Where can I find gender and diversity information about a company's board members?

I think the premise of your question is wrong. The best way to recruit experts that are most likely to be helpful is not by building a Board of Directors. Being on a board has a tremendous set of responsibilities that most people aren't prepared to take-on initially. Furthermore, most early-stage investors believe that a working board is "overkill" for companies that haven't raised at least $1m in seed funding, so you might be exposing yourself to negative signal by actively building a board. Given that you live in SF, you probably have already experienced the tremendous spirit of helpfulness that exists throughout SF and the Valley. If you are able to get through to people you consider a potentially good mentor, you'll most always be able to get at least a 30 minute coffee. If there's strong personal chemistry between yourself and a mentor, they might be willing to formalize an advisory relationship where in exchange for equity, they might agree to do more work for you including making introductions. But I'd be very cautious about formalizing a board relationship with anyone at this early stage. I find LinkedIn and AngelList to be very powerful when combined. AngelList can be used to find people who are actively investing and advising, and LinkedIn is a better means of cold contact if you make your request contextually relevant. Happy to talk to you in a quick call to share more of what I've learned in recruiting great advisers and investors.

You need to create a profile on Linkedin and be active, post and comment on others profiles. It's a process but people help people they know. Executives are extremely busy people and they protect their time. Also try Facebook groups, again you'll have to join and interact- that's networking in social media. All the best.

The easiest way would probably be to join a recruiter clack group (e.g. https://weirdlyhub.com/peoplepeople-slack-community-recruiters-hr/) and reach out to people there. You could also do a search on LinkedIn for: 'recruiter', and if you have a particular geographic area you want to focus on just include that in the search too. Reaching out to the people you find on those platforms can be done in a couple different ways, and the best one will depend on what it is you're trying to communicate or ask. If you'd like more specific advice relevant to your particular product or service, feel free to send along further information, best, Lee

A lot of people see still see diversity as a Nice to Have, rather than something that affects their bottomline. Although most coverage and research have been done primarily by niche market groups, even McKinsey early in 2015 put out this big report, touting real data: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/why_diversity_matters. If you'd like to discuss diversity hiring practices through various stages, shoot me a call!

The point of advising is to have fun but it's also to align with the upside of the business. So the things to consider / ensure are. - Are they venture backeable ... if they don't plan (or you don't see them being able to) raise venture capital, then being a formal advisor (with equity) won't matter. - Do you trust them. As an advisor, you're extended your brand and credibility to the team so you need to ensure they'll be good stewards of it. - Are they coacheable ... when you talk, do they listen and are open to the advice. Do they take action? As for compensation & commitment, here's what's normal. - 0.1-1% equity in the early stages .. usually over 2 years vesting monthly. - You make yourself available for 1-2 hour per month, and help throughout making introductions, reviewing documents,etc Personally, I think it's super important to ensure you tell what you won't be doing. Ex: I won't be accountable for a work product, as in - I'm not going to run your marketing / development team :) You never know what people expect, so it's best to discuss it upfront. Also, if you plan on doing formal advisory (for compensation) - it's ideal to get atleast 10+ companies to help out in that format to ever see a financial return ... your essentially acting much like a VC. So just understand, there's a very high likely hood that it won't go anywhere financially .. but it can be super rewarding. The key is that you enjoy spending time with the team and learning about their journey.