hangnon2jesus
New member
Hello guys we have a good team (technical with 5 YOE and masters, business founder, and sales/marketing founder) and we are all long time friends. We just started things out two months ago and this advisor strongly likes our vision and we had 3 calls with the team and 2 extra with me, the CTO. Now he asked for equity before the relation seriously starts and we were shocked by his expectations.
Here’s what he claims:
- He founded a successful a startup and raised +10M and got acquired.
- He has his VC.
- He currently works as an advisor for a couple of startups, 2 to 3 exits.
- He talks to us with a tone of a successful entrepreneur with multiple exits that can take our crappy startup to the moon. We don’t disagree on our crappy startup; we are first time founders but we are worried if he will help us or waste our time. These calls were just to know each other, judge our work but weren’t beneficial in anyway. Even most of the advices are widely available online on in the lean startup book for example.
We digged deep into his career and here’s what we found:
- The startup he founded doesn’t exist anywhere on the internet except on the archive.org; wasn’t successful as he claimed, they kicked the CTO super early and they raised only 1M. They never got acquired; no information about whether they closed or got acquired.
- His VC is a weird landing page and no one works there on LinkedIn except him.
- His LinkedIn is kinda empty, no posts, only his experience at his first startup + sales roles.
- There’s no information anywhere about the advisory roles he is having anywhere (he talks a LOT about them).
We just finished a call with him a moment ago to discuss:
1. His contribution: he said he is expert at sales and he can help in fundraising, product market fit, and strategy.
2. How much time he can commit: he refused to do it time commitment wise, he said “in the beginning you will need more commitment than later, so I prefer to do it responsibilities wise not time commitment wise, sometimes I will give more sometimes I will give less, it really depends on our need.”
3. What’s your expectations about equity? He said “equity for an advisor can be anywhere from 0 to 10% and for example the last company I joined and having an exit soon, I had 7%. I aim for at least $12M-$14M in return.”
We are building a B2B AI product, we have an MVP tested with our network, great reactions but no real traction yet. We still between the idea to startup stage. We have a clear vision. And obviously we need tons of help.
Any advices/relevant experiences are super appreciated!
Here’s what he claims:
- He founded a successful a startup and raised +10M and got acquired.
- He has his VC.
- He currently works as an advisor for a couple of startups, 2 to 3 exits.
- He talks to us with a tone of a successful entrepreneur with multiple exits that can take our crappy startup to the moon. We don’t disagree on our crappy startup; we are first time founders but we are worried if he will help us or waste our time. These calls were just to know each other, judge our work but weren’t beneficial in anyway. Even most of the advices are widely available online on in the lean startup book for example.
We digged deep into his career and here’s what we found:
- The startup he founded doesn’t exist anywhere on the internet except on the archive.org; wasn’t successful as he claimed, they kicked the CTO super early and they raised only 1M. They never got acquired; no information about whether they closed or got acquired.
- His VC is a weird landing page and no one works there on LinkedIn except him.
- His LinkedIn is kinda empty, no posts, only his experience at his first startup + sales roles.
- There’s no information anywhere about the advisory roles he is having anywhere (he talks a LOT about them).
We just finished a call with him a moment ago to discuss:
1. His contribution: he said he is expert at sales and he can help in fundraising, product market fit, and strategy.
2. How much time he can commit: he refused to do it time commitment wise, he said “in the beginning you will need more commitment than later, so I prefer to do it responsibilities wise not time commitment wise, sometimes I will give more sometimes I will give less, it really depends on our need.”
3. What’s your expectations about equity? He said “equity for an advisor can be anywhere from 0 to 10% and for example the last company I joined and having an exit soon, I had 7%. I aim for at least $12M-$14M in return.”
We are building a B2B AI product, we have an MVP tested with our network, great reactions but no real traction yet. We still between the idea to startup stage. We have a clear vision. And obviously we need tons of help.
Any advices/relevant experiences are super appreciated!