Question: Under what conditions would it make sense for a pre-seed stage CEO to give a board seat to his co-founder CTO/VP Engineering? What might be the positives/negatives? Especially if the CTO/VPE has more experience with dealing with VCs than the CEO?

If you think your co-founder would make a good fellow director, then put him on the board. With a company as young as yours, do what’s best to run your business and don’t worry too much about what potential investors may think later. When you decide to take some venture investment, you can sit down and decide what makes sense for the board at that time.

While helpful that your co-founder has some relevant VC experience, it’s not necessary for him to be on the board in order to interface with investors. Most of my board meetings have company executives who regularly meet with us who are not on the board.