Most advice about startup boards focuses on how to build one. Far less gets said about how to actually serve on one well. Adrian Vanzyl has sat on both sides of that table. As a founder, he’s answered to a board. He’s also sat on the other side of it, as an investor. That dual view shapes a clear opinion: most board members add far less value than they think they do.
This isn’t a cynical take. Instead, it’s a practical one. Once you’ve been on both sides, certain patterns become impossible to miss.
Why Most Board Advice Sounds Right and Isn’t
Board members often deliver advice shaped by secondhand information. They read the deck. They skim the metrics. Then, they offer confident opinions based on a partial picture. This isn’t malicious. However, it’s a structural problem. After all, a board member who visits once a quarter simply doesn’t have the context a founder has every single day.
As a result, the most common failure mode isn’t bad intentions. Rather, it’s overconfidence built on thin information. For instance, a board member who suggests cutting a specific team, or pivoting a specific channel, may sound decisive. Yet without real operating context, that advice can be actively harmful.
The Difference Between Governance and Meddling
Good board membership starts with a clear boundary. On one hand, governance means asking hard questions and stress-testing assumptions. It also means holding a founder accountable to their own stated goals. On the other hand, meddling means trying to run the company from the boardroom, one layer removed from the consequences.
Adrian Vanzyl draws this line carefully. A board’s job is not to make operating decisions. Rather, it’s to make sure the founder is making good ones. It’s also about catching blind spots before they become expensive. That distinction sounds simple. In practice, though, it’s easy to violate. This is especially true for board members who were once operators themselves and miss being in the weeds.
Why Availability Matters More Than Expertise
Plenty of board members are recruited for their expertise. Fewer are chosen for their availability. Yet availability often matters more. Consider a brilliant board member who’s impossible to reach during a crisis. In practice, they provide less real value than an average one who picks up the phone immediately.
This matters because the moments that define a board relationship rarely happen in the quarterly meeting. Instead, they happen in an unscheduled call about a co-founder conflict. Sometimes it’s a term sheet that needs a same-day read. Other times, it’s a crisis that can’t wait three months for the next scheduled session. Either way, board members who show up for those moments earn a different kind of trust. That’s compared to ones who only show up on the calendar.
What Founders Should Actually Want From a Board Member
Founders often default to wanting board members with the most impressive resume. That’s understandable. However, it’s frequently the wrong priority. A more useful question is simpler: will this board member tell you something you don’t want to hear? Just as importantly, will they do it early enough to matter?
Board members who avoid conflict to preserve a comfortable relationship aren’t doing their job. This holds true even if the relationship feels pleasant. Instead, the board members worth having are willing to raise an uncomfortable point in month three. That’s far better than a devastating one surfacing in month eighteen.
How Adrian Vanzyl Evaluates His Own Value on a Board
Adrian Vanzyl applies a simple test to his own board work. Specifically, he asks whether the founder would be meaningfully worse off without him in the room. If the honest answer is no, that’s a signal. Either he needs to change how he’s engaging, or he should step back entirely. Notably, board seats accumulated for prestige rather than genuine usefulness tend to become dead weight. This applies to everyone involved, including the investor holding them.
This self-check matters because board seats are easy to collect and hard to actively work. Consider an investor with a dozen board seats and limited bandwidth per company. In that case, they’re optimizing for portfolio breadth, not for the depth any single founder actually needs.
The Long-Term Cost of a Passive Board
A disengaged board doesn’t just fail to help. In fact, it actively creates risk. Founders operating without real board engagement often go too long without external challenge to their own assumptions. As a result, small strategic mistakes compound quietly. Nobody with real standing raised a flag early enough to matter.
By contrast, an engaged board catches these issues while they’re still cheap to fix. This isn’t about control. Rather, it’s about having someone in the room who owes the founder honesty instead of comfort. It’s also about paying close enough attention to notice when something’s drifting off course.
What This Means for Founders Building Their Board
If there’s one practical takeaway here, it’s this: choose board members for engagement and honesty first, credentials second. Picture a well-known name who shows up once a quarter and says pleasant things. By comparison, a less prestigious board member who calls back within the hour and tells hard truths is worth far more.
That’s the standard Adrian Vanzyl holds himself to. It’s also the standard he encourages founders to demand from everyone else sitting around their table.