Monad Founder's Message to Peers: You Shouldn't Give Away Advisor Shares Lightly
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Monad Founder's Message to Peers: You Shouldn't Give Away Advisor Shares Lightly
Founders always give advisors a certain equity stake, which is understandable, but usually a mistake.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Keone Hon, Co-founder of Monad
Translation: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
Editor's note: Last month, L1D partner 0xLouisT published an article discussing the widespread issue of insider token allocations in the industry (see "The Labyrinth of Daedalus: Uncovering the "Tokenomics" Hidden from Retail Investors"), mentioning that investors often obtain extra tokens through advisory roles. He once saw a case where an institution’s advisor allocation was five times its investor allocation—effectively reducing the institution’s actual cost by 80% compared to official fundraising and valuation figures.
The topic of insider token allocations quickly sparked broad market discussion. Last weekend, Keone Hon, co-founder of Monad, shared his personal views on the role of advisors, arguing that founders have no need to give away equity or token shares to advisors for free.
Below is the original text by Keone, translated by Odaily Planet Daily.
I’d like to share some personal thoughts with founders about advisors.
Sometimes founders choose to grant equity (or token allocations) to advisors, which is understandable—but it’s often a mistake.
Building a new company is hard. There are countless new problems to solve, so it’s easy to view advisors as instant solutions.
But this isn’t necessarily true.
You can get a lot of advice for free
In the crypto space, nearly all experts are active on X. You can reach out to them with just a direct message.
You can DM me anytime and tell me about the challenges you’re facing while building your company. I’ll do my best to reply—if I miss your message, please remind me again.
You can also simply post your questions on social platforms; someone will surely respond. People love giving their opinions.
Just seeking advice shouldn’t cost you anything.
Try solving problems yourself
There’s no substitute for solving problems on your own, and learning is incredibly valuable.
As a founder, you’ll inevitably face many unfamiliar challenges—product development, hiring, marketing, social media, business development, security, user acquisition, and more. Depending on your background, you might only have experience in one or two of these areas.
But the only way to learn these skills is through hands-on experience. Only then can you truly acquire new capabilities and build confidence along the way.
An advisor might temporarily help with one or two issues, but ultimately, you still need to learn by doing.
Don’t overestimate the value of advisor endorsements
“I need well-known advisors to endorse me”—this mindset is understandable.
As a new project, your pitch deck might be rough, and your team may lack experience in building companies. To convince investors of your vision, you might be tempted to bring in experienced advisors for credibility.
The problem is, advisor endorsements carry little weight. So many projects have high-profile advisors, and so many advisors are advising so many projects that investors already realize their impact on a project’s success is minimal.
Investors know you lack experience—that’s not surprising. You’re an early-stage founder. Your job is to learn. Instead of relying on an advisor’s resume, prove your ability to learn new skills and solve new problems through action.
Personally, I actually prefer seeing teams without advisors. In such cases, the team must rely entirely on themselves and has a clearer understanding of what they still need to learn.
Advisors contribute far less than full-time employees
In reality, anyone outside your full-time team will ultimately dedicate only a tiny fraction of their time, whereas full-time employees are fully committed.
A full-time employee can invest 40, 50, or even 60+ hours per week toward making the project succeed. An advisor might spend only a few hours per month. Even if their experience or network makes each hour more efficient, can it really be 100x more efficient?
Success comes from actually doing the work—and doing the work takes time. There’s no shortcut around this.
Moreover, it’s a real problem when advisors receive larger equity stakes than full-time employees.
Your expectations may be too optimistic
Just like how the burger you actually eat never looks as good as the ad, everyone can be overly optimistic—especially early-stage founders.
When an advisor pitches their services to you, you might feel overwhelmed and instinctively say “yes,” thinking they’ll make your job easier. That’s understandable.
The truth is, starting a new company is hard—even with an advisor, it remains hard, and it only gets harder later on. The only real solution is to strengthen yourself and your team.
If you're struggling in the first level of a video game, you should improve your skills—not use cheats. Otherwise, what will you do when you reach the second level?
The adverse selection problem
The people who could offer truly valuable advice may not want to be your advisor. Conversely, those who proactively offer help may not provide genuinely valuable guidance.
In fact, the individuals most likely to give you valuable advice probably won’t charge you anything—but they also won’t become your formal advisor.
In certain rare cases, an advisor might indeed help solve a short-term problem. For example, if you’re a non-technical founder trying to identify the ideal CTO—this is genuinely difficult. Having an experienced advisor help screen potential co-founders could be useful.
Even then, you should carefully consider how much you should pay the advisor, and check whether someone could help you for free during such a critical moment.
Startups must be frugal.
Advisors can’t help you solve core problems
In the early stages of building a company, the most important things are product iteration speed and learning velocity. On these fronts, advisors can’t truly help you. Only you can determine your success or failure.
The early stage is always tough—you have little experience and few resources. But your experience grows over time. There are no shortcuts to success.
The crypto community is tightly connected, with abundant resources available—often at no cost. You should seek out these resources first.
If you ever run into any issues, feel free to DM me. I’ll do my best to help. Good luck.
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