The Pop-Up Advisory Board
Earlier this week, I hit on the topic of co-founders / business partners, and advisory boards / mentors. Today I wanted to address a new concept that I recently tried out: The Pop-Up Advisory Board.
A typical advisory board is a group of people that come together on a periodic basis to weigh in on your business and give advice. You want that group to be well-rounded in terms of experience, and people that believe in what you’re doing and want you to succeed. They are typically biased (i.e. they like you), and they’re often incented via stock options or pay (but not always).
It’s important to note that advisory boards are not ACTUAL voting boards. They’re simply for advice and counsel.
At the moment, Dragon Army does not have an advisory board. At some point I may put one together, but for now I have enough investors and mentors that are available to give me advice when I need it (and I need it, a lot.) The blueprint for Dragon Army is a unique proposition, and the team and I are working through various ways to present ourselves. And while we feel like we’ve landed on something strong, I knew that we needed to get unbiased input on the direction from people who were potential buyers of our service.
So I convened two Pop-Up Advisory Boards to come in for two hours, hear our pitch (over lunch), then engage with us on what they liked, what they didn’t like, and their advice on how to position us for the future. Those two meetings were phenomenal and incredibly helpful as we chart new ground in the mobile marketing space. The two groups were made up of experts in marketing, many of them acting or former CMOs. And there is no commitment for those individuals going forward.
I hadn’t heard of anyone doing this before, so I thought I’d share it here in case it was an approach that made sense for your company. It may be that you have an advisory board, but you have a specific situation that you want deep experts to weigh in on. In that case, consider the Pop-Up Advisory Board as a way to get that input without asking the experts to commit to something long-term.
Great post. The way I use my advisors is mostly on an individual basis and based around their expertise when I need it. Sometimes over email, sometimes text, and other times via phone and many times at all times of the day, even 11pm for important next day decisions. For big, fork in the road decisions on how to handle milestone decisions- financing, business partner, and other big decisions- I like to engage the whole advisory board. Typically my approach is to chat with each one on one and send a summary to the group offering an overview of the issues, options forward and thoughts related to each. Then, we get on a call or meeting if possible and hash through the issue and get everyone’s opinion. I then use this information to make the best informed decision but do not have the advisory board make the decision, just to provide input. I found this to be much more useful and agile in the way I made use of the board as I found trying to get everyone together for a “advisory board” meeting to not be as productive and not the best way to leverage their skills. Plus, I found it to be a much better way to get the right council and real time. I have found advisors to be critical at helping companies to avoid bad decision making and to dodge business icebergs. Ultimately, it is the CEO that must make the call unless you have an official board of directors which I did not have. I do like the pop up idea and this parallels my experience and preference.