I cannot overemphasise the importance for early-stage companies to create an Advisory Board.
The founder and management team, more often than not, are very closely involved in the business on a day-to-day basis. As such, they can do with inputs from an Advisory Board which meets once a quarter or so to review the business and give critical feedback on the future plans. The semi-detached view can help in opening up new lines of thinking which the management team sometimes misses because of their proximity to the daily operations.
What is needed for this relationship to succeed is complete candour on both sides. If it can be made to work, the Advisory Board can be a tremendous advantage for the start-up.
4 responses so far ↓
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3 smu12 // Mar 3, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Good point, but I will go further.
The main use of the Advisory Board in a startup stage company should be to increase the level of confidence both from consumers and future investors. The brand value is just a derivative. If you manage to sign up an icon to the Advisory Board, take for example a Narayana Murthy, the face lift in the market is immediate and guaranteed. Most mature advisors will be happy to associate with social entrepreneurs and social themed organizations at low overhead and CTC, because it benefits their public image too (two way stroke). The business model of Singapore social entrepreneur’s Global Indian Foundation and Global International Schools is a good case study how Advisors and social themed organizations can have mutually beneficial relationships at very low CTC cost.
4 Reply to SMU12 // Jan 23, 2011 at 9:42 pm
You may be thinking that advisors made a good impact for GIIS schools or for founder Atul Temurnikar. There are 4000 students because of the many parents who did not want children to go to local schools. Some impression was created for the market instead of raising the problem which is lack of recognition of Singapore schooling by schools in India.
I don’t know if any advisors of GIIS are in that model like you say getting any “mutual benefit”.
The latest Straits Times report suggests Indians to go local to integrate. Children who are always studying in a school like GIIS will not know what is Singapore values of zero tolerance of corruption, what is teamwork of different races, what is really integrity and how to develop a hardwork culture, not a lazy culture.
http://definitivenewspaperclippings.blogspot.com/2011/01/attend-local-schools-to-integrate.html
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