Although most firms that have a customer advisory board set them up after their firm is started, primarily to assess customer satisfaction and brainstorm new product ideas, customer advisory boards can be useful before a firm has customers as well. An example of a firm that did this is iConclude, an IT solutions company that was recently acquired by Opsware (www.opsware.com). iConclude was founded to help other companies troubleshoot mission critical software and hardware problems, but when it came to producing an actual product, the company wasn’t exactly sure what its product should look like. To make certain it didn’t stumble and produce a product that wasn’t what its clients needed, the company decided to form a customer advisory board to dig deep into its future customers’ problems and discern the exact features its product should include.
Reflecting on the nature of the customer advisory board that was set up, and what the effort accomplished, Sunny Gupta, iConclude’s founder, recalls:
“We were very upfront with all of the companies we spoke with. We realized we needed real customer input in order for us to really get the right product into the market. That led us to form a customer advisory board of 7 to 8 of these (firms with large IT departments) companies mostly out of Seattle. They met with us every second week and really tried to hone down on exactly what their problems were and what would be the ideal solution from their perspective.
This got them on board much, much earlier with us which was pretty instrumental because we identified real requirements which enabled us to build the right product.”
Ultimately, iConclude built a successful product and was acquired shortly after by a much larger firm.

Questions for Critical Thinking
1. Why do you think iConclude was able to persuade other companies to serve on its customer advisory board?
2. What insight or insights do you believe that iConclude gained by assembling a customer advisory board before rather than after its product was fully developed? What benefits, other than getting good quality advice, did iConclude glean from putting together a customer advisory board?
3. How do you think iConclude utilized its customer advisory board after its product was launched?
4. Look at YouTern (www.youtern.com), the focus of the “You Be the VC 9.1” feature. What type of advisory board or advisory boards would make the most sense for YouTern?