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Comment by peter422 | Hacker News Reader

> In recent months I craved more time to explore new ideas again as a founder, and decided to leave Clubhouse while staying on as an advisor.

Just at an FYI to the author, this is a bad idea. Once you have left a startup, your opinions are going to be valued much less by everybody still there because, well, you quit. Your incentives are now not aligned fully, you aren’t part of the mission anymore, and this was because you decided you didn’t want to be.

And from your perspective, you quit. Don’t waste your time on them anymore, fully focus on your next project.

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It isn’t about giving advice. The advisor role is simply about saving face on both sides. Neither the company nor the founder want to admit they lost faith in the other party.

That's a great explanation. I've seen the "[Person] will stay on as an advisor for the next N months." so many times when execs or leaders at companies decide to leave. It's a kind of "[Person] has decided to spend more time with their family" statement.

Again, it’s a waste of time. The company nor the former employee should be wasting their time with saving face.

The startup has actual important things to do and the former employee has new projects to start. When a founder leaves it isn’t even that big a deal, nobody cares about a former employee.

In a lot of situations, no additional time is spent (and thus wasted). This happens with advisors in the general case too: they become an advisor and never meet again.

And what benefit is the company getting from saying a person that is not going to contribute to the company in any way is an “advisor”?

I guess the company should just do that with every former employee? I mean, why not.

This is the behavior of a person and company playing startup and not actually trying to build a strong company.

Probably because founders tend to have strong influence over a company and tend to have their share of personal fans and supporters among the userbase. So they try to avoid alienating them by pretending that they still get along.

Like when Carl Pei left OnePlus, we all knew it would go to shit once Oppo took over but they kept up the pretense for a while to protect the brand before they started undermining it.

For the 'advisor' there's probably a financial arrangement to this to keep them quiet and from shoveling up dirt in the media. It's hard to just give someone money like that so again a fake role comes in handy.

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