Arnie Goldberg, technology executive and advisor, explains the ideal purpose of technical advisory board meetings on the a16z Podcast.
Insight
Goldberg: Technical advisory boards provide unvested outside perspectives on engineering choices
“I needed smart people from the outside that didn't have a lot of vested interest in the solution or weren't going to be there necessarily to deal with the consequences, to just bring some informed opinions from their experience into some tough technical choice…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Goldberg: Box resolved a six-month engineering debate with one advisory meeting
“Six months went by, and this debate raged within our engineering team, and even as we hired, you know, more senior people to come in, and the debate wouldn't go away. All it took was one formal conversation with, you know, some of the, as I created this archit…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Goldberg joined Box because its co-founding CTO stopped wanting to manage
“While in my role as VP of engineering for Box trying to scale the company, I had a co-founding CTO that didn't want to manage anymore. That's basically how I got into Box at the very beginning.”
Insight
Goldberg: Disband technical advisory boards when actionable problems are lacking
“It's okay to disband these things if they become, it's actually, if people appreciate it, even though the, you know, the people in a room have fun hanging out with each other If there's not real actionable things that have to come out of it, you're wasting eve…”
Disclosure
Box formed customer advisory boards using target CIOs to drive roadmaps
“So at Box, we had both, and they're very, very different. So the audience or the population of your customer advisory board are really what you would expect to sell to, right? So in, in Box's case, it would be the CIOs of big companies across different vertica…”
What-if
Goldberg: Box failed to cycle off unproductive advisors due to missing clauses
“And so, you know, what happens if you have vocal advisors, and so this is also where it goes back to the point about refreshing the board every couple of years, because I got advisors on that seemed great on paper, but didn't contribute and so I would have lov…”