Ask HN: Advice/Mentorship in exchange for stock options – was it worth it?

In the past months i have been networking like crazy. Finding potential hires, sales, business angels, VCs and their associates, biz devs (allrounders), etc.. After a cold start i got more and more warm introductions over time. I pretty fast came to a point where i got introduced to a bunch of seniors of all kinds. We got great feedback and a lot of them where really excited about the team, vision and our product and offered to support us by giving advice and mentorship. In exchange they wanted to have virtual stock options.

Until today i said "no" to all of those offers as i love to figure out things by myself and i have the feeling that i get most advice and knowledge for free. I trusted all of those persons. But there always was a huge uncertainty if they would really tell me something i wouldn't come up by myself. I mean i mostly have the feeling to know what i'm doing; it is just that the resources are so limited that i couldn`t care about it until now. As a founder, I am the person who knows best where we are right now and how to prioritize our tasks, as being the only person with a complete overview and roadmap in mind. So my more important question always was "How good is their network?".

What are your experiences? How many advisory and mentors have you had in your startup and how did you compensate them? Did you have requirements? Did you agreed on milestones or metrics? How important was their network along the road?

PS: We have an ESOP in place by offering a virtual stock options pool of 15%. Until today only our top notch developers got some.