What Is a Startup Advisor?
What Is a Startup Advisor?
A startup advisor is an experienced operator, founder, or investor who provides strategic guidance, domain expertise, and connections to early-stage startups. They help founders make better decisions faster, avoid common pitfalls, and accelerate traction.
What Does a Startup Advisor Do?
A startup advisor helps with go-to-market strategy, fundraising, hiring, and product roadmap. They share frameworks and insights from their experience, introduce investors and customers, act as a sounding board for major decisions, and are often formalized via equity compensation and advisory agreements.
When Should You Bring on a Startup Advisor?
You should bring on a startup advisor during pre-seed when you need credibility and pattern recognition, during MVP when validating your idea, post-traction when preparing to raise or scale, or anytime you're entering unfamiliar territory or making high-stakes moves.
How Much Equity Do Startup Advisors Get?
Startup advisors typically receive 0.1% – 1.0% equity depending on experience and involvement, often with 2-year vesting and 1-year cliff. The equity should reflect strategic value, with more valuable advisors helping with fundraising, sales, or product-market fit.
What Makes a Great Startup Advisor?
A great startup advisor has relevance (they've done what you're trying to do), clarity (they help you decide), candor (they tell you the truth), network (they open doors), and commitment (they're present and engaged).
What's the Difference Between a Startup Advisor and a Consultant?
| Startup Advisor | Consultant |
|---|---|
| Equity-based | Fee-based |
| Strategic sounding board | Delivers scoped work |
| Ongoing relationship | Time-bound engagement |
| Startup experience-driven | Often domain-specific execution |
| Focused on leverage | Focused on deliverables |
Why Startup Advisors Matter
The best startup advisors are not mentors. They're not friends. They're leverage.
Founders live in decision quicksand. Every move matters, and most founders are making them alone. A startup advisor cuts through that fog. They've seen the patterns. They've made the mistakes. They help you move faster by helping you think sharper.
Unlike a consultant, an advisor isn't here to deliver a deck. They're here to help you win. Their advice is rooted in lived experience, not theory. They've sat in your chair. They've raised rounds, built teams, missed goals, pivoted, scaled, exited, or crashed and rebuilt. And because they're not billing by the hour, they're incentivized by outcomes, not tasks.
The right advisor can change your startup's trajectory. They can get you in the room you didn't know existed. They can see the move you're not making. They can help you recognize whether that "maybe" investor is wasting your time, or worth fighting for.
But don't confuse prestige for value. Not every ex-VC or BigCo exec makes a great advisor. You need relevance. Someone who's close to your space, your stage, your stack. Someone who isn't afraid to disagree with you. Someone who shows up.
You also need structure. Set expectations. Define cadence. Use a formal agreement. Don't do "vague help for vague equity." Make it real.
Most importantly, listen, but don't outsource your instincts. An advisor helps you sharpen judgment. They don't replace it.
Book a Call
Ready to accelerate your startup's growth? Let's talk.
Book an Intro Call
