Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. There is an increasing interest among companies

small and large in putting together technical advisory boards. It sounds pretty straightforward.

Get some senior technical experts to help with the technical speed bumps. But if that is all your

technical advisory board is, you are missing out.

Built and utilized correctly, a technical advisory board can be a huge advantage when it comes to mapping out a long-term strategic plan, finding talent, and building a great engineering

culture.

On this segment of the A16Z podcast, we break down the right way to build a technical advisory board, what you should

expect from the board, and just as important what you shouldn't. And for those looking to serve on a

technical advisory board, the reasons to do it, as well as the things to consider before committing.

The conversation features four technical experts, Pernima Padmanabon, former CEO of Kavarin, Alex Roder from Twitter, Arnie Goldberg from PayPal,

and A16Z general partner Peter Levine.

Peter Levine starts us off.

I was talking earlier with a couple of folks, and one of the things, you know, this notion of technical advisory board, I first want to clarify that there's a difference between a technical advisory board and a board advisor.

Okay, so for those of you just so were clear here, a board advisor is somebody who serves with the board of directors.

Typically, you'd have venture

capitalists on the board and then some third party, another person who might be a board

advisor come and be on the board of the company. So we're not talking about that. Now, the other,

I'm on the board of lots of different companies here at A16Z.

And I often talk, and maybe I'll start open up the sort of panel here, I often talk with

entrepreneurs that I serve with about a customer advisory board. And here we're now talking about

a technical advisory board. So maybe're now talking about a technical advisory board

so maybe I don't know if you guys have some views on kind of the differences

...