50 ways to get quality online advice, for business and life

Its never been easier to reach out for expert advice

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Its a multi-disciplinary, long-term and solitary endeavour that consumes vast resources in order to create sustainable value for customers and society at large. Businesses are frequently started by less than a handful of people and, even as they grow, their fate rests on very few shoulders.

Its not surprising, therefore, that business networking and group coaching communities have existed for almost as long as business itself (think Entrepreneurs Organisation and Vistage). So why do so few entrepreneurs leverage these communities and resources? The reasons are varied I’m sure but at the core, I believe, is friction. They are difficult to navigate (some are invitation only, some have revenue hurdles, they often seek members who can fill particular skills or industry gaps in the group etc.), the quality of the group is opaque and there is often a significant cost involved.

Thankfully, the internet has done what it does best by eliminating previous barriers and friction. There are now a myriad of communities, services and apps, both free and paid, enabling neophytes to get advice from experts of almost any stature and across most disciplines.

Navigating the guru-verse

The difficulty these days is noise, not friction. With the rise of social media and democratization of content production and distribution, the world is awash with ‘experts’ and advice. Yes there is more quality content created now than ever before (the number of books published continues to hit new records), but at the same time the quality is harder to discern amongst the noise from copycats, wannabes and sometimes even scammers.

I wrote the following overview to help navigate through the noise. It identifies what I believe are the best online resources to help find and directly connect with experts and thought leaders across the tech, startup and business spectrums.

In addition, I have compiled a database which grows every day and details the nuances of each tool and community that I find. Check out the Online Business Advice database.

Online Business Advice Landscape

Paid advice services

The leading pay-as-you-go service for general business, tech and startup advice is Clarity.fm, with a marketplace of advisors of the caliber of renowned investor Peter Pham (VC behind Dollar Shave Club). Charges range from a couple dollars per minute to, in some cases, over $20 per minute.

Other paid advice marketplaces range from specialized platforms such as Healthfundr, which focuses on health-tech advice and funding, to generalist platforms such as PrestoExperts and popexpert.com, whose advisors cover topics from business to health and everything in between. Charges start at under a $1 per minute.

Technologists and developers have a number of support services at their disposal, such as Codementor, Hackhands and Wizpert, which pair you with an experienced practitioner in a particular framework or programming language. Most also have advisors that can provide strategic and tactical advice.

Entrepreneur Magazine (Entrepreneur) operates a more traditional coaching model called Entrepreneur Coaching, in collaboration with Professional Education Institute. It services international markets but has limited coaches and spaces and therefore accepts a limited number of applicants. Costs start at a few thousand dollars per year.

Paid advice platforms have proven to be a difficult business model and there have been a number of casualties in the last year: 24sessions and LiveNinja closed their advice marketplaces and pivoted to enabling video engagement, while the future of Huddlewoo and Airpair is unclear.

Free one-on-one services

Free one-on-one services are a more recent phenomenon and due to their opaque revenue models, there are very few players.

OfficeHours is focused on business, startups and tech and offers 10-minute sessions, at preset times (office hours), with advisors across a range of business disciplines.

Venture Capital firm KPCB Edge launched the Office Hours app as an outreach play — it enables anyone to chat, during a limited number of preset office hours, with their influential partners.

Score is a non-profit mentorship service in partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). It offers free online or face-to-face business mentoring sessions with their network of volunteer business experts (in over 300 chapters across the USA).

Q&A services and communities

Q&As and AMAs (Ask Me Anything sessions) with thought leaders have exploded in popularity in the last few years. Pioneered by Reddit’s IAmA subreddit, which has hosted notable people from Barack Obama to Bill Gates to Stephen Hawkins to Edward Snowden (and everyone in between), the AMA format has been embraced by communities across the web.

Leading online communities and platforms, such as Quora, Tumblr and Digg, have launched their own interactive AMA services. Quora’s Writing Sessions hosts 2–3 sessions per day with thought leaders across the business, tech, scientific, political and social spectrums. Tumblr’s Answer Time focuses primarily on creatives, while Digg Dialog’s model is to engage with journalists that have written in-depth pieces on socially important topics. All these ‘majors’ still rely on text-chat, despite audio- and video-chat being embraced by newer and smaller communities.

In the startup and tech world, Product Hunt Live is the leader, offering 3–4 sessions per day with some of the world’s top tech, business and investing figures. Most of their sessions are via traditional text-chat, but Product Hunt also uses Blab.im (Team Blab) to host video-chat AMAs. The influential Hacker News site also hosts text AMAs but on a far less frequent basis.

Niche communities have also embraced AMAs, hosting regular sessions with leaders in their respective fields. Notable examples include Growthhacker.com and Inbound.org focusing on marketing thought-leaders, Designernews.com focusing on design thought-leaders, Techinasia.com focusing on Asian tech leaders, reddit’s Science subreddit hosting text AMAs with scientists and reddit’s Books subreddit hosting text AMAs with published authors.

A number of vibrant Slack communities host regular AMAs, notable examples are Startup Foundation, Startup Study Group, Designer Hangout (UX Community on Slack), @Product Manager HQ and Focus Asia.

AMA apps

The hype around AMAs has attracted a number of startups to the space, however the majority of pure-play AMA apps have failed (kingforaday.co, qnawith.co, getpundit.com, geniushub.com, getstagehound.com, letsama.com).

Wiselike and yes.no are similar platforms focusing on professional development, where experts respond to direct questions in their own time. They both work hard to attract a broad swath of notable people to their platforms (and seem to be succeeding).

ConvoLounge is a text-based AMA event platform and is used frequently by popular Slack community Startup Study Group.

Live interactive broadcast platforms

There has been an explosion in the number of live interactive video streaming services, on the back of successes such as Twitch in gaming, Google Hangouts for group conversations and Periscope for social. Other major players include LiveStream and Ustream and YouTube Live. Facebook’s Live video streaming service is possibly a game-changer in the mass market, but was restricted to celebrities and has only recently been made available to general US users only.

Google Hangouts on Air paved the way in the business advice space with open interactive video conversations plus text-chat. New services like Blab (Team Blab), Spreecast, Crowdcast and Huzza have upped the ante by enabling multi-participant sessions, where the host can accept up to 3 audience guests at a time, as well as text-chat with the audience and, in the case of Crowdcast, host polls. Blab.im and Spreecast support discovery and have an abundance of business and tech focused hosts and sessions, including Product Hunt’s Live video sessions (Blab). Crowdcast and Huzza are purely enablers at this stage.

Live Interactive audio streaming is a more recent phenomenon, with the early leaders zcast and Unmute enabling multi-participant audio conversations (plus text-chat). Zcast has more tech and business hosts and sessions and both have a discovery mechanism and allow you to follow interesting hosts.

Anchor is an audio app with a unique but powerful approach to audio conversations. It enables asynchronous group Q&A style conversations, by broadcasting short audio clips and stitching responses together. The audience can participate publicly in any Anchor conversation and they have had a number of high profile tech and business figures participating.

Thought leader discovery tools and platforms

In recognition of the growing ‘noise’ afflicting social media and the web, there is a growing segment of dedicated ‘thought leader discovery’ tools and communities, whose purpose is to uncover and showcase notable people.

Notable discovery services

Influential serial entrepreneur (and LinkedIn Influencer) Loic Le Meur is working on a new startup called Leade.rs, which aims to assist in the discovery of “top people doing amazing things in their field right now”. While still in early development, he has been soliciting advice from those very people at conferences and events such as SXSW and the World Economic Forum.

Fellow serial entrepreneur, Rufus Griscom, has launched Heleo.com, which partners with thought leaders to curate and repurpose their content. Heleo has so far partnered with 24 top-tier experts and best-selling authors in business and personal development, including Eric Ries (Lean Startup), Nir Eyal (Hooked), Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project), and Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) and Daniel Pink (Drive and To Sell is Human).

LinkedIn’s Influencer program publishes content from over 500 of the top thought leaders in the world, including the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson.

Thinkers50 is a global ranking of management thinkers published every two years.

Quora’s incredibly content-rich platform makes it easy to find opinions on a huge range of topics and uncover (and follow) experts. Their Verified profiles ensure the authenticity of public figures and serves as a quality signal.

mosaicHUB is an advisor discovery platform that helps people and businesses find and connect with experts for hire, across a range of business disciplines and geographies. It’s a self-service platform, but does offer some quality signal in the form of ratings.

Other useful thought leader discovery tools

There are a plethora of communities that, whilst not their primary focus, make it possible to discover and follow thought leaders or influencers in the space. Examples in the tech and startup world include:

• AngelList, the largest startup social and funding network, which offers a strong quality signal.
• Product Hunt, another startup social network, which has managed to maintain a high quality community by restricting commenting privileges.
• Clarity, the leading business advice marketplace, maintains high quality standards and displays user ratings.
• Medium has become a leading long form content publishing tool in the business world but also makes it simple to find and follow experts whose opinions you value or who those you respect follow.
• Dribbble and Behance are the leading design social networks supporting people discovery and tracking
• Stackoverflow and Github are the leading developer communities
• Academia.edu is one of the largest social network for academics, offering a great way to find and follow researchers and academics.

Quality resources for time-poor entrepreneurs

‘Entrepreneur’ (noun, en·tre·pre·neur): one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

The definition says it all — entrepreneurship is a multi-disciplinary, solitary challenge. It’s therefore imperative that entrepreneurs know how to quickly find the quality people, communities and tools that can help them on their mission.

I have spent countless hours researching, filtering, cataloguing and building in the business advice space. I have uncovered incredible resources and people that can make a fundamental difference to your business! For a comprehensive overview, please check out the online advice database.

If you’re interested in staying in the loop in this dynamic space and for regular insights from the best AMAs across the web, please hit the ‘follow’ button below.

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Twitter: Paul Reichman / Amazio