â
CEO: âAnd I deeply appreciated that input. It helped us refine the plan we ultimately aligned on.â
Board Member: ââŚIâm going to start recording these meetings.â
đ§ 4: One Board, Many Minutes â Divide and Confuse
If you truly want to sow long-term doubt, donât stop at rewritingâfragment.
Send multiple versions of the board minutes:
- Finance gets one version.
- The observer gets a redacted version.
- The new investor gets the âcleanâ PDFâmissing pages 3â4.
Never use centralized storage. Let every board member maintain their own archive of half-remembered board meetings, saved under filenames like:
Minutes_final_v3_latest_edits_revised_FOR_APPROVAL_but_not_final.pdf
And when a new board member joins?
Just forward a handful of disjointed emails and say, âThis should give you the context.â
Sample Boardroom Dialogue:
New Board Member: âIs there a central archive of past minutes?â
CEO: âKind of. Theyâre all in email. Just search your inbox for âminutesâ and ignore the ones marked âdraftâ or âpls disregard.ââ
New Board Member: ââŚbut I wasnât on the distribution list back then.â
CEO: âAh. Then you probably missed the context.â
â
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đŹ Closing: Reality Is Overrated Anyway
And there you have itâyour crash course in minute-based misdirection.
By mastering the fine art of strategic delays, creative phrasing, selective editing, and chaotic distribution, youâve not only redefined how board minutes are writtenâyouâve redefined time itself. Who said governance had to be linear?
With any luck, your board members now spend their days wondering whether theyâre misremembering, overlooking, or simply not smart enough to keep up. Which, letâs be honest, is far more productive than asking what actually happened in the last board meeting.
Remember: the goal isnât deception. Itâs a calmer, quieter boardroom⌠achieved through mild disorientation and administrative sleight of hand.
Coming up next in The Startup CEOâs Guide to Mastering Boardroom Chaos:
đ 6. The Art of the Surprise: How (Not) to Sync Board Members Before Meetings
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