Building Codiga: Choosing Advisors

Note: This post is part of a series about building Codiga.

When I started fundraising, I had a call with a young (meaning, in their 20s) person, whose dad was a startup investor. I thought he was an investor himself, but was only taking calls from founders he could refer to his dad. I was ready to start the meeting with my yeti blue microphone in front of my mouth, ready to pitch and get another rejection. He showed up 10 minutes late to the Zoom meeting, on his phone while ordering a latte at blue bottle coffee in a random place in the bay area. The call was supposed to be for 30 minutes, but it lasted one hour.

During this meeting, I did not have the opportunity to pitch my company, but I had the chance to listen to all his knowledge and wisdom even if he did not have any technical background or startup experience. After one hour, he told me that if I offered him a position as an advisor, he might consider it and help me with fundraising.

It was a very hard pass for me.

Surprisingly, this is not the only offer I got from people that wanted to be “advisor”.

Some startup founders believe that taking advisors is going to help them. Many advisors do nothing besides taking a few points on your captable. Such people are dead weight: they are taking space on your captable without providing any value.

Are advisors all useless? Absolutely not. You need to choose them carefully.

As a solo founder, I know I have biases and blind spots. I needed someone to keep me regularly in check. I could not rely on my team to tell me when I was wrong: they had no incentive to do so. I did not need a Julien v2.0, I needed someone with a different mindset and perspective.

I started to look at taking an advisor, someone I can trust and see regularly. I have been introduced to Kathy Keating during my first few weeks at Techstars and thought she would be a perfect advisor. Kathy had strong technical experience in small and large companies, she had been a co-founder at a startup that exited. She was the profile I was looking for, and I was lucky that Kathy accepted to be my advisor. Through my startup journey, Kathy regularly met me and provided feedback on what she thought I needed to do. Did I follow all her advice? No. Did I reconsider my roadmap, product, and strategy based on her feedback? Absolutely, and many of her advice guided my decisions, including the decision to exit.

Advisors can be helpful, like Kathy had been for me. When choosing an advisor, always think of the value they bring. Any advisor must provide some value; otherwise, they are just dead weight. Advisors need to get some equity for their help, and this equity must vest over time so that they have an incentive to make you take the right decisions and stay for the long run.

I believe advisors at the early stage must be people passionate about entrepreneurship that want to be part of the early days of a company, but should not focus on the financial aspect. Since I exited Codiga, I started to advise one startup. They asked me to help them and I agreed. But I also made clear that I will not take any equity/compensation until they have significant traction or raise a series A. And even at this point, I will take a minimal percentage (e.g., less than 1%). My wish is to be part of a great ride, see new companies thrive and succeed, not to make millions on the back of hard-working founders.