It sounds, to me at least, like he did a very poor job of actually putting this "opportunity" in proper context. More often than not this type of behavior is a

It sounds, to me at least, like he did a very poor job of actually putting this "opportunity" in proper context. More often than not this type of behavior is a failure of the CEO rather than the board. As a technical founder I'm really well aware of it. After all, I'm constantly pushing projects that my non-technical partner (and by extension our board) really doesn't grok. Things like site security, more robust backups, improvements to the software stack... these are all things that don't really show up in any visible way within the product but they're all crucially important. It's my job to put the risks in proper context and help him understand that. It's his job to learn, understand, and help me make better decisions as well. I've often championed projects that addressed risks that weren't worth the effort to properly deal with. I need him to reign me in when that happens. I think it's far to shallow to say "well they don't understand so their just flailing about trying to turn it into things they do comprehend." Assuming that you've assembled the right board and the right investors it's much more likely that you've done a poor job of engaging them in the topic. To them the advisor LOOKS like a commodity because from their position he is.