Build a Personal Advisory Board: Clone Your Favorite Experts with Stash

Imagine having Paul Graham, Sahil Bloom, or your favorite industry expert on speed dial. Someone who knows your business challenges and can give you advice grounded in their real thinking.

Obviously, that's not happening. They're busy. You're not on their radar. And even if you got 15 minutes with them, you'd freeze up and forget half your questions.

But here's the thing: most successful people have shared their thinking extensively through podcasts, YouTube, blog posts, interviews, and social media. That content is sitting out there, public and accessible.

What if you could collect it all and create an AI advisor that thinks like them?

That's exactly what Stash lets you do.

The Problem: You Want Mentorship, Not Content

There's a difference between:

Consuming content: Watching a 2-hour interview with a successful founder

Getting advice: Asking that founder about your specific business challenge

Content is passive. Advice is active and personalized.

When you watch a founder talk about their journey, you might think "that's interesting" but struggle to apply it to your situation. What you really want is to ask:

• "How would you approach pricing for my specific product?"
• "I'm struggling with X—what would you do?"
• "What's the biggest mistake I should avoid in my situation?"

You don't just want to learn from them—you want to consult with them.

How to Build Your AI Advisory Board

With Stash, you can create "clones" of the people whose thinking you value most. Here's the process:

1. Choose Your Advisors

Pick 3-5 people whose expertise you want to tap into:

• Founders who've built businesses similar to yours
• Experts in your field (marketing, sales, product, etc.)
• Thought leaders whose frameworks resonate with you
• Successful people whose decision-making you admire

They should have enough public content that you can gather substantial material.

2. Collect All Their Public Content

Scrape everything you can find:

• YouTube videos and podcasts: Download and transcribe interviews, talks, presentations
• Blog posts and articles: Import all their written work
• Twitter/social media: Capture their threads and insights
• Interviews: Find every podcast appearance and panel discussion
• Books and courses: Import their published materials

The more comprehensive your collection, the better the "advisor" will be.

3. Import Into Stash as a Knowledge Base

Create a workspace for each advisor (or one workspace with folders per person). Organize their content by:

• Topic (product strategy, fundraising, hiring, etc.)
• Format (videos, articles, tweets)
• Date (to track how their thinking evolved)

Stash processes everything and builds a searchable, queryable knowledge base of their thinking.

4. Ask for Advice in Their Style

Now comes the magic. Instead of Googling generic advice, you can ask:

"What would [Founder Name] say about my pricing strategy?"

Stash draws from their entire body of work—not just a single article—and generates a response grounded in how they actually think. You get advice that sounds like them because it's based on their real perspectives.

Real Example: Your Personal Paul Graham

Let's say you're building a startup and want Paul Graham's perspective. Here's what you do:

Phase 1: Content Collection

• Import all essays from paulgraham.com (100+ essays)
• Transcribe Y Combinator startup advice videos
• Capture interviews and podcast appearances
• Add his essays on specific topics (fundraising, hiring, growth)

Phase 2: Knowledge Base

Everything goes into your "Paul Graham Advisory" workspace in Stash. The AI reads it all and understands his frameworks, principles, and way of thinking.

Phase 3: Get Advice

Instead of generic startup advice, you ask:

• "How would Paul Graham evaluate my product-market fit?"
• "What would PG say about our burn rate and runway?"
• "Should I focus on growth or profitability right now?"

Stash responds with advice that sounds like Paul Graham because it's pulling from his actual thinking patterns, not generic startup wisdom.

It's like having him on your advisory board, without needing to get into Y Combinator.

Why This Works So Well

Depth over breadth: Instead of random advice from the internet, you get perspectives from people whose judgment you trust.

Consistency: Their advice reflects coherent frameworks, not contradictory hot takes.

Specificity: Because you're asking questions tailored to your situation, the advice is actually applicable.

Always available: No scheduling, no favors, no networking required. Ask questions whenever you need guidance.

Multiple perspectives: Build advisors for different areas (marketing, product, finance) and get specialized advice.

Building Your Full Advisory Board

Most successful people have advisors for different domains. You can do the same:

Product Strategy Advisor:

• Collect content from product leaders you admire
• Get advice on roadmaps, prioritization, user research

Marketing/Growth Advisor:

• Import content from successful growth marketers
• Ask about distribution, positioning, content strategy

Fundraising Advisor:

• Gather investor content and founder fundraising stories
• Get guidance on pitch decks, valuation, investor relations

Management/Leadership Advisor:

• Collect from experienced CEOs and executives
• Ask about hiring, team culture, difficult decisions

You get a full advisory board without convincing anyone to join.

Beyond Business: Personal Development Too

This isn't just for business advice. You can create advisory personas for:

• Fitness/health: Clone a trainer or health expert's approach
• Creative work: Get advice from artists or writers you admire
• Life philosophy: Learn from philosophers or thought leaders
• Career development: Model successful people's career decisions

If someone has shared their thinking publicly, you can build an advisor based on it.

Getting Started

1. List 3 people whose advice would be most valuable to you right now
2. Spend a few hours collecting their best content (podcasts, articles, videos)
3. Import everything into Stash workspaces labeled by advisor
4. Start asking questions relevant to your current challenges
5. Iterate based on what's helpful and add more advisors as needed

You'll never have access to everyone you want to learn from. But you can get pretty close.

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Ready to build your dream advisory board? Try Stash and get advice from the people you wish you could ask.