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The Fourth Effect: Turning Boards into Growth Engines

• Alex Romanovich

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Boardrooms don’t have to look like a scene from a courtroom drama. Alex sits down with Breen Sullivan—former big-law IP attorney turned startup general counsel and founder of The Fourth Effect—to unpack why so many startups avoid boards, how that hesitation quietly limits growth, and what it takes to design advisory and governing structures that actually move revenue, fundraising, and product forward. Breen shares hard‑won lessons from scaling companies, why community and marketplaces weren’t enough to place candidates, and how the real bottleneck sits inside the startup: unclear incentives, no framework, and a semantic fear of the word “board.”

We go deep on the difference between advisory and fiduciary roles, how to compensate and vest advisors against measurable outcomes, and why timing and fit matter as much as resumes. Breen reveals at least 20 advisor archetypes—from the ICP door‑opener to the capital strategist—and shows how the right mix can unlock pilots, close enterprise deals, shorten compliance paths, and prevent avoidable failures. Then we explore AI’s role beyond simple “matching.” The Fourth Effect is building an AI-driven layer that models each startup’s needs, encodes soft skills and leadership styles, and uses agentic workflows to keep relationships aligned, productive, and accountable.

Global expansion gets practical, too. We talk about entering adjacent markets, navigating investor norms, and when to use structures like a Delaware flip. The throughline is simple: create the seats, define the outcomes, align incentives, and let technology accelerate the human work of trust and execution. If you’ve ever wondered how to turn advisors from nice‑to‑have into a compounding advantage, this conversation is your new blueprint.

If this resonated, follow and subscribe for more candid, tactical conversations—and share this with a founder who needs to hear it today. Your review helps more builders find the show.

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Alex Romanovich:

Hi, this is Alex Romanovich and welcome to Global Edge Talk. Today is August 25th, 2025, and our wonderful guest is Breen Sullivan. Hello, Breen.

Breen Sullivan:

Hi, it is so fantastic to be here.

Alex Romanovich:

Lovely. Why don't we jump right into it? We just talked about Monday. And Mondays, you love Mondays, and I hate Mondays. So uh let's talk more about that a little bit later. But let me introduce you first to our audience. Our global audience all over the world, I think, is going to be fascinated by your story. You used to be an attorney, a legal counsel for a number of companies, even companies like General Electric, some of the bigger ones. And uh that gave you a very interesting uh experience and a tremendous insight on what the startup world is all about, what the corporate legal world is all about, intellectual property world, and a few others, a few other topics as well. We'll talk more about that. But then you decided to pursue something totally different. Well, not exactly totally different, but something different. And that's the fourth effect. Tell us a little bit more about that, and then we'll jump into some of those interesting stories about you.

Breen Sullivan:

Yeah, absolutely. I would love to. So, as you just explained, my background is as a general counsel for high-growth mid-sized tech startups. And it's true before that, you know, I was a big law lawyer, but with an intellectual property focus. And actually, my very first legal job was with General Electric in Italy, in Florence, Italy. But on this path, you know, then I end up moving in-house. I become a general counsel, you know, sometimes head of legal, sometimes chief legal officer for three different companies, three different industries, all of them private, all of them for-profit, all of them rapidly scaling. And it was from that unique vantage point where I really was able to see this huge opportunity that honestly was being left on the table for two very important constituents. So one, startups and scale-ups that are for-profit, you know, private sector high-growth companies. And then on the other side of the marketplace, executives, people that are ready to give back as advisors, as directors, sometimes also as angel investors. They want to plug in to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but they don't necessarily have an on-ramp.

Alex Romanovich:

Oh, very interesting. Now, from what I understand, from what you told me, the fourth effect first started as a platform to help women predominantly get board seats. And then there was some kind of an aha moment, and it migrated to something that's much bigger. Tell us more about that.

Breen Sullivan:

Yeah, so so you're you're correct. So sitting from that vantage point, general counsel, these companies, in the very beginning, the first impetus behind building the fourth effect, it was trying to solve the problem of how do we get women on boards. Because it became obvious at some point, you know, over the course of this career that it was incredibly opaque and incredibly difficult to know how to get started, how to land that first for-profit board seat, how to build a for-profit career. And what did that even mean? So that's how this began. Then when we first started trying to solve that problem, we began with community. And that was very important. It's necessary, but it didn't solve this problem. It didn't get women on boards in and of itself. Then we built a marketplace. And, you know, here we could leverage AI, machine learning, we could create access for both sides, we could create that kind of connection and recommendation, but that wasn't enough either, in and of itself, to get any one type of person on boards. And what we learned over the years of actually executing in the space and building this, it was this really much bigger opportunity was really boiled down to the company themselves. Companies don't know what they don't know when it comes to building advisory boards and governing boards. There has not been a roadmap, a framework. There hasn't been a clear startup governance system, a tool that enables startups and scale-ups to be in the driver's seat, to be incentivized, empowered, and educated so that it's very clear for them why they should build these boards in the first place. Like why? And what are these boards? What is an advisory board versus a governing board? How to structure in a strategic and fit-for-purpose way informal and formal advisors in order to capture pattern recognition, in order to leapfrog ahead and actually hit really important KPIs, ultimately not die as a startup. How do you fundraise successfully? So all of that, realizing that has been a big gaping hole because there has not been startup governance structure. There hasn't been that intelligent layer of, you know, that ecosystem layer. That is why startups oftentimes are not building these boards. They're not creating the seats, they don't know who to put in the seats at what time. And so on the other side of the marketplace, whether you're female, you're male, wherever you come from, without having that intelligent layer of infrastructure, the rules of engagement and that clarity, that ability to know where to slap yourself in to bring value, it's impossible to get started, to get that first seat, to get the subsequent seats. So we realized it was really much bigger than any one group that needed to get access to board service. This was really a systemic gap. And this was really about making sure the seats get created in the first place.

Alex Romanovich:

And you know what's interesting about it is that as individuals, we take good care of our real estate governance or legal uh issues and so forth. We take care of our inheritance issues and so forth. We take care of a lot of different things that uh affect us as individuals, families, and yet companies, the founders and the companies, don't do the same exact thing for the companies, right? And for the employees. And what's amazing about it, I've spoken to so many startups and worked with so many startups globally, and the problem seems to repeat itself over and over again. The governance, the selection of the board, advisory board, and the governing board, that seems to be like um the last thing they think about or they even talk about. Yeah, sometimes they would put that into the deck. And, you know, here's our team, here's our, you know, governing board or advisory board, but yet not talk about it that much or too much. What have you learned from actually putting the board together for the fourth effect?

Breen Sullivan:

I mean, honestly, I think the single most shocking thing that has become clear in the years of doing this is just how little most people know about advisory boards and governing boards. And this is really true across the map. You know, whether you're talking about founders and of course experienced founders where they've done this two, three, four times, they know the most because they've they've learned by doing, you know, through trial and error, through experience. And then VCs, you know, there are some VCs that are pretty knowledgeable because, you know, they're they're former founders, they've worked with so many founders, they've been at this, you know, for a long time. They've watched a lot of companies come into existence and then scale. But with the exception of small pockets of people, mostly this knowledge is not it is not widely known. It is, it's it has not been accessible. And and it really is more than anything else an education and semantic gap. And so I don't care how sophisticated somebody is. I have met thousands of extremely sophisticated and impressive people that just don't know about this. It's just a gap. It's opaque. And many founders are not very experienced three-time, four-time serial founders. Many founders don't know any of this. And the problem is that nobody even knows they don't know. And nobody will admit they don't know. So nobody knows where to go. And and even though, okay, now we have chat GPT. So why isn't everyone just asking chat GPT? They don't even know that they need to ask, they don't know what questions to ask. So this is why there's so much incredible opportunity here. Um a resource like the fourth effect needs to exist, because the startup failure rate is so high, it is 90%, which is not surprising if you've ever walked in these shoes, because every part of this journey is incredibly, incredibly challenging. So if you don't have the right people at the right time, if you can't lean on the right bench of informal and formal advisors as you navigate this incredibly challenging landscape, it is so much harder to be successful. And that's whether or not you have access to capital. That's whether or not, you know, that's whether or not you're incompetent or competent. This is just a big gaping hole.

Alex Romanovich:

You know, it's amazing, is that a lot of folks don't realize that having the right board next to you or behind you not only solves the governance issues or gives you that knowledge, but it also opens a lot of opportunities in terms of business development, fundraising, marketing. It depends obviously on how you select the board, how you select the advisory board. But why wouldn't companies, why wouldn't startups and early stage companies recognize that that having the board around you is like having, you know, it's like you know, having uh success in, you know, in geometric progression. In, you know, it's like amplifying your capabilities by tenfold, by fivefold. Why, why are they not educated in something like that?

Breen Sullivan:

I mean, honestly, so much of it is semantics. So I think a founder hears the word board and they immediately are thinking of a publicly traded company, Fortune 500, governing board with, you know, 12 angry men sitting around the table or whatever they're picturing. It's a boardroom, it's people in suits, you know, they they're gonna fire that CEO. It's scary, it's intimidating, it's unclear. Are we, you know, now we're in the realm of preferred shares, you know, everyone's nervous. What founders don't realize is that an advisory board, whether it ever assembles as a group or it's just a series of informal one-on-one relationships, sometimes those relationships aren't even compensated, although certainly the best practice is to compensate those relationships, at least with equity, you know, that matches the scale. So one of the accepted scales, there's a couple of frameworks. Um, and you want that because you want your advisors to be aligned, you want them to have skin in the game. Sometimes advisors are writing you a check as a founder, you know, they're also investing in you. But I think for founders to understand that the advisory landscape, all of these different relationships, or they are, you know, however they come to be, those are not a governing fiduciary board relationship that those advisors serve the founder. Those advisors serve the management team. It's a contractual relationship. It is no different than a consultant, an independent contractor, which there's not a founder out there who's scared to enter into a 1099 relationship with a consultant. But I think that that's one big hurdle is just not knowing that. And then even if they do know that, having access to how do I, how do I paper these relationships? How do I structure them from a legal perspective? How do I make sure that I understand the ROI that I need out of this relationship as a founder? And then how do I effectively have that conversation with the advisor so that they, you know, so that there's clarity on both sides, which is of course the point of a contract. You know, they know what they're expected to provide, they know what they're getting. And then this can be incentives are aligned. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. So I think a lot of it is that founders just don't know that uh and they're intimidated and scared when they don't need to be. Um, I think also the very experienced founders who've done this a few times, they have, they tend to have kind of an arsenal of these different ways to structure relationships with these advisors in order to achieve, you know, myriad goals, right? So you mentioned business development, that's one. So, you know, having your ICP, having not even just your ICP, but your ICP who's going to get you that first major contract. That that's one example of a way that you can leverage and tap into advisors that is not immediately apparent to a founder and they don't, they might not know how to, you know, what would be in it for the ICP. How do I enter into that conversation with this person? How do I meet that person? How do I, you know, get that person to sign on the dotted line? So I think there's a whole lot of that. There's also that's one example. And, you know, one of the things that we have learned in the six years of doing this, we've identified at least 20 advisor archetypes. And, you know, the business development, your ideal customer profile, your ICP is one of them. But any one of those 20 can find value in the white space, can increase revenue, save money in many different places, help you avoid common pitfalls that could be devastating, help you fundraise directly write checks. There's so many things that these advisors can do for the founder if the founder is armed with knowing those advisor archetypes and then having a framework, understanding when they should tap those advisors, how they compensate those advisors, and make sure that they can stop vesting if they're not getting value from those advisors. So, you know, I think I answered your question. Governing board is sort of a bit of a different answer, but um, but there definitely is one there too.

Alex Romanovich:

I totally agree with you. It's a it's a non-intimidating, not intruding, not conflicting body of people that can really open doors and provide a lot of assistance and and so forth. Now let's talk about probably the most uh talked-about topic of these times, artificial intelligence. That's now capable of so many different things, developing content, matching one with the other based on profiles, uh you know, uh predicting things, doing research and so forth. How is Forth Effect leveraging AI? And what do you think is the future of platforms like yours with these technologies where matching is going to be like the most basic thing that they will do? And there's just so much more to do with AI.

Breen Sullivan:

Oh, there is. And it's so exciting. I think what AI is making possible is the ability to solve these deeply, deeply human problems. Because when you when you talk about our example, so we want to help startups find just the right person at the right moment. That is a deeply human solution, deeply human problem. It's it's rooted in relationships. I don't think we could have solved that without AI. I think AI is the key that makes that possible. And, you know, that is what we are very excited about. That's what we're building right now. And it will be the kind of new iteration of our platform is built to this spec. Um, we're actually patenting the underlying technology around it, which is all AI driven. But long story short, like essentially what we can do is create an incredible model, you know, an optimized model that can determine for every startup, as idiosyncratic as that startup is, what exactly is the right recipe for success for that startup. Right. And that has a lot to do with not just hard skills, skill set, and network experience, but also soft skills, characteristic, leadership styles. All of this is something that, you know, over time, as our model is experiencing more and more successes and you know, learning from its users, it optimizes and get better, it gets better and better. So I think, I think like I know there's uh, you know, some people have have observed, you know, have talked about how the AI companies of tomorrow, they will be the companies that learn from their customers and then they're able to serve back to the customer exactly what the customer needs because of the customer using the product or the service. And and I think that that is exactly why now instead of using AI to automate something, we can use AI to create infrastructure. Like we can create board seats. We can create, you know, we can create the opportunity and the infrastructure because of AI.

Alex Romanovich:

Are you suggesting that one of the board members could be the AI avatar? If you will. Is that possible? Is that something that's in the that's in the works? Can you tell us?

Breen Sullivan:

So not not exactly that, no, but if I understand your question correctly, but definitely um agentic AI and enabling the facilitation of this deeply human relationship that the founders have with the advisors. That that's right there. I mean, that's what we're actively building that. And and another thing that we are that we're very excited about is our ability to analyze the personal characteristics and leadership styles and skills and traits of our members in a way that can also find synchronicity with these scaling startup teams because it's it's not it's not enough just to provide access. It's not enough just to be transactional. There it really is four dimensions. You know, there's, you know, of course, timing is a really important part of that fourth dimension, but there's also our psychology and our personal characteristics in our traits. Because at the end of the day, relationships, just human relationships, are at the center of everything that we are doing. No one's putting you on their board, no one's writing you a check if this isn't a real, authentic connection. And so it's fundamental. And also you you cannot assemble a good team without relationships being what decides whether this is a good team or not. I mean, relationship is is everything. And that is what AI makes possible.

Alex Romanovich:

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about something that's near and dear to me at Global Edge Markets, and that's global and being global and going global. Now, your co-founder is from Switzerland, I believe, right? And you have members in over 50 countries worldwide. How do you see that developing in the near future where different parts of the world have different needs? Startups and early stage companies and even scale-ups in different parts of the world have different attitudes, may have different um approaches, if you will. Investors obviously may have different uh requirements in those different parts of the world. How do you see the fourth effect unifying this huge global community?

Breen Sullivan:

Well, okay, so immediately, well, I guess, okay, the a few different answers, but the first is that the reason why we have members in over 50 countries, this actually happened organically. And at first it was really because startups in these different cities and different parts of the world want to scale into adjacent markets. And it was obvious to you know scrappy, resilient startup founders that if I can line up the right informal and formal advisors at the right time in my target market, it's going to be much easier for me to penetrate and scale in that market. Also, how do I fundraise in another market? How do I do, you know, a Delaware flip and you know, become a Delaware C Corp, have a subsidiary that can do that, that can then get venture funding. How do I, how do I negotiate what scaling in a global world means? Advisors are probably your single best route to do that effectively. So founders all over the world already knew this and and they came to us. So, you know, this is why, you know, this is how that happened. And then, of course, having advisors in other markets is so important because startups don't just scale one direction. So, you know, everyone's scaling everywhere. So I think that is that is one very exciting part of this intelligent layer of infrastructure that we're building, that I think it unifies, like it really helps to facilitate global markets. And because innovation is innovation wherever it's coming from in any part of the world. There are differences, you know, from a compliance perspective, when you're especially when you get into the realm of governing and fiduciary boards and fundraising. That's true. That being said, there's no reason why you can't leverage technology to help to bridge some of those gaps, you know, to help turn pears and nectarines into apples. You know, like there is a common startup language that, you know, you can mostly get to apples to apples in order to help the constituents in our marketplace work together. So I think there's there's huge opportunity there. You know, there's also a lot of nuance with international companies. Sometimes there's more opportunity for, say, American executives, or vice versa, even at the larger scale.

Alex Romanovich:

Um, a couple of final questions. It's been a fascinating conversation, by the way. So you're um walking on the street and you uh run into Breen Sullivan of, let's say, 10, 15 years ago. You sit down for a cup of coffee. What do you tell her?

Breen Sullivan:

Life's a journey. I mean, I think I think it's uh I think what is the most important is to just be scaling the mountains. And the mountain's a moving target. And uh and for me, I mean, as hard as this is, I'm so grateful, truly. I'm grateful every day that I get to uh work so hard, that like that I am like I am on Kilimanjaro or whatever I'm on, you know, and that that's the point, I think. You know, so I'm really grateful for it. And and I think is if as long as you're climbing, you keep climbing, what else is there?

Alex Romanovich:

Totally agree. So, what is your in conclusion, what is your advice to the uh new members of the Fourth Effect platform and the entrepreneurs everywhere?

Breen Sullivan:

Well, for entrepreneurs, so new members who are founders, for entrepreneurs, I think like uh probably the biggest lesson I've learned as an entrepreneur is that you always overestimate what you can do in any given day, and you are going to really disappoint yourself. So if there are 20 like do or die items on your list, you're only gonna get through like three. And and it's soul crushing. But we also really underestimate what we're able to achieve if you string together a bunch of those disappointing days. So you really feel this as an entrepreneur, at least I've really had this experience where even if so, if you find yourself discouraged or you're drinking out of a fire hose, if you stop and you look back 90 days, it is mind-blowing and is deeply satisfying and so invigorating and so inspirational what you've managed to accomplish in that 90 days, as long as you just do it every single day. You show up every single day, you just keep climbing. And that that's amazing. And that makes me feel like, you know, we can be like that Shell Silverstein poem, and we can be that 98-year-old woman who eats the entire well. I think all things are possible if you approach it that way.

Alex Romanovich:

Brian, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a fascinating conversation. Lots of luck to you with the fourth effect and other endeavors, to you and your partners, obviously. And we'd love to have you back to uh to look at your progress, maybe in the near future. I'm sure it's gonna be successful. I'm sure it's gonna be amazing, and wish you all the luck in the world.

Breen Sullivan:

Well, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I hope it was indeed fascinating. And yes, for all of your listeners that want to enjoy and join and become a part of the Fourth Effect, the easiest way to find us is our website, thefortheffect.com. We do platform tours twice a week. It's a wonderful way to get a private introduction and really see what we're doing. See, see for yourself or platform or community, see it next, and um and get started.

Alex Romanovich:

Thanks so much.

Breen Sullivan:

You're welcome.