Help build the next generation of great companies.
Venture Advisors work alongside the scientists and founders turning national lab technology into companies, bringing the experience, judgment, and relationships that helped them build their own.
What a Venture Advisor does.
Many of these teams are building a company for the first time. Advisors work directly with the scientists and co-founders on the early decisions that shape it.
Open doors
Introduce the team to the customers, partners, and investors it needs to reach. One introduction from you can save a new company months.
Pressure-test the plan
Challenge the team's assumptions about its first market and product, and help it decide what to prove next.
Help build the team
Bring your judgment to co-founder selection and early hires, the decisions that shape a young company most.
Coach the founders
Share what building companies taught you: how to pitch, how to sell, and when to change course.
How it works.
- Matched to the teams that need you
- We match you to the ventures whose teams need what you know: your technical domain, your markets, and the companies you have built. You can advise one team or several, as part of a small advisory committee for each.
- A volunteer commitment
- Six months of monthly committee sessions and working meetings with the teams you advise, plus introductions and hands-on help where you can make the most difference.
- A COMPASS partner alongside you
- A COMPASS partner coordinates each committee and makes sure your advice turns into decisions and next steps for the team.
Who makes a strong Venture Advisor.
People who have built companies and markets, and want to help new teams do the same.
Founders and senior operators
You have founded or scaled a deep-tech company and remember what you needed to know in the first year: how to build a team, raise capital, and turn a plan into an operating business.
Commercial and industry leaders
You know the market and the people who buy in it. You can tell a team whether its first application is real and introduce it to the customers who decide.
Technical and functional experts
You bring depth in semiconductors, computing hardware, quantum, or space systems, or you know how to make a function like product, sales, or manufacturing work.
Start with a conversation.
Tell us what you have built and the markets you know. We will talk through which ventures your experience fits.
Become a Venture Advisor
Your background, the markets you know, and the kinds of teams you would like to help.