There have been a lot of great comments hear. I call the problem, "The True Believer Problem". True believers are those who are bought in to the product and vision, and ultimately are personally invested in the company's success, regardless of compensation. However, they are hard to distinguish from the opportunist, who can spot true believers, and their success, and then latch on. They often reflect back to key executive / founders, the values / language / signs of being a true believer, but their investment in the company's success is directly tied to their financial upside. Oftentimes these folks work very hard to market themselves, and their company, but mostly themselves. It can also cause cultural rifts because non-executive true believers spot this behavior and have very little recourse. The culture starts to suffer, little by little.
Startup boards can be highly problematic. Some board members are great, but many can't differentiate the best interest of the company from their own best interest. They can be highly-biased and interested in a getting a good return / new investments opportunities / using the company to leverage their professional network. This often comes into play when your board is only a combination of founders & investors. Who's bringing the industry experience w/o pressures of an exit? Who's sitting on the board because they care?
Many very important things don't matter early. There's a mindset that Compliance / Security / Legal / HR are things that big companies worry about. That they just slow down agile startups. The reality is that the reason that the perception is that those things will slow companies down is two-fold. One, most founders that never worked in leadership roles at legacy or non-startups don't know anything about them. Secondly, boards don't really care about this stuff until they need to be in place for an IPO. They don't even really matter if your plan is to be acquired. This leads to some very toxic environments.