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DON DODGE: Hi, I'm Don Dodge, and this
is Google Root Access.
Today we're going to talk about advisory boards.
Should your startup have an advisory board?
Who do you look for to find on that advisory board?
And just how do you do it?
My guest today is David Gurle.
David has been on both sides of the table.
He's been an adviser to several companies.
And he's been a CEO who has built his own advisory board.
So welcome, David.
DAVID GURLE: Thank you for having for
having me today, Don.
DON DODGE: Great to have you here.
You're CEO of Perzo, a new company.
So it's about-- how old is the company?
DAVID GURLE: Well, since September, 2012.
So only about six months.
DON DODGE: And do you have an advisory board?
DAVID GURLE: I do, actually.
I have four people in my advisory board today.
DON DODGE: So why do you get an advisory board?
You're an experienced executive.
You've been around big companies and startups.
Why do you need an advisory board?
DAVID GURLE: I think any new venture has to bring together
a number of talents and experiences and assets.
Nobody can have it all.
Clearly, the team that you are building in your organization
has to have anything that helps you to get the product
to the market.
But even that is not sufficient.
You need to go to reach out to other experiences,
complementary ones, sometimes supplementary ones, so that
you always get a full picture, the full information before
you make a decision.
And that's the reason I went and sought the advice of these
four excellent people.
DON DODGE: And do you look for general
advice, or do you pick--
you have four advisers, so do you pick one who's great at
marketing and sales?
And do you pick another one who knows the financial
markets, and another one who knows engineering?
How do you decide which advisers?
DAVID GURLE: That's a very good question.
I think first you have to look at yourself--
where you are good at and where you need help.
You can get the team as the team dynamics come true.
Where is your team really strong at?
And where they can get better?
And then look at your market.
Where are you going to go?
Are you going to be an enterprise startup?
Are you going to be a consumer startup, an
infrastructure startup?
Depending on all those elements, you have to pick the
right people to complement you.
And this is really the important thing.
There's a complementarity around that.
So in my case, this is my first startup.
I have done startups in big companies, but it's very
different when you are outside on your own.
So I needed the advice of people who have been in this
situation before and therefore, who could help me
navigate those hurdles.
I think that's number one.
Number two--
I think you need believers in you.
Advisers are good for two things--
first, telling you what they will recommend given a
situation, but also give you the morale
boost that you need.
Sometimes when you hit those bumps in the road, they tell
you, look, David, it's OK.
We're going to walk it through.
This is how it's done.
And with that kind of energy that comes from your advisers,
you're able to overcome a bunch of obstacles you could
otherwise not.
DON DODGE: That's a very interesting point, because
normally, you think of advisers as giving deep,
professional advice on legal matters or financial matters
or engineering or whatever.
But CEOs also need someone that they can bounce ideas off
of, things like difficult problems that you couldn't
discuss with your employees because they're too tragic or
ultimately bad.
So you use the advisers also as your sounding board, your
cheerleaders.
DAVID GURLE: Coach and mentors.
And that's really how I treat--
I hope that this comes across in this way towards my
advisers-- is that I think my company's
kind of a sports team.
Maybe it's a soccer team or a football team.
And the advisers are our coaches and mentors.
And they've been there.
They are specializing in different areas.
I can use my advisers to ask things that I wouldn't ask
other people, because I know that the relationship is
really strong.
And they are not going to judge me.
And with that judgment element out of the equation, it makes
your relationship much simpler, more straightforward.
What comes out is not you are good or you're bad, or you
suck on this and you are really good at that.
It is, OK, well, you have a difficult situation or you
have a very good situation, and here are the
right things to do.
And this removes all pressure that you will get, for
example, from a regular board or from
potential other investors.
And that's what I like about
surrounding myself with advisers.
Because of those things, I feel free to
innovate and execute.
DON DODGE: So the sports analogy is actually a very
good one-- a coach or a mentor.
Even Michael Jordan, the best basketball player in the
world, needed a coach.
Or Tom Brady, the quarterback of the
Patriots, needs a coach.
CEOs think of themselves as invincible and knowing
everything.
But even they need coaches and mentors to help them through
some of the tough times.
DAVID GURLE: Absolutely true.
I'm definitely not invincible.
And I think the challenge for CEOs or wannabe founders is to
understand their situation well.
And that's where I think everything starts from.
You have to know what you're going to be excellent at.
And you have to continue to be excellent in it.
Michael Jordan was an excellent basketball player,
but I'm sure that there are many other areas in his
professional life as a basketball player.
He needed to complement himself.
And that's again, going back to this complementarity.
The coaches are there to complement you.
Some coaches in the basketball are just, how do
you play the game?
And some people are there, what do you do
when you don't play?
And this is as important.
I have an adviser from a major recruitment organization.
And he is actually there to tell me how to pace myself,
because I overcommit.
And overcommiting is as bad as overtraining.
So you need to find a balance.
And that's how you surround yourself with the
right group of people.
DON DODGE: So how do you find advisers?
Or how do you pick them?
Do you shoot for the stars and try to get the best possible,
most prominent famous person you can get?
Or do you look for someone who has deep technical or deep
domain knowledge?
How do you choose your advisers?
DAVID GURLE: Once you have identified the areas that you
need help--
and before I give more specifics, I think you need to
have a master adviser, somebody who you
can call at any time.
And that person is going to be really your day in, day out
person you interact with.
Then the rest of the team has to be
specific to the functions.
It's good to have somebody who's known in the industry,
because of two things.
Because a-- because they are known in the industry, they
know what happens in the industry.
And therefore, they're advice is getting lots of information
and sanitizing and distilling it to you.
So you don't have to go and hunt for this information.
I think that's very valuable.
So you need to find somebody who is a maven or who is a hub
in the world of potential advisers, and also who's got
that human touch that you can connect with.
A big name might be an excellent idea, but if you
can't connect with that person, I don't think it's
going to be useful, because it's a personal relationship,
first and foremost.
And that's, I think, criteria number one.
Criteria number two is, there are lots of people in the
Silicon Valley and other places where enterprises are
created who are willing to give advice,
but nobody asks them--
seriously.
And so they all shoot for the stars.
But there are plenty of stars that sometimes you can't see
with the visible eye, but you put a telescope, you can.
I think the analogy is similar here.
There are lots of people with great experience that you can
go and get help from.
And you need to network with people.
You need to not hesitate to ask.
You see somebody you like in the domain that you are
looking for.
Are you open to advise me?
And most people will say yes.
And that's what you are looking for, so that the
relationship and then finding and not always looking for the
visible stars, but recognizing that a universe of startups is
plenty of other stars.
And bringing them together is what's going to make your
advisory board a successful one.
DON DODGE: So the ideal advisory board then are people
that you know and trust and have a great
relationship with.
You try to get one general adviser who's your go-to
person every day or every week and then fill it in with two
or three others who might have deep domain experience on a
particular topic?
DAVID GURLE: That works for me.
And I think that's a balanced advisory board.
It's really important to have the
advisory board to be balanced.
You mentioned that I've been on advisory boards myself in
my previous roles.
And what I have found, in some instances, it worked really
well when the CEO of those companies I was working with
were using the advisory board as sounding advisory boards.
I think that's really valuable.
But if you are using the advisory board just to have
the prestige of names that you are never going to talk to
during the life cycle of this advisory board, I don't think
that's useful.
You need to, I think, be very careful about the star chasing
syndrome that I have seen in some instances.
DON DODGE: So there's a board of directors, and there's an
advisory board.
So the board of directors is normally your investors or
financial investors.
The advisory board may not be an investor.
They're just there to help.
DAVID GURLE: In my case, actually yes, some of my
advisory boards are investors.
And some of them are here to help.
And the board of directors are indeed, all investors.
That's the criteria I choose when I created the company
that they have to be an investor in order to be in the
board of directors.
DON DODGE: So you get different advice from board of
directors versus an advisory board?
DAVID GURLE: Absolutely.
And very interestingly, is that it's two different
universes sometimes.
And again, it goes back to being
judged versus not judged.
The board of directors, even if in this case, I am also the
chairman of that board, you still are in the context of
performance.
And the information you convey and everything
is tainted by that.
In the advisory board, you are just there to take advice.
So with that bias taken away, the scope is very broad.
And therefore, you get a much higher quality input.
DON DODGE: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.
I really appreciate you being here.
DAVID GURLE: My pleasure, and I wish all the existing and
tomorrow startups best of success and surround
themselves with most complimentary
advisory board members.
DON DODGE: Thank you very much.
And that's Google Root Access.
We'll be with you again very soon.
Thank you.
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