Insight
Padmanaban: Early-stage customer advisory boards should consist of non-customers
“When you're starting out, even though it's a customer, you call it a customer advisory board, ah, none of them are your customers, and actually turns out to be great because you're getting a lot of feedback from the customers, as you said, on the use case, on …”
Insight
Padmanaban: Six to eight members is optimal for technical advisory boards
“With startups and smaller companies, things move very fast, and so you need constant feedback. And so you have this from a structure perspective, six to eight members is actually works out well.”
Insight
Padmanaban: Technical advisory boards should use renewable two-year terms
“So instead of having a four-year term, usually we have done a two-year term for the advisors, and then you can always renew if the advisor is still relevant to, and is providing a lot of input for another two years.”
Insight
Padmanaban: Spending over ten minutes presenting at advisory meetings wastes time
“My rule has been, if you are spent, spending more than 10 minutes presenting, you're wasting the advisor's time.”
Insight
Padmanaban: Customer advisory boards primarily serve to validate problem statements
“From a CEO perspective, The customer advisory board, the biggest one is validation of the problem statement.”
Insight
Padmanaban: Technical advisory boards are critical for product management teams
“But on the technical side, it's not just for engineering. I found it was very valuable for the product management folks.”
Insight
Padmanaban: Close sales deals before appointing customer contacts to advisory boards
“When I wanted some of the advice, them as advisors, some folks I had as informal advisors, still I sold the deal. Once I sold the deal, then I brought them off on as a formal advisor, because having gone through that.”
Disclosure
Padmanaban: Technical advisory boards yield unexpected deal referrals and key hires
“Many of them ended up getting, getting, giving referrals to other deals, as well as really helped in some of the hiring decisions. I didn't, I, that was not my stated goal at all, but we were looking for some technical experts, and they had access to the pool,…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Padmanaban: Intel strictly prohibits employees from accepting equity for board advice
“Intel has a very strict policy that you cannot accept anything. So after a lot of back and forth, she still wanted to be on the board and provide advice, but had to sign an agreement with Intel, and we had to sign an agreement with Intel that in no shape or fo…”
