The paper provides an attempt to direct the research in the area of venture capitalists and the board of directors in SMEs. Issues about boards in venture capital-backed technology based industrials are explored, and various research designs are used to meet different research questions. Empirical results indicate that venture capital firms purposefully use boards in the portfolio firm, and boards in venture capital-backed firms are more active than boards in other firms. The venture capitalist and the entrepreneur/owner-manager of the portfolio firm may have diverging expectations to board roles. In this setting the board becomes an interesting meeting place for studying the processes and the dynamics between external and internal stakeholders. Future research in this area should integrate board role theories and board process theories.