Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Roeder: Technical advisory boards work best with informal, real-time problem solving

Alex Roeder · a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board · Jan 2, 2019 · at 29:43

Alex Roeder explains how startup leaders and technical advisors get maximum value from technical advisory board interactions.

0:00 / 0:38exact quote · 38.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think the best arrangements are when The company's just super, not too formal about it, just really honest about what they're, instead of, oh, I have a technical advisory board meeting next week, oh shoot, like I have to think of an agenda, and now it's a to-do item. I think the more it's just around, I'm stuck on X today, so I want to go talk to some people I trust about X. And it can be right down the middle of what a technical advisory board is for, or it can be a little, you know, you mentioned product management, or it can be around, well, you know we just promoted an engineer to be the VP of engineering And so they've never done management before, so how do you help with this case, sir? I think just the more it's about real world things that they're struggling with, the more you can actually be useful.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Alex Roeder

Insight
Roeder: Unfocused technical advisory board meetings impose productivity taxes on engineers
“So, if you're gonna invite other people in, be really sure that they know why they're there, and I mean, I sit on these things to help. There's really no other reason. Like, it's fun and interesting, and you meet smart people, and you're there to help. So when…”
Alex Roeder Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:24 a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board
Insight
Roeder: Evaluate potential technical advisors by presenting real company problems
“Giving, you know, giving real problems that you're working on is, is one of the better ways to understand, get real signal from people, so I would just talk about where the company is, why you're putting it together, some of the things you're grappling with, a…”
Alex Roeder Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:14 a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.