Maybe one frame is through taking control of your own personal development and learning: after all “learning is the one thing your employer can’t take away from you”

Over the years we’ve seen the rise of bro-etry and cringe “thought leadership” and crying CEOs. When I scroll my feed I have to sidestep the clearly threadboi and #personalbrand engagement-farming posts and try and focus on the real content.

Networking is useful, but distasteful to many. Instead, participating in self-directed learning communities is networking

“Don’t become a marketing manager, become someone who knows how to run user research”

Describe things that someone can explain to someone else, or you'll miss out on word-of-mouth growth. Imagine you wandered into some party and met an investor/donor/customer named Emily. Even if you're the most persuasive person ever and she walks away from the conversation energized and excited, your time is wasted because Emily can't explain to her coworkers/friends/legislative-body what specifically she's excited about.

If Emily is a potential customer and all she heard was nothing-language, then you've gained no information. She might be interested! But that interest might only be in something she's imagined — not what you're actually making.

Nothing-language is describing your product as "an investigation into how we generate dispersed intimacy, signify alliance, and physical representations of our digital coordination praxis"1 instead of saying you're an investment fund. If you're going to "revolutionize", "create the operating system for", "build at the intersection between", "empower", "democratize", "individually flourish", or "be interdisciplinary", the universe should pause, rewind, and let you explain again. It's kind and wants you to succeed.

Be boring. Say you're "plaid for messaging apps" or "a figma plugin that generates svg icons from gpt-3" or "chrome extension that adds cmd-k to every website".

When I first started meeting founders, I wanted to help with anything and everything. Unfortunately, that's neither realistic or possible. For example, I have many responsibilities at my day job that must come first. Over time, I have honed in my pitch to be explicit about how I can and can't help. See the notes above about ways to be helpful, and find your own unique combination of value to bring to the table.

My contract typically looks like this: We agree to meet ~X hours per quarter/half/year Multiply by Y contracting rate Y ⨉ X = some dollar amount Z Divide Z by the startup's latest price per share to arrive at a number of advisor shares to grant

Be founder-friendly! It's a big deal and a lot of paperwork to get a smaller check or advisor on the cap table (unless they already have a lot of operational infrastructure in place) – this usually means being relaxed about the commitment paperwork or helping out pro-bono for the first few hours while they work through the logistics.

Finding founders you work well with can be a numbers game; you won't be sure what you like doing until you've met a handful of founders, done several advisory meetings, and poked at different types of problems. It's okay to dip your toe and warm up to the process before committing a lot of time and energy to this. I started slow, and have been steadily sharpening my own intuition about what kinds of products and founders get me excited, and where I can add unique value