Original author: Keone Hon, co-founder of Monad
Original translation: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
Editor's note: Last month, L1D partner 0xLouisT wrote an article about the widespread insider token allocation problem in the industry (see "The Labyrinth of Daedalus: The "Token Economic Model" Hidden from Retail Investors"). The article mentioned that investors can often get additional tokens through consulting services. He has personally seen that the consultant share of an institution is 5 times that of its investor share, which can reduce the actual cost of the institution by 80% compared with the official financing and valuation data.
The topic of insider token allocation immediately triggered widespread discussion in the market. Last weekend, Monad co-founder Keone Hon wrote about his personal views on the role of advisors, and believed that founders did not need to give out advisor shares for free.
The following is the original content of Keone, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.
On the topic of advisors, I would like to share some personal views with founders.
Founders sometimes choose to offer shares (token shares) to advisors, which is completely understandable, but it is also usually a mistake.
Building a new company is difficult, and there are a lot of new problems to solve, so it is easy for founders to see advisors as instant solutions.
However, this is not necessarily correct.
You can get a lot of advice for free
In the crypto space, all the experts are basically active on X and are only a private message away.
You can always private message me with questions you encounter when building a new company and I will do my best to get back to you - if I miss your message, please PM again.
You can also post your questions directly on various social platforms and someone will definitely respond, people always like to provide their opinions.
Just asking for advice should not cost you anything.
Try to solve problems on your own
There is no substitute for solving problems on your own, and learning is also a valuable thing.
As a founder, you will definitely need to solve all kinds of unfamiliar problems. You have to deal with a range of situations such as product, recruiting, marketing, social media, business development, security, customer acquisition, etc., and depending on your work experience, you may only have experience in one or two of these areas.
But the only way to learn these knowledge is to do it yourself. Only in this way can you better learn new skills and gain confidence in the process.
Advisors can temporarily help you solve one or two problems, but ultimately you still need to learn by doing.
Don't overestimate the value of consultants' endorsements
It's understandable to think that "I need some well-known consultants to endorse me."
As a new project, your PPT may be a bit sparse, and your team may have limited experience in building new companies. In order to convince investors to believe in you and your ideas, you may be tempted to find some experienced consultants to endorse you.
The problem is that the endorsement of consultants is of low value. Many projects have many well-known consultants, and so many consultants are providing advice to so many projects that investors have long realized that consultants have a very limited impact on the success of a project.
Investors are also well aware of your limited experience, which is not surprising, as you are an early-stage founder. Your job is to learn. Instead of relying on the qualifications of your consultants, you can demonstrate your ability to learn new skills or solve new problems through your actions.
Personally, I actually like to see teams without consultants. In this case, the team can only rely on their own abilities and will have a clearer understanding of what they still need to learn.
Consultants have very limited input compared to full-time employees
Realistically, anyone outside of the full-time team will end up investing only a fraction of the time that a full-time employee would.
A full-time employee can invest 40, 50, 60+ hours per week into a project to help it succeed. A consultant might only invest a few hours per month, and given their experience or connections, they might be more productive per hour, but are they really 100 times more productive?
Success comes from actually doing things, and actually doing things takes time. There is no way around it.
Also, giving advisors more than full-time employees is a real problem.
Your expectations may be too optimistic
Just like the burger you actually eat is never as good as the one in the advertisement, everyone has moments of overoptimism, especially early-stage founders.
When advisors pitch you their services, you’ll be understandably overwhelmed and want to say “yes” — because you think they can make your job easier.
The problem is, starting a new company is hard, it’s still hard with advisors, and it gets harder later on. The only way out is to build yourself and your team up.
If you find the first level of a video game difficult, you should improve your skills instead of cheating. If that's the case, what should you do when you reach the second level?
Adverse Selection Problem
Those who can provide you with truly valuable advice may not become your advisors, and conversely, those who actively "reach out" to you and provide consulting services may not provide truly valuable advice.
In fact, those who are most likely to provide you with valuable advice often do not charge any fees, but they will not become your advisors.
In some special cases, consultants may indeed solve certain short-term problems. For example, if you are a non-technical founder and you need to identify an ideal CTO... This is indeed difficult, but it would be helpful if an experienced consultant could help you screen potential co-founders.
But even so, you should carefully consider how much you should pay consultants and see if there is anyone who can help you for free at such a critical moment.
Startups must be frugal.
It is difficult for consultants to help you solve core problems
In the early stages of building a company, the most important thing is the speed of product iteration and learning and updating. In this regard, consultants can hardly help you, and only you can decide success or failure.
The early stages are always hard because you have little experience and few resources, but your experience will grow over time. There are no shortcuts to success.
The cryptocurrency community is very close-knit and there are many resources available, which often cost nothing, and you should seek out help first.
If you run into any problems, please PM me and I will do my best to help you solve the problem. Good luck.
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