Advisor Board in the development of an innovative project

According to statistics, 90% of startups fail. "Start-ups" do not mean all new businesses in principle, namely companies that are trying to build a business with some kind of know-how, economic or technical innovation, which is the main competitive advantage.

Often such projects are started by people without a serious entrepreneurial experience. Simply because non-standard ideas usually come to those who are engaged not only in business. In addition, building a company, when you have such a "breakthrough" innovation on your hands, most often seems to be a simpler business than opening, for example, hotels. However, most often this is not the case, and the risks of the business of technology are added to the standard risks of ordinary business.

And it becomes clear that one in the field is not a warrior. Prior to this stage, most smart people are still at the planning stage, and some are retreating. Others have the courage and stubbornness to move on, and then the team starts. Looking for people who once developed similar technologies, are looking for marketers and managers, experts in developing new products and sales. And now, the team is assembled. True, it is far from ideal, because people who have enough experience are either too expensive and do not want to leave work, or they simply do not exist in nature. However, there are no less questions. On the contrary, their number is growing. Competent employees saw in the original idea a few holes, which the founder did not notice. Then the team starts working on closing all these holes. It takes a couple of months and the founder is faced with the fact that at such a rate the project budget will end faster than at least an ephemeral opportunity to earn money. Then the thoughts come back to those people who did not manage to hire. After all, they have much more experience, they have already made all the mistakes, and they have all the necessary connections. And then comes the insight.

Of course, it is still impossible to hire these people, but who prevents to ask their advice or to ask you to present you to the right people? And then the team can already turn this advice or contact into a real result, you need only a small push. And it will not cost them anything, except for a couple of hours of time. Simply put, we must look for advisors.

Most startups in Silicon Valley and other developed ecosystems have similar expert advice, or "Advisor board". Most often, this is an entrepreneur or top manager of a large company from the same area as a start-up. Also, the Advisor Board often includes venture investors who have already successfully invested in projects in the same area and through them have acquired many connections.

The motivation of such people is very diverse. As already mentioned, some of them are venture capitalists who will gladly meet with an interesting project, give some useful advice and present to people who have something to offer if the advisor is familiar with them. Their interest is in testing the team of the project in this way, whether it will be able to realize the benefits obtained and whether it is worth investing in it. So contacting investors for advice is also a good way to get investment. Of course, only if the project is sufficiently promising. A small catch is that the investor will not help too much the project in which he is going to invest money, but has not yet done so. Because the rapid progress of the project will increase its cost, and for the same share to spread will have much more money.

Another option is people who just might be interested in discussing your idea with you. They are not investors, they are not going to invest in you, but their experience can be useful to you. If you find an approach to such people, you can get recommendations absolutely free. In some cases, such advisers will be allocated a small share in the company, usually it is about 1-2% depending on the current evaluation of the project.

There are also companies and experts who will put up a start-up hourly price for their consultations, but more often than not it's not worth it.

In addition to face to face communication, you can often get interesting ideas from the public presentation of the project on a variety of online platforms. These can be specialized forums in your industry, or resources where information is published about start-ups.