Creating a startup board of advisors is a waste of time. Yes, you heard me right, it’s a waste of your time.
You’re likely to get advice telling you that having a board of advisors will help you get funded. However, that advice, however well intended, is wrong. In fact, having a board of advisors could potentially hurt your chances of getting funded.
Why you don’t need a board of advisors to get funded.
When I was starting to raise the initial funding for my company, I had gotten it in my head that I needed a board of advisors if I was going to raise money.
When I was an entrepreneur in residence at a San Francisco Venture Capital Fund, most of the startups that got money had a board of advisors. In fact, many of these startups proudly displayed a slide of their advisory board in their pitch deck too.
So, by my way of thinking, if these companies that got funded had a board of advisors, then I needed a board of advisors.
And I spent a lot of time recruiting a really good group of advisors for my startup. I remember proudly telling my first investor, Gill, about the advisory board I had recruiting.
