Elena Verna: How to leverage advising for the growth of your company | s16vc

In this interview, Elena Verna, a B2B SaaS Product-Led Growth Advisor to companies such as Miro, Amplitude, MongoDB, and a number of others, and Aleks Shamis, Managing Partner @ s16vc and a 3x product founder, discuss all things advising: what advising is, and how to leverage it for the growth of your company. Aleks and Elena believe that engaging industry leaders as advisors early in the journey can change the trajectory of companies.

Follow Elena on LinkedIn & Twitter:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna/
https://twitter.com/ElenaVerna

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Follow Aleks on LinkedIn & Twitter for more insights:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandrshamis/
https://twitter.com/aleks_shamis

Follow s16vc on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/s16vc/

Follow s16vc for more content on Medium:
https://medium.com/@s16vc

Visit our website:
https://www.s16vc.com

Chapters

• 0:30 Intro
• 0:30 Intro of Elena + What the heck is advising?
• 3:07 Advising vs. Coaching vs. Mentorship vs. Consulting
• 5:04 Is advising growing in popularity?
• 8:20 Advising as a new standard for hiring senior people: “Try before you buy”
• 13:12 Accountability & skin in the game in advising
• 14:58 How advisors think about compensation: the ratio between equity and cash
• 20:14 How both a company and an advisor can protect themselves against a poor match?
• 23:40 Can a community and close friends who are ahead of you replace a formal advisor?
• 25:34 Hiring advisors for your team
• 26:35 10 1-hr conversations with various growth marketing experts vs having a single growth marketing expert as a formal advisor?
• 29:15 Don’t hire industry leaders; engage them as advisors instead
• 30:06 Is there such a thing as pre-PMF advising?