Advice About Advisory Boards

The question that I most frequently get asked about advisory boards is: "How much equity should I give to a member of my advisory board?" The answer is very little, almost certainly less than the entrepreneur is thinking about. Perhaps some numbers would be useful here. How about .1% (that is a tenth of a percent) to perhaps .5% -- depending upon the value to be provided. By the way there should be vesting involved. The vesting period should be long enough to cover the period in which you expect to be getting value from the advisor.

Having now answered (to the extent I am comfortable doing so in the absence of any specific knowledge or facts of any particular case) the only question any client ever asks about advisory boards, I hasten to note that there are a lot of other – far far better – questions that could be asked about advisory boards. Here are a couple: What value can I reasonably expect from a member of my advisory board? How do I get that value? Why do