Mentors as Primary Care Physicians

I just had a great visit with Abbey Titcomb, who's leading the Student Founder program in "_U First" at UnderscoreVC. Like many great entrepreneurship programs and business incubator/accelerators (including Smarter in the City, where I'm a founding Board member), _U First relies heavily on mentors to support entrepreneurs as they grow valuable businesses. Based on Abbey's personal experience as a startup founder, and my experiences with both Smarter and as a mentor at MIT designX, we had a fascinating conversation about mentor matching. It's not difficult to find amazing talented individuals willing to share their experience to help out the next generation of founders - but for incubator/accelerators, it can be quite difficult to make the relationship work.  

In the accelerator/incubator world, it's not uncommon for 3, 4, or more mentors to be assigned to a single startup. They may all come together at the beginning for a mentor match or kickoff, but generally work with the startup in isolation from each other thereafter. Most entrepreneurs have experienced the difficult situation of getting one piece of feedback from Mentor A, then getting contradictory feedback from Mentor B just days later. Whose advice do you follow? How do you tell Mentor A that you chose to follow Mentor B's guidance instead of his own? Which mentor do you call when you need help with one specific issue? Enter the idea of mentor as "primary care physician."

In most group health organizations, a primary care physician is a patient's first point of contact in the vast world of services that may be needed to treat an illness. The PCP gets to know patients personally and is the patient's first stop whenever there's a health concern. The PCP becomes a sort of gatekeeper for all the other services or specialists who may be called upon to solve the problem. Without a PCP, the patient would be alone in navigating the system, possibly getting conflicting diagnoses, risking redundant tests and other logistical challenges that could delay diagnosis and healing.

By applying the PCP model to accelerator/incubator mentorship, we can eliminate the problem of well-meaning but conflicting guidance. Just as the medical PCP can help guide treatment in an orderly fashion, the PCP Mentor can guide the entrepreneur's experience in the program. As the medical PCP directs the patient to the appropriate specialists and helps interpret the results of tests, the PCP Mentor can guide the entrepreneur to other "specialist" mentors for guidance with specific domain issues. 

Here's my prescription for this mentoring model:

• Assign one PCP Mentor to each startup. This individual will work closely with that team throughout the entire program, getting to know their needs, guide them through the program phases, and measure their progress. This should be a mentor with general experience in the startup's area of focus - finance, social, enterprise, edu, etc.
• Create a group of "specialist" mentors who are available for "referrals" from the PCP Mentor. They should have skill expertise that can be applied across categories - marketing, engineering, product management, operations, etc.
• As the PCP Mentor gets to know the startup's needs, she facilitates sessions with the "specialist." 

The last point is worth highlighting, too, as it eliminates another common problem in accelerators. When "specialist" type mentors offer "office hours," many entrepreneurs arrive without knowing exactly what they can or need to get out of that individual. The mentor will ask, "how can I help you?" and the founder stammers, "I don't know…I guess you can just tell me about how to do marketing?" When a PCP Mentor makes a "referral" to the specialist, she can work with the founder in advance of the meeting to perfectly understand how to make the most out of that expert's guidance. 

I'm curious to hear from other accelerator/incubator directors or mentors. Do you use this model? Do you just have independent mentors? Can the equivalent of the reliable "family doctor" help make the most out of your valuable mentor pool?