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Comment by cloudjacker | Hacker News Reader

"If you are at a board meeting and a VC says “you should do less email marketing and more content marketing”, would you go see your VP Marketing after the meeting and tell them to cut email and double down on content? I sure hope not."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA wheeeze

I've seen so many founders come back from board meetings pale faced and interpreting the gospel of VC as this exact next step

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Yeah. It's odd how often otherwise-serious businesspeople have this weird "recency bias" for feedback, even from non-board members.

Have lived this first hand in a large startup and thought... wait, we know our business and customer better than the folks you chat with once a quarter over fizzy water, why are we moving market position exactly?? (I was livid)

The later stage your startup becomes, the more conversations you end up having with your board members. It's no longer once a quarter, but often once a week or sometimes daily. While their word should not be treated as gospel, I've found that our VC board members have become extremely well versed in our business and industry.

If you ignore advice and fail (always the more likely outcome no matter what you do) then you failed because you refused to take advice. If you take the advice and fail, you can't be blamed. This is oddly powerful pyschology

If you're the boss, you'll be blamed either way. This should not be part of the decision process. The loneliness of being the boss...

I've seen this very frequently as well, and when pushing back or pointing out that it's not a good idea, they respond with the argument that we have to do what they say because we will want to raise another round eventually, or just the general perspective that they must know better what they are doing than the engineering staff in the company.

I have long felt that one of the reason such young founders are funded is that they are possibly less likely to push back on onerous terms or instructions.

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