Building the Board

An integral part of the facade of respectability for any company of this ilk is the Board of Advisors (BOA). A well built BOA lends instant credibility to any company. Why would anyone question the integrity of a company that has Senior ex-Vice Presidents of Major Telecoms on its BOA? With the right combination of luck and dazzle a mark will buy the whole shootin' match without opening the books because it believes in the BOA.

Mr. Keystone.
The first person on the BOA sets the tone and needs to be researched thoroughly. In our case the local Tech sector has a lobby group headed by a senior and well connected Ex-VP of a major Telecom company, a Mr. Keystone. He fit the bill perfectly. We approached him, made the pitch (not for BOA, just for advice) and he was very interested.

We got him into the office and gave him the walk through: showing him all the mock-ups of our semi-functional solution. He was terribly impressed and asked right then if he could invest. The answer was, of course, "No." It was more important to get his Rolodex than a few grand, so he was told, by NM, that we were not looking for investment at this time and (this is where I got my first hint that I was involved in a con) that were were cash flow positive. (!!!)

We had 15-ish full time staff burning at least $50,000 per month and I knew for a fact that we had not had $100,000 of revenues the past year. I knew this was a lie. I did not know how to react. Falling dumb, I kept silent and later accosted DC --only to be told that were were cashflow positive and that there were parts of the business I was not privy to. (unless he was running coke on the side, he was lying again --I soooo wanted to believe him, but I didn't)

Well, Mr Keystone could not have been more thrilled to find such a gem of a company in his own backyard. We were everything he dreamed of bringing to his friends: young, innovative, cutting edge, on the verge of breaking through to being a billion dollar enterprise --and cashflow positive at this early stage (that is unheard of).

We became Mr. Keystone's pet project and he became the first quarterback of our BOA, bringing in two key people: Mr. Robson another telecom vet and Mr. Finette an economist who specializes in fundraising for emerging tech companies. More on them later.