No, it's a way of dealing with the issue of deadlocked decisions between co-founders if equity is split evenly. Usually in the case of a deadlocked decision be

No, it's a way of dealing with the issue of deadlocked decisions between co-founders if equity is split evenly. Usually in the case of a deadlocked decision between co-founders, you can resort to a board vote, after which you resort to a vote among shareholders. If, say, two co-founders split equity and they're both on the board, then a disagreement could lead to a problem. If, however, only one of them (usually the CEO) is on the board, then there's no deadlock there. Sometimes people recommend giving one co-founder (again, usually the CEO) one extra share so their vote can break a deadlock. But putting only the CEO on a board is another way to deal with that problem without having to worry about extra shares.