What AdvisorI replaces
A consultant tells you once, for five figures
Plan software will format whatever you type, for twenty dollars. AdvisorI researches the idea, tells you the parts you didn't want to hear, and lets you change an assumption and ask again.
AdvisorI is human-curated AI. The questions AdvisorI asks, the order it asks them in, and the answers it refuses to accept were all set by someone who has run these numbers on real businesses. AdvisorI does that work faster and cheaper than a person can.
AdvisorI is not the cheap option and was never meant to be. It doesn't compete with $20 plan software. It doesn't undercut consultants. It sits in the gap where neither one helps a founder decide.
| The job | Professional services | Plan software | AdvisorI ($49–$149/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is this idea viable? | A consultant's opinion, inside a $2.5k–15k plan engagement | Not offered — you assert it, the tool formats it | A researched verdict with kill-criteria, delivered first |
| Market and competitor research | Market research firm, $5k–30k+, weeks of lead time | A template asking you to name your competitors | Live web search; competitors named, with their pricing |
| Customer acquisition and GTM | Fractional CMO or GTM consultant at $150–500/hr | A blank marketing section | Channels, CAC, and an eight-week launch plan |
| Financial model | Modelling consultant at $150–500/hr, or bundled at $3k+ | Spreadsheet templates you populate yourself | Built from your acquisition numbers, not typed in |
| The written plan | $500–3k freelance; $2.5k–15k+ investor-grade | The one thing these genuinely do well | Generated, plus a build-ready spec |
| Lender / investor pack | $10k/mo retainers at the investor-grade end | Not offered | Handoff artifacts you can hand to a lender |
| A working website | Web designer, $2k–10k | Not offered | Generated and published, revealed as you progress |
| When an assumption changes | Re-engage. New scope, new invoice | Retype it and hope | Change it and re-run; the sections downstream follow |
| Talking it through with an operator | Hourly, uncapped, forever | Nobody to ask | One-to-one mentorship at a fixed $997/mo |
Professional-service figures are 2026 market ranges — sources at the bottom of this page.
The arithmetic, in one line
Buying the professional-services equivalent of one AdvisorI project — plan, market research, financial model, go-to-market — runs roughly $5,000 to $30,000 once, plus hourly for every question afterwards. AdvisorI at the top of its band is $1,788 a year, and the questions afterwards cost nothing — because re-running is the product rather than a new engagement.
Why professional services lose
At this specific job. They win plenty of others.
- The meter never stops.
- The plan is the beginning of the invoice, not the end of it. Every follow-up question is billable at $150–500/hr, which trains founders not to ask — the exact opposite of what someone deciding whether to build needs.
- It's a snapshot, and it starts ageing on delivery.
- A document written in March cannot know what changed in June.
- You buy the conclusion, not the reasoning.
- You cannot re-run a consultant with one assumption changed. That is the single most useful thing a founder can do, and it is structurally unavailable at any price.
- The incentive is to produce a plan, not to stop you.
- Nobody is paid $12,000 to conclude “don't build this.” A tool with no engagement to protect can say it in the first section.
- Weeks, not minutes.
- Scoping, scheduling, drafts, revisions. Founders lose the quarter they were trying to test.
Why plan software loses
Including the part that's fair to them.
- An inch deep, by design.
- They are templates with a formatting engine. The research, the competitor list, the numbers and the judgement are all still yours to supply.
- They have no opinion, and cannot say no.
- They exist to help you write a plan, never to gate you out of one. A founder who needs to hear “this is a bad idea, stop” cannot buy that from any of them at any tier.
- Nothing is connected.
- The marketing section and the financial section are separate text boxes. We won't compute finances until acquisition has produced a CAC, because a projection built on a number nobody chose is fiction.
- No live research.
- A current competitor set requires searching the web now. Template software has never done this, and an AI wrapper without search does something worse — it invents one.
- Whatever they cost, the work is still yours.
- That's the honest reason these are cheap, and it's the whole difference: you are buying a document editor, not an answer. The research, the competitor list, the numbers and the judgement remain your job.
AdvisorI runs on 30 years of wins and failures
The guidance built into AdvisorI comes from Matt Newman's 30 years of business success and failure. Mentorship is the same guidance in conversation, applied to your business instead of routed through the analysis.
A consultant at $300 an hour who gives you three hours bills $900 and owes you nothing between calls. Mentorship is $997 a month, flat, with AdvisorI included and the channel open between sessions. Ten seats, by application.
Where these numbers come from
Business-plan consultant ranges: OGScapital and Growth-Grid, 2026. Strategy consultant hourly benchmarks of $150–500/hr: ConsultFees, 2026. Marketing consultant costs: OuterBox, 2026. Mentorship format and price: buildari.ai/mentorship. The software band is the observed category norm across LivePlan, Bizplan, Enloop and the AI-wrapper cluster, with LivePlan at roughly $20–30/mo as the anchor, rather than a single vendor quote. Ranges are what a founder would be quoted, not what any one firm charges — your quote will differ.