It’s amazing how many people will orbit around startups as advisors or something like that in an attempt to give off the scent of startup person in order to accrue status

The ultimate irony is that precisely 0 startups make it where the founder(s) doesn’t look extremely silly and low status during the founding era

Bezos left a 7 figure high status job to manually pack books into boxes on the floor. Do you realize how dumb this must have looked to his former colleagues? 

Gates and Allen were writing software out of a New Mexico strip mall. Etc etc etc 

And of course “advisor” is v nebulous; many can be very helpful