Monad co-founder to peers: You should not easily give away consultant shares

Author: Keone Hon, Co-founder of Monad

Compiled by: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

Editor’s note: Last month, L1D partner 0xLouisT wrote about the widespread issue of insider token allocation in the industry, mentioning that investors often receive additional tokens through advisory services. He had witnessed an institution where the advisor's share was five times that of its investors, which could reduce the institution's actual cost by 80% compared to official financing and valuation data.

The topic of insider token allocation sparked widespread discussion in the market. Last weekend, Monad co-founder Keone Hon shared his personal views on the role of advisors, arguing that founders should not give away advisor shares lightly.

Below is the original content by Keone, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.

Regarding the topic of advisors, I would like to share some personal thoughts with founders.

It is completely understandable that founders sometimes choose to offer shares (token allocations) to advisors, but this is often a mistake.

Building a new company is hard, with a whole host of new problems to solve, so founders can easily see advisors as an instant solution.

However, this is not necessarily correct.

You Can Get Plenty of Advice for Free

In the cryptocurrency industry, all experts are basically active on X, and you can reach out to them with just a private message.

You can message me anytime and tell me the problems you are facing while building your new company, and I will do my best to respond ------ If I miss your message, please remind me again.

You can also post your questions directly on various social platforms, and there will definitely be someone who replies; people always like to offer their opinions.

Simply seeking advice should not cost you anything.

Try to Solve Problems Yourself

The significance of solving problems on your own is irreplaceable, and learning is a very valuable thing.

As a founder, you will definitely need to tackle various unfamiliar problems. You must deal with a series of situations including product, hiring, marketing, social media, business development, security, customer acquisition, and so on. Given different work backgrounds, you may only have experience in one or two of these areas.

However, the only way to learn this knowledge is through hands-on practice. Only then can you better learn new skills and gain confidence in the process.

Advisors can temporarily help you solve one or two aspects of the problem, but ultimately you still need to learn through practice.

Don't Overestimate the Endorsement Value of Advisors

"I need some well-known advisors to endorse me" ------ This idea is understandable.

As a new project, your PPT may be somewhat rudimentary, and your team may have limited experience in building a new company. To convince investors of you and your ideas, you may be inclined to seek out experienced advisors for endorsement.

The problem is that the endorsement value of advisors is very low. Many projects have many well-known advisors, and with so many advisors providing advice to so many projects, investors have long realized that advisors have very limited impact on a project's success.

Investors are also well aware that your experience is limited, which is not surprising; your original identity is that of an early-stage founder. Your job is to learn. Rather than relying on the credentials of advisors, you should prove your ability to learn new skills or solve new problems through action.

Personally, I actually prefer to see teams without advisors. 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.

The Contribution of Advisors is Very Limited Compared to Full-time Employees

In fact, anyone outside the full-time team will ultimately only contribute a very small portion of their time, while full-time employees will be fully committed.

Full-time employees can dedicate 40, 50, or 60+ hours a week to help the project succeed. Advisors may only contribute a few hours a month; considering their experience or network advantages, they may indeed be more efficient per hour, but can they really be 100 times more efficient?

Success comes from actually getting things done, and getting things done takes time. There is no other way around this.

Moreover, giving advisors more shares than full-time employees is also a real issue.

Your Expectations May Be Too Optimistic

Just like the burger you actually eat never looks as good as the one in the advertisement, everyone has had overly optimistic moments, especially early-stage founders.

When advisors pitch their services to you, you may feel overwhelmed and involuntarily want to say "yes" ------ because you think they can make your work easier, which is understandable.

The problem is that starting a new company is hard, and it remains hard even with advisors, and it will get increasingly difficult later on. The only way out is to strengthen your own and your team's capabilities.

If you find the first level of a video game difficult, you should improve your skills instead of using cheats. If you do that, what will 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, while those who actively "extend a helping hand" and offer advisory services may not provide genuinely valuable advice.

In fact, those most likely to offer you valuable advice often do not charge any fees; they simply will not become your advisors.

In certain special cases, advisors may indeed help solve some short-term problems. For example, if you are a non-technical founder, you need to identify an ideal CTO… this can indeed be challenging, but if an experienced advisor can help you screen potential co-founders, it would be very helpful.

Even so, you should carefully consider how much to pay the advisor and see if anyone can help you for free in such critical moments.

Startups must be frugal.

Advisors Are Hardly Able to Solve Core Issues

In the early stages of building a company, the most important thing is the speed of product iteration and the speed of learning and updating. In this regard, advisors are hard to help; only you can determine success or failure.

The early stages are always tough 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 tightly connected, with many resources available that often come at no cost; you should seek out these forms of help first.

If you encounter any problems, please feel free to message me, and I will do my best to help you resolve them. Good luck!