Gamification in Finding a well-rounded Advisory Board
Some people were curious about how Future Delivery managed to get both the founder of Google Earth and Google Adense, as well as top top people in the field of accounting and law onto our board, so here I will explain how we found each board advisor. I'll go more in-depth on our management team on a future blog. First of all, as a young team, we need a well-rounded advisory board who know what they are doing to guide us and prevent us from making bad decisions simply because of a lack of knowledge. We had in mind the exact expertise we are looking for, and applied good networking techniques to connect with them. As I pointed out in my eBook on networking I wrote two years ago, good networking has 6 Core Values: Integrity, Sincerity, Optimism, Confidence, Initiative, and Persistence. As long as you constantly apply these 6 core concepts in your life, doors will open up in life for you. For Avi (founder of Google Earth, or Earthviewer by Keyhole), we found his website and thought he was the perfect person on our board. I emailed him and said, "Hello! I saw your site and found it very interesting. I'm creating a Virtual World company aimed to enhance Productivity, and I would love to catch lunch/coffee with you some time in discussion of you possibly being our Board Advisory." And he said, "Sure! Lets talk some time!" There was actually a time where we had a miscommunication at the beginning, and the meeting did not happen. But after a few polite and happy follow ups, we finally got lunch, clicked pretty well, and he said our stuff is interesting so we can bounce ideas off him as an advisor. For Eytan (founder of Google Adsense), we went to a speaker event (go to lots of those, and ALWAYS connect with the speaker), and he was one of the speakers. My CMO Jun made a really good connection with him, and after hanging out a few times, Jun asked if Eytan would like to be a board advisory, and he said sure. Eytan has been really cool and already helped out with some of Future Delivery's tough decisions. For Jake (our guru on accounting), I met him at a round-table event with UCLA Anderson School Board Advisors almost three years ago. The event is usually for Anderson MBA students, but I signed up as an associate and became one of the only undergrads who could go to all the MBA events. At the event, he was clearly one of the happiest people I have ever met. I respected the positive energy and influence he exerted towards the whole group, especially after experiencing so many things throughout his life. After the event, I scheduled a follow up and asked to meet up with him every once in awhile. As I started Future Delivery, I went for his advice, and he agreed to be part of the advisory board. Finally, for Albert (our Legal Expert who worked on the Myspace aquisition), I met Arman, the founder of one of the early dial-up companies who is now running a infrastructure/server company at an Entrepreneur Conference called Startup LA towards the end of last year. I followed up with him and ask to catch lunch some time. Arman and I clicked pretty well too, and he wants to help out Future Delivery. Our of a lot of great advice and offers, he referred me to his friend Albert. I scheduled a meeting with Albert, and we discussed our mutual interest in chess as well as some issues start ups deal with these days. He says virtual worlds is definitely something he is very interested in and wants to be a Board Advisor. Throughout my career, I have firmly believed that, when you meet passionate and motivated people with a sincere attitude, only good things can happen. Building relationships is one of the most important and meaningful things you can do in life, regardless if it is for professional or personal enrichment. Outside the comfort zone there is a harmless dragon that looks scary, but you are invincible to it. Once you realize there is nothing you can lose by approaching and talking to more people, you will be ready to slay the harmless dragon.
Click this link to see my latest post on how Diablo III uses Gamification to become so addicting
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Finding advisors is a game
As a young team, we need a well-rounded advisory board who know what they are doing to guide us and prevent us from making bad decisions simply because of a lack of knowledge. However, finding impressive strangers to help you could be a scary task, so by adding “gamification” to the process, or simply viewing it as a game, things become a lot more straight forward and less daunting. (How many of you are afraid of approaching a boss in a video game?) As I pointed out in another post , good networking has 6 Core Values: Integrity, Sincerity, Optimism, Confidence, Initiative, and Persistence. As long as you constantly apply these 6 core concepts in your life, doors will open up in life for you.Building a well-rounded advisory board is itself a gamified challenge — one where Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness plays a central role, as relationships and trust are the currency of great mentorship. Understanding what gamification really means can help you approach the advisor hunt with the right mindset.