Warm, not corporate
Advisory relationships are human. The app should feel like a thoughtful journal, not a sales dashboard. We use language that respects the fact that you are asking people for their time and wisdom.
We built the tool we wished existed
We are a small team of practitioners—not corporate consultants. We built and maintained our own advisory boards for years, mostly in spreadsheets and scattered notes. The relationships were real. The system was embarrassing.
What we wanted was simple: one place to track who is on our board, when we last spoke, what we talked about, and what we learned. Something that felt warm and human, not like a CRM—because advisors are people, not leads.
After two years of dogfooding different approaches, we built PersonalAdvisoryBoard. It is opinionated in the right ways: we use the five archetypes because research supports them, we use quarterly cadence as the default because it works, and we surface wisdom over time because compounding is the whole point.
Our values
Intentional over busy
A great board is not big—it is balanced. We built the archetype system to help you think clearly about composition, not collect impressive names. We will always optimize for quality of guidance over quantity of contacts.
Your data, your control
Export everything as CSV anytime. We do not sell personal data. Advisors are private—nobody outside your account (or Team organization) sees your board. If you want to leave, we make that frictionless.
The research we stand on
We are not inventing the wheel. Decades of mentorship research—from organizational behavior to career development—consistently finds that:
- Employees with mentors report higher job satisfaction and are promoted faster than those without (Workplace Mentoring Study, SHRM, 2020).
- Diverse advisory networks—spanning functions, industries, and seniority—are better predictors of career success than access to a single high-status sponsor (Herminia Ibarra, INSEAD).
- Professionals who capture and revisit past guidance make materially better decisions when similar situations recur—a finding consistent with deliberate practice research (Ericsson, 1993; updated replications).
- Relationship maintenance behaviors (follow-up, gratitude, updates) are the strongest predictor of network longevity—not relationship initiation (Rob Cross, University of Virginia).
PersonalAdvisoryBoard is designed around these findings. Every feature—archetypes, cadence tracking, nugget capture, reflection cycles—exists because the evidence says it helps.
What we are building toward
The long-term vision is simple: give every professional access to the kind of structured guidance that used to require a prestigious network, an MBA, or an expensive executive coach. Not everyone has a mentor who attended the right university or worked at the right firm. But everyone can build a board—if they have the right system.
We believe intentional mentorship is a skill, not a privilege. We are building the tools to make it learnable.
Start your board today
Free plan · No credit card required
Get in touch
Questions, feedback, or partnership ideas? We read every message.