Strange article. Is this meant primarily for YC companies, or generally? Sounds like advice that's only applicable if you're dealing with very reputable top-tea

Strange article. Is this meant primarily for YC companies, or generally? Sounds like advice that's only applicable if you're dealing with very reputable top-tear investors. My experience: Giving investors substantial control doesn't just give them an ability, it gives them a liability to their LPs. If something goes wrong in the startup, and everyone knows that the board members could have potentially taken drastic steps such as firing the founders to possibly prevent the bad situation, even if the possibility is very small, then that responsibility weighs heavily on the VCs. Giving them substantial control, gives them a big responsibility to fix problems and only a loaded gun with which to fix them. Just a guess, Sam's advice seems like a classic type of VC advice - do riskier things, because although it will likely end up bad for you individually, we're well diversified and it increases expected value for our VC portfolio as a whole. Suppose that's a big part of the reason why he's the spokesman for YC now. > Finally, board members stick with the company when things really go wrong, in a way that advisors usually don’t. Nice choice of wording, they stick with the "company". > As a side note, bad board members are disastrous. You should check references thoroughly on someone before you let them join your board. That sounds like more than just a little side note! Here's the other side of the debate: http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2013/06/17/steve-blank-dont-give-away-your-board-seats/ http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2013/06/17/steve-blank-don... http://venturehacks.com/articles/one-way-control http://venturehacks.com/articles/one-way-control http://venturehacks.com/articles/board-structure http://venturehacks.com/articles/board-structure