I have been on a mission to help entrepreneurs in our community increase the value they get from their Board of Directors and Board of Advisor. I recently spoke at the Silicon Slopes StartFEST conference on “Designing the Perfect Advisory Board™” and created a page of great content to help you build your own Perfect Advisory Board™.
There are several sets of model venture documents available to help you with your startup (see some suggestions lower down) and I was asked if there were similar documents or templates for creating an Advisory Board. I’ve previously posted on some interview questions and qualification review items for Advisory Boards. For this post, I’ve done quite a bit of work to share what is available in terms of agreements between startups and potential advisors.
By far the favorite is the Founder Institute’s FAST Agreement (Founder / Advisor Standard Template) which includes a template that allows for appropriate customization without having to have lawyers review everything! The current version is version 3.0 from July 2026. You can also download the FAST template directly. A number of executed advisory board agreements that are online seemed to use the FAST template. They have detailed guidelines for equity awards to Advisors based on stage and time/effort commitment which is quite helpful.
They have detailed guidelines for equity awards to Advisors based on stage and time/effort commitment which is quite helpful.
Stage 2 Capital’s post Anatomy of an Advisor Agreement: What You Need to Know! includes an Advisory Board Agreement template, although the IP section caught my attention as potentially concerning. I think that many advisors may not be willing to accept it, so it may need to be reviewed by legal counsel.*
Building your startup advisory board, an article on Silicon Valley Bank’s site, is a good discussion of the advisory board, including vetting potential advisors. Their estimated equity allocation is consistent with my experience and what I see in the industry.
Carta’s discussion of Advisory shares: A founder’s guide was a helpful discussion, HOWEVER, the percentage shares they list as supposedly “median” equity grants to advisors is about half of what I see elsewhere and what Fi.co suggests is market, so use caution as many quality advisors would likely say no if you offer Carta’s suggested levels!
I thought that Hubspot had a pretty reasonable discussion of Advisory Boards, but that their template was frankly woefully inadequate (I don’t even recommend downloading it, it was so sparse and did not cover the topics they had described! ).
Model Legal docs for your startup:
Don’t forget, there are a number of organizations who have made available model legal documents to help you get your startup going, and get it funded. A high quality investor should suggest a set of model documents as the foundation of negotation to reduce the legal costs in raising a round of funding.
- The NVCA’s Model Legal Documents
- These are frequently the go-to documents in the angel and VC community – although some have commented that they are fairly complex, but what did you expect from the National Venture Capital Association?
- Ask an investor if they are using templated documents – it saves you a LOT of legal time if you can compare the docs they’ve presented to a standard set to know what is changed.
- Document Driver from Founders Workbench (By Goodwin)
- I have not personally reviewed the output of the Document Driver, so I cannot speak to the quality of the docs generated (and I’m not an attorney, so ask one!), but it is certainly something to consider trying if you are looking for cost effective legal docs.
- Sequoia’s Writing a Business Plan is helpful and includes a link to their pitch deck template
- Techstars previously offered a set of model documents, but these seem to have been removed.
*Nothing from VentureWrench, VentureWrench.com, Enclavix, LLC or in this post should be considered legal advice. You should review every document you execut with appropriate legal and financial professionals.
Want even more concrete and actionable fundraising advice? Check out our free VentureWrench Guide to Investor Capital, or explore our Designing the Perfect Investor™ course to learn the insider strategies that actually work. Because raising capital is hard enough—you shouldn’t have to figure it out through trial and error alone.
Nicole Toomey Davis is the CEO and co-founder of Enclavix and the VentureWrench Startup Community. She’s a serial entrepreneur who has raised millions in angel and VC funding, secured over $1.2M in SBIR grants, and sold a company to a public firm. She now spends her time helping entrepreneurs avoid the costly mistakes she’s seen (and made) along the way
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