Zivity and Tivo: The Importance of an Advisory Board Redux

I had my best President's Day ever!

Yes, shocking I know, since President's Day is fabled for its awesomeness as a holiday so how could any one President's Day be better than another? Well, allow me to tell you.

I met up with one of the co-founders of Zivity for some french toast and to chat about business-y things. Take any opportunity you have to talk to smart people about what they do, especially when it's founding a startup. Zivity was founded a few months before Tenuki, so talking to Zivity's co-founder is like looking through a little window into my future. She had all kinds of advice for me, but at the top of the list was the importance of a good advisory board. Especially, in the early months.

Zivity has managed to assemble a top-notch advisory board through a domino effect. They got a couple of good advisors and those advisors recommended other good advisors. Zivity is smart: they have gotten advisors that cover the different aspects of their business, rather than focusing exclusively on technical advisors, which is a problem, I suspect, in many other startups.

So that was an excellent way to start my morning: tea, toast, and transfer o' knowledge. Then I stopped into a nearby thrift store that having a 50% off sale. I wandered past a stack of old VCRs and lo and behold, on the top of the stack was a Tivo! For 10 dollars! Five bucks on sale!

And it works, and it has a lifetime subscription!

Ah, sweet, sweet President's Day.