I recently took on the role of Entrepreneur in Residence at the Kiwibank Fintech Accelerator, powered by Lightning Lab.  Consider me the “Mentor-in-Chief” – as well as advising the ventures and helping them make great connections and destroy roadblocks, my main job is curating the relationships between the ventures and their mentors, and later in the programme, between the ventures and their [potential] investors.

We have a super strong group of mentors contributing to the programme, and we’ve organised them into advisory boards for the teams. I am totally humbled by the calibre of the mentors, and their generosity in contributing to the growth of these nascent startups.

If you’re a mentor in this programme, or in any other programme, please accept my deepest heartfelt thanks for your contribution. People like you make the startup world go round.

Here is my suggested agenda for a one-hour pre-seed Advisory Board meeting.  NOTE: this is only a template, and should be adjusted (likely cut down) to your specific requirements at the time.

1. Welcome and into (5 minutes)
Roll call
Conflicts of Interest
Approval of previous minutes
Matters arising from the previous minutes

2. Context (10 minutes)
Current pitch and feedback
Changes to Lean Canvas
Learnings from last week
Key things we need to learn
Product update¹
Runway²
Roadblocks we need to destroy³

3. Metrics (5 min)
Site analytics (acquisition)
Users: total, active, growth rate week-on-week (activation)
Revenue
Retention
Referrals

4. Sales (5 min)
What’s working
What needs improving
Action plan

5. Investor wrangling (5 min)
Who have you talked to?
Who should you be talking to?

6. Strategic Topic (changes every meeting, be sure to set this in advance) (15 min)

7. Other business (5 min)

8. Actions and deliverables (who is going to do what by when) (5 min)

9. Next meeting time and farewell (5 min)

If I had more than an hour, I’d throw a little bit more time at context, and most of the time toward strategic. I’d like to stress that the above is only a template – what you actually use will vary from startup to startup, and from meeting to meeting. Do not stick to the template slavishly, but use it as a mnemonic or a guide.  The timings are so quick, but it is designed for an accelerator, where things happen quickly.  If you want to make a longer meeting, I’d throw the extra time at strategic topics, where you’re going to get the most value.

You can (and should) also make time to meet individual advisors or mentors outside of your advisory board meeting. Also, encourage them to talk to each other (we have a Slack for that) in between meetings.

I’m interested in community feedback for the above agenda. Am I missing anything (like the boat)? Please comment below, and I’ll modify the list as required, with appropriate attribution.

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Thanks to the following people for their contributions for improvements to this list:
¹ Ryan Baker
² Andrew Wallace
³ Sunit Prakash