🔒Advice: Free and anonymous

There's no shortage of opinions about the usefulness of advice. Take Lucy van Pelt's psychiatry booth in the comic strip “Peanuts,” where she tells the depressed Charlie Brown, “Snap out of it, five cents please.”

Maine House of Genius, part of an international group of home-grown advice-givers, hopes its unusual format will help push meaningful, actionable feedback from experts who've already made it in the business world or other positions to the state's early-stage companies.

Having covered the innovation economy for a number of years, I can tell you there's no shortage of people willing to help, people with varying degrees of business acumen that might make a difference to a small company that's reached a roadblock in its growth. Or not.

There also are various contests where money and advice are forthcoming, like the Gorham Savings Bank $50K LaunchPad Competition for early-stage companies and Women Standing Together, a group that meets for lunch and hears an entrepreneur present their business, then has small groups at tables give advice.

The difference with House of Genius is that the two companies that present the third Tuesday of each month must ask only one question that they hope will advance their business, and listen as 10 anonymous panelists give them advice. The point of the anonymity is so that a presenter seeking accounting advice doesn't go directly to an accountant panelist at the risk of not hearing other opinions that could be helpful. The presenters and panelists themselves only learn who the other panelists are at the very end of the meeting.

Perhaps more than the other venues and formats for advice I've seen, this one tries to put everyone on an equal level so that all opinions are heard. Recent presenter Lorraine Fagela, founder of Cornerstone Food Co. in Falmouth, which makes Buko-brand coconut chips, told me the advantage of the House of Genius is that an expert doesn't have to be an expert in her own industry to be helpful.

“There's a vulnerability [in standing before more than a dozen people], but I am there for a purpose,” she says. “They're going to help me and I'm there to learn. People's advice comes from different walks of life and could be your audience [consumers].”

That was the case with panelist Nicola Chin, who runs her own Up With Community consultancy in Lewiston and is a big fan of coconut chips. The two women planned to touch base after the House of Genius event.

And that's part of its allure as well: getting contacts and exposure. Chin wanted to meet someone from Bixby & Co., the Rockland-based maker of Bixby Bars, and was able to.

Steve Underwood, an underwater videographer who developed the Pakpod tripod with pitons on the ends of its legs, says his company, Deep Blue Design, found the panelists didn't fully understand the advantages of his product, and got back to him with additional suggestions after the event once they saw it used in videos on his website.

The feedback made Deep Blue change the images on its own website and on Amazon.com to feature the tripod's distinctions. And Underwood says sales, which had stalled seasonally over the summer, are back on track.

So yes, the advice is free. But both the presenters and panelists seemed to benefit from the format of not pre-judging the information they might get from others, and in the process learned about potentially beneficial resources and contacts.

It's part of the innovation process, which we mostly hear about only in terms of fundraising. House of Genius emphasizes how second and third opinions and original ideas can help when the entrepreneur is too close to their own product or service to see the next step.