Advisory clients
Let startups request your advisory services from your public profile, run each engagement through a simple pipeline, and give clients a private portal to search your network and ask for introductions.
Turn your profile into a front door
Your public NetworkOS profile already shows the strength of your network. Advisory clients turns it into a way to win work: a founder who lands on your profile can request your advisory services directly, you review and accept, and they become a client company with a private portal — all without leaving NetworkOS.
Accepting advisory requests and the client portal are part of the Pro plan. Everything on your side happens in the web app at thenetworkos.com; your clients get their own lightweight portal.
How it works
Turn on advisory requests
In your public profile settings, toggle on "Accepting advisory requests." A "Request advisory services" button then appears on your published profile. This is a Pro feature.
A startup requests you
A founder fills out a short form on your profile — company, what they need, and how to reach them. No account required on their side. You get an email and the request shows up on your Companies page.
Review and accept
Open the request, verify the company, and accept. NetworkOS creates the company in your client list with the point of contact linked — exactly like a company you'd add by hand — or you can decline with an optional note.
Run the engagement
Move the engagement through its stages (in discussion → active → paused → ended), record your fee terms for your own records, and invite the client to their portal.
The engagement pipeline
Every accepted request becomes an engagement you can track on the company's page. Advance it as the relationship evolves — in discussion while you settle terms, active once you're advising, paused if it's on hold, and ended when it wraps. Ending an engagement archives the company for you; pausing leaves it in place. You can record fee terms (equity, cash, or a mix, with an amount and cadence) for your own bookkeeping.
The client portal
When you accept, the company's point of contact is invited to a private portal. They sign in with a one-time email link — no password, and never a NetworkOS account of their own. In the portal they can see the status and timeline of your engagement, and, once you enable it, search your network and ask you for introductions.
You control access: invite additional people from the company, revoke anyone, and turn network search on or off per engagement (it starts off). Search and requests are only available while the engagement is active.
What clients can and can't see
Portal search is deliberately limited — even stricter than team search. For each match a client sees a compact card: name, company, job title, headline, industry, location, LinkedIn, and a relationship-warmth indicator with a reason for the match.
They never see the underlying contact — no email addresses, no private notes, and no interaction history. Your notes aren't searchable to a client and aren't even used to write the match explanation. When a client requests an introduction, it lands with you as a normal "requested" introduction; you decide whether to make it, and it goes out from your own inbox like any other NetworkOS intro.