Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Goldberg: Box gave technical advisors equity equivalent to senior engineer packages

Arnie Goldberg · a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board · Jan 2, 2019 · at 30:32

Arnie Goldberg, former VP of Engineering at Box, explains how Box structured equity compensation and vesting schedules for its technical advisory board members.

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“I just gave a stock option package that was equivalent to a seasoned engineer. And, you know, I put my board together pretty early on in Box's life, so it was a, it ended up being a pretty reasonable package at the end of it all. But it was I think a three-year vesting period”

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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…”
Arnie Goldberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:10 a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board
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…”
Arnie Goldberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:42 a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board
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.”
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Insight
Goldberg: Technical advisory boards should debate decisions, not grant approvals
“It's not to present something and get approval, but it's to debate a point and to debate something that, that is worthwhile enough to, you know, get all these people, high power people from, you know, across the Valley or whatever, into a room together and mak…”
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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…”
Arnie Goldberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:39 a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board
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…”
Arnie Goldberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:23 a16z Podcast | Building the Right Technical Advisory Board
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