You are a CEO. Competition is tough and you need all the advice you can get. Board of directors is there to help. Your board demographics is the usual; member average age is 60, in average they have been in this board for 7 years and 90% of them are male. What do you do?

You propose changes on the board composition. You know that based on several studies board characteristics (like gender diversity) have clear impact on company performance and you don’t want to give your competitors any extra competitive advantage.

To find new members you have the “who-do-we-know” discussion in board room. But 60 year old males tend to know other 60 year old males. Not a good way to increase diversity.

There must be other ways you think. Instead of paying thousands to head-hunters, one can always use LinkedIn for free. Everyone is there, but there’s no way of knowing who would be interested and available for new board positions.

Dead end?

Not for long. Boardio will be an alternative to “who-do-we-know” discussion by providing companies with access to board candidates with different backgrounds – both experienced board professionals but also less-experienced young executives that are valued for the fresh perspective and energy.

Based on our experience on Abonnet we know that there’s a need for this kind of service.

James Citrin has also noticed the need;

The irony is that while much has been written about the legitimate difficulties of companies finding qualified and interested directors for their boards, there are a growing number of prospective directors who would be all too happy to serve.

And Aaron Hurst;

Odds are that the leadership of the perfect board for you doesn’t know that you exist and if they do they don’t know that you would be interested.

Nice, but honestly speaking we are more interested on your views as we hope you’ll start using Boardio. Are we on a right track? Are we solving a real problem? Have we missed something?

Please, let us hear your thoughts. Thanks!

(Please go to Boardio LinkedIn group to comment.)

To vote, comment and see results please go to our LinkedIn group.

BOARD A
All board members are (non-minority) males with average age of 55. In average, they have been in this board for 7 years. One of them has degree in business, one in law and one in finance. Their core skills in board work are Industry knowledge, Finance/Audit and Strategy. They got the board seats mainly because they knew fellow members in advance.

To vote, comment and see results please go to our LinkedIn group.

BOARD B
This board is more diverse; there’s one female member and one male is Asian. Average member age is 42 and in average they have been in this board for 3 years. Their education is close to Board A members with the exception that one member has degree in engineering instead of law. In addition to Industry and strategy knowledge, this board has good knowledge on Technology and global business. They were recruited because of their skills, not because they knew fellow members in advance.

Good news for you;

We are broadening Abonnet scope to bring new opportunities to you!!

Today Abonnet focuses on Advisory Boards but in just few weeks time we’ll launch new version of Abonnet (under the brand BOARDIO) were you’ll find not only different kind of board positions (corporate, NGO, Advisory, Board of Directors etc) but also mentoring opportunities.

This change will multiply opportunities available for you and make BOARDIO one-stop shop when it comes to sharing your expertise!

Best way for you to stay up to date on the change and to get notified on new opportunities is to join BOARDIO LinkedIn group “Board Member and Mentor Network“.

We’ll also provide more detailed info on the change to existing Abonnet users.

If any questions or comments, please contact tuomo@boardio.com.

W H A T
We need two people;
1) Investor
2) Developer

Investor; What’s the service you use to look for new board positions or new board members? There you see, there’s a gap in current service offering in this field. New Abonnet will fill this gap and become leading service to connect boards with high quality executives. Service will be build on top of current Abonnet and thus we are 90% ready. Now we need few dozen k€ to make this happen. In addition to money, you should have global mindset, solid experience on board work and be active user of several online services.

Developer; Are you familiar with both back end (LAMP) and front end web technologies? Are you ready to put your skin in the game to make things happen? For you we offer opportunity to work part time from anywhere you like and get more Abonnet shares than you ever dreamed of as a compensation.

W H Y
Abonnet has been growing steadily and we now have close to 500 registered advisors and over 40 Advisory Boards. Good start but we want to grow much faster.

During the last few months we have made extensive iteration on the concept. Now we have a rock solid plan to proceed. Feedback on that has been purely positive and we already got two new investors to join. This plan will set Abonnet to whole different level – with new name and brand to better express the new scope.

W H E N
NOW. We will move fast and will launch new Abonnet on 1Q13.

H O W
We will make this giant leap with a step at a time while carefully listening to our customers every day.

Our whole team shares the new direction and we will keep our eyes on the ball to make sure to deliver.

We know we are not able to do this alone and thus wanted to ask you to join. Please contact tuomo@abonnet.com for details.

In Finnish/ suomeksi http://www.abonnet.com/finncham.php

or

see the pdf leaflet

In English http://www.abonnet.com/market_entry.php

See also the story at FinnCham pages http://kauppakamari.fi/en/2012/11/09/new-solution/

This question was asked by one of the leading Finnish business magazines Fakta in August issue. News story was much based on a interview with Abonnet CEO Tuomo Virkkunen.

As an example case on a company having good experiences on Abonnet, they selected Sibesonke. Sibesonke CEO Uwe Schwarz says; “Advisors have shared their contacts and experiences with us. In addition to some good advice, they have also encouraged us to proceed.”

See the full story below (only in Finnish):

Abonnet has received very good feedback and many senior advisors from the US. The concept of Advisory Boards is widely used there and people are eager to share their expertise to help new companies succeed.

We have now decided to focus our activities more towards US markets. This can not be done remotely and thus we are looking for a CEO based in US to run Abonnet.

Please see details in here (http://startuply.com/Jobs/CEO_7655_1.aspx) and if you know a good candidate please let us know!

Skype is a great VOIP/VIDEO service with over 700 million registered users. We at Abonnet wanted to enable convenient use of Skype between Advisory Board members.

Here’s how it works.

First of all, insert your Skype name as part of your profile;

Now when you are at Virtual Board room (i.e. secure online environment for your Advisory Board) just select the person and click on the Skype call button to call this Advisor. Quite easy! No need to send your Skype details back and forth in advance.

If some of your Advisors do not yet have Skype details as part of the profile, you’ll see the Skype call button but it’s not activated. Please, ask this Advisor to complete her profile with Skype name.

Finally, you can even make Skype group calls with Abonnet. This is rather cool actually . If all your Advisor now have Skype name as part of their profile, all you need to do is to click on the Start Skype group call button and we’ll get your whole board on the line!

We are not big fans of re-inventing the wheel but rather prefer using existing services as much as possible. That’s why we have linked Abonnet first to LinkedIn and now to Skype.