Blank Hierarchy: Fill & Download for Free

The Four Steps to Epiphany by Steven G. Blank has an excellent section on advisors. They do not exist solely or even primarily to support fund raising.In Blank's hierarchy:Technical advisors provide product development advice.Business strategy advisors help you think about building the company.Customer advisors - especially for enterprise products - help you understand demand.Industry advisors connect you with partners and draw the landscape.Sales and marketing advisors help you with critical decisions about growing sales / sales teams.Blank helpfully describes how many of each type of advisors he thinks you should have - never too many technical advisors, in his account.At your stage, you may still want informal advisors. Developing a formal advisory board is a major step, and I generally advise people to do that when they're well-enough established that the trade-off between advisory status and (very small) amounts of stock makes sense.It is not impossible to get funding if you're solo. But if you can't do that yourself, you probably need a partner who is a senior member of your team. Getting funding, and many, many other tasks are full-time challenges.Now: Where to find this person. Obviously, use every network you possibly have. Talk to VCs and even to junior members of venture capital firms, who may not connect you with investors, but are pleased to network and advise people about key figures in the industry and fund-raising communities. Look at Angel List, Gust, Conspire, LinkedIn networks, of course. Look at advisors and board members of top firms in Crunchbase.

(Fill in the blank) famous fashion designer.The reason fashion is disproportionate is that in the fashion industry, the designer is at the top of the hierarchy, and often the founder of the company. Think Ralph Lauren. In most other fields (including tech), they usually are not.

My clients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder often twist the truth in order to rationalize both their failures and their mistreatment of other people. These lies often fall rather neatly into the following groups:Blame ShiftingNarcissists (people who qualify for a diagnosis of NPD) believe that if they admit being at fault, they will feel worthless and other people will lose respect for them. So, when they make a mistake, they tell themselves and other people things like:It is all their fault.They provoked me to do it.If they had not done (fill in the blank), I would not of had to do (fill in the blank).It didn’t happen.Everyone does it. Why pick on me?I was only thinking of you.DevaluingPeople with NPD lack emotional empathy and construct status hierarchies. They rationalize devaluing other people in some of the following ways:If you weren’t such an idiot, I would’t have had to (fill in the blank).I was only being honest.They disrespected me.It was a joke.You are too sensitive.I only said what everyone was thinking.I have a right to expect better service.If she doesn’t want people to call her fat, she should lose weight.Why do you always criticize everything I say?Their AbilitiesI am the smartest person in this room.I could do your job better than you, even without any training.I don’t need a degree in (fill in the blank) to answer that very technical Quora question.I know better.They should put me in charge.Trust me, I am always right about things like this.The only reason I am not rich and famous is that I was cheated out of my chance.If I were President, I would fix everything in the first 100 days.Everyone envies me because (fill in the blank).Punchline: Narcissists tend to lie to themselves and other people about things that show them as less than perfect, mistaken, or at fault.A2AElinor Greenberg, PhD, CGPIn private practice in NYC and the author of the book: Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations.