Ask HN: Why there is no advisor on demand service?

5 points by bbd 7 years ago | 8 comments

Startups might need a different advisory board at the different stages. The current way to find, engage with advisors are very manual and sometimes the outcome is not good, especially when companies change direction etc. What if there is a board of director/advisor service startup can access tailored to their specific need and when they need it. Why no such service exists?

Digory 7 years ago |

I'm late, but if you're interested in the legal landscape around that issue, Stephen Bainbridge and Todd Henderson published "Outsourcing the Board: How Board Service Providers Can Improve Corporate Governance" earlier this year.

[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/outsourcing-the-board/6...

mattmanser 7 years ago |

There used to be HN Office Hours and a few other startups that tried to do this a few years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943633

https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/opzi-a-quora-for-the-enter...

bossx 7 years ago |

https://clarity.fm/

bbd 7 years ago | |

Thanks for the info. I am aware of clarity.fm. I am thinking more a packaged advisor service like a group of advisors (e.g. one marketing, one product, one legal etc) to provide on-going very tactic advisors based on startups' context. Something like YC is offering in their core program but to every startup.

AznHisoka 7 years ago | | |

Because I don't want an armchair advisor w/ no skin in the game to give me advice on generic things like marketing, and product. I want someone who's invested in the journey. They'll also have more meaningful advice b/c it means they've done the research into my product/market/competitors.

dangwu 7 years ago |

Because demand far outweighs supply. Good advisors don’t have the time.

bbd 7 years ago | |

Thanks for the insight. Though every startup wants to get the best advisors in theory. They might also be OK to get good enough advisor based on their stage. For example, a pre-seed startup might find valuable to get advice from an A-round founder. Any thoughts on that?

agitator 7 years ago |

Don't consulting agencies provide these types of services?