GLG Share Gives Startups Access To Mentorship Without Trading Equity

Since 1998, the Gerson Lehrman Group has been helping its clients answer their most difficult questions, using an algorithm to choose from more than 350k experts and then facilitating a conversation between clients and counselors. These experts include C-level executives, doctors, scientists, educators, journalists, and anyone else who has fostered a certain level of expertise in various verticals.

Today, GLG is launching a new program called GLG Share that lets startups access its network of hundreds of thousands of experts at a highly discounted price.

Here’s how it works:

Potential clients sign up for GLG Share and submit their query — this can range from “I don’t know where to start when hiring a sales team” to “I need help understanding the market potential for my business.”

From there, the GLG team assigns a research manager to your account, who gets down to the bottom of what you’re looking for in a counselor. They decide whether you need to speak to someone on a very granular level about something very specific, or if you need a more high-level counselor to help with multiple aspects of a problem.

Once the proper counselor is selected, you’ll have complete access to that counselor with whatever questions you may have. In fact, you’ll have access to a wide array of counselors for the length of the subscription, with no limit to the amount of questions you can ask.

Usually, GLG clients start their subscription as soon as they’ve been paired with a counselor. Six months costs $12,500, while a year costs $25k. In the GLG Share program, however, startups get the first two months of their subscription entirely for free.

“What we’re seeing with GLG Share is that our counsel members are actually really interested in talking to startups who are pursuing an interesting idea in their field,” said John Donoghue, head of new markets at GLG. “We’re even seeing that experts end up, in many cases, becoming long-term advisors for the startup.”

For startups who have been trading equity for similar answers, GLG Share represents a new way to enjoy mentorship without handing over part of their company.

GLG Share already has a small number of startups on the platform, with the public launch making the service available to everyone starting today.