Our Mission

In 2018, Breen Sullivan was an in-house tech lawyer watching her male colleagues angel invest, join advisory boards, and serve on startup boards. Her female colleagues were not. When she looked for a way to find those same opportunities for herself, there was no obvious place to go.

That observation led to a bigger question: why is there no system for how startups and experienced professionals work together? Companies use equity to access talent every day, whether it is an advisor, a board member, or a fractional executive. But there has never been a platform for defining the role, structuring the compensation, generating the agreements, or managing the relationship over time.

When Breen met Katrin de Haen, a serial entrepreneur who had spent years building community-driven products for founders, they realized the problem was bigger than matching. Matching without structure fails. You have to define the terms first. That insight is what drives everything we build.

We started by building a community. Over the past several years, we have worked with thousands of companies and professionals across 60+ countries, hosted hundreds of events, and facilitated thousands of connections. We learned that the real gap is not finding people. It is structuring the relationship so it works for both sides.

That is what The Fourth Effect is now: the platform for the advisory economy. We paper the full lifecycle of advisory relationships, from first match to signed agreement to ongoing management. For startups looking for the right people, and for professionals building portfolio careers.