100% on consultants! esp. for advisory after funding, great way to both get steady bursts VP level help, and potentially, mutual trialing before bringing them o

100% on consultants! esp. for advisory after funding, great way to both get steady bursts VP level help, and potentially, mutual trialing before bringing them on full-time ("director of X"s getting ready to go VP, ...) re:specialists, i think the near-term + ultimate answer is "both". my reasoning was lacking an initial unicorn advisor, an experienced startup person should be in a better position to help identify the gaps, e.g., whether needing an insider, and if so, what kind of one in particular, how to find, how to vet, etc. In contrast, most insiders, unless they've actually started their own product company, are like the blind men and the elephant, and don't realize how tiny of a view they have. as a concrete example, if doing something like gov contracts, world of diffs between say an ex-general, an ex-agency-cto, an ex-procurement officer, an ex fed vp sales, etc., and each may be individually brilliant + connected to diff networks + appropriate for helping diff co's. a wonderful thing is for most smart people, "the first meeting is free", so not hard to get great advice from prospective people on this stuff!