[jmspring]

Before addressing eliminating meetings based on content and goal, how about looking at the structure of the organization and management teams (in startups) that require useless meetings?

One startup I was an early engineer for had a management team that developed a need to have daily all hands yet still planned on weekends in the schedule. It wasn't obvious at the start, but it crept up over time.

Miss an arbitrary deadline? Meeting. Someone in management forgot to tie their shoe? Meeting.

Sometimes there are just some people that require meetings to justify themselves.

This particular startup eventually had an ok exit (sub 4x multiple) with only four of the original twenty people still there. One of the main needy meeting culprits was not one of them.