Advisor Selection

Background

With the support model at VOLTA shifting from a focus on educational programming to one of bespoke support for residents, the need to have experienced and engaged advisors are critical. This document provides clarity around what an Ideal Advisor is for this program. The ideal fit will be aligned in four key areas.

#1 They focus on startups

For advisors that lack experience working with startups, the nature of an early-stage startup team’s communication, time management, and urgency of requests can be a challenge. We are looking for advisors that not only have experience with startups but have specifically chosen to focus on helping startups and can speak to examples of how they have developed methods to mitigate the risks associated with these unique challenges.

Ideal advisors should not only have experience in a domain that can help a startup grow, but they should also have experience in the application of the support with startups specifically.

Questions to answer

What areas of expertise do they have that can help our startups?

Do they have specific experience working with startups?

How has their experience influenced the way they support startups?

What are some of the important lessons they have learned from working with startups?

Do they have any reference startups that we could speak to?

#2 They focus attention on an urgent growth problem

Early-stage startups are very often distracted by

shiny object syndrome⁠

. For many, this stage is their first time starting a business and they will be receiving advice in a number of areas that will all of which will feel urgent.

VOLTA advisors will work closely with the startup to help identify what key problems are preventing them from growing their business and help them prioritize the specific activities that will build the skills needed to validate that they are solving a market problem. Ideally, the focus should be optimizing for a willingness to pay to use their product. This could be measured in revenue, product usage or testimonials from their ideal customers.

Questions to answer

How do they assess the needs of a startup?

How do they measure the success of their support?

How do they help startups prioritize the activities needed to leverage their support?

Can they describe example engagements that they have delivered successfully that addressed an urgent problem in the startup?

#3 They focus on the development of skills and capacity

VOLTA’s focus is to help founding teams drastically improve the odds of building a high-growth tech startup. For this to happen, the ideal advisors will focus their emphasis on the development of key skills that are necessary to grow their startup. The guiding principle of all support engagements is “teach to fish” not “fish”.

Questions to answer

Does their current support approach focus on the execution of activities or providing the guidance needed to educate and inform team members to execute?

Can they give any examples of engagements where they guided the development of new skills?

What are some of the long-term impacts their support has helped startups accomplish?

#4 They are willing to measure their performance by the impact they make on the startups they support

For a bespoke support model to work, it requires advisors to be self-accountable. This means that they are willing to measure their own performance by the measurable impact their support makes on the startups they support. This also means that they are willing to communicate proactively if they feel that the startup they are supporting is not able to complete the work necessary to achieve the results the support is expected to deliver.

Questions to answer

How do they currently scope out an engagement with a startup?

What criteria would they use to disqualify a startup?

Are they open to communicating proactively if they feel the engagement is at risk of not being successful?

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