Yes, Your Mentors Matter

In the epic Mahabharata, Arjuna given a choice to choose either unarmed Krishna or his huge army. He decided to take Krishna as his Saarthi (Mentor). We all know, how the five Pandavs followed the Krishna’s strategic guidance at every step to fought the battle against the 100 Kauravas & their large army and defeat it.

Mentors are crucial for any startup growth. They see things which are unseen for founders. They highlight many issues in advance and provide remedial suggestions that saves a lot of time, money and efforts. They put founders on a fast learning trajectory to become achiever of their situation with a growth mindset. As per research, 33% founders, who are mentored by successful entrepreneurs, become successful entrepreneurs in their ventures. (Source: Endeavor Insight)

I have high gratitude towards my mentors. They consistently nurtured me to become an entrepreneur of a successful startup with right values. Under "Pay it Forward" mission, I started taking mentoring sessions with founders by sharing my 10 years of startup learning. As the saying goes, Teaching is Twice Learning. I am enjoying this new way of learning with interesting positive startup founders.

Being on both side of mentoring (Mentee as well as Mentor), I am sharing this article to help founders and mentors to know what is “Good Mentoring", and how to use it positively to make the startup successful. 

Who is a startup mentor: An experienced professional / senior entrepreneur, who faced challenges, gone through struggles & hardships in achieving something good for society, who understands changing business world and its evolving opportunities, who is willing to provide his/her time, expertise and connections to the next generation to learn from and prepare them for unknown challenges. Mentors should challenge founder’s methodology, assumptions to solve a society problem to increase their success chances. Founders can learn many aspects of business, thinking skills and many mental models for decision-making that will serve them and their startups for all coming years.

Summarizing behavior & aspects of mentor and good mentor in 10 points:

1. Time availability: A mentor should provide dedicated time in a regular interval to connect with founder and understand his vision of the company. They should encourage mentees to record such meeting minutes and provide updates of the progress.
2. Be open and approachable: Startup founders are always juggling with time due to lack of resources and people. It is important for a mentor to understand this and accordingly provide flexible time options for their meetings.
3. Inclusive mentoring: A mentor should be mindful to meet all founders of a startup in initial discussions to understand their role, vision and value creation. Later ward, he can plan his interactions with specific founders based on the agenda.
4. Be a listener & provide real life examples: A mentor should listen founders’ story, experiences and challenges empathetically. He should provide real life experiences from where founders can derive their own lessons to become cognizant about their situation and probable solution.
5. TRUST factor: Trust comes with time, transparency and truthfulness. Being a Mentor, one has access to all emotional, financial & social status of mentee founders. He should keep the discussion confidential even within founders. There may be a situation where one founder is opening up against other founders or his personal issues. Mentor should tactfully handle such conversations and align them towards the bigger picture of their startup purpose.
6. Opening his people network: A mentor has access to wide network of influencers & professionals (such as specialist, advisor, lawyer or potential investors). He can help his mentees with this readily available trusted people network. Mentor should advise founders to take professional help to solve critical issues. Many times, founders are not awared about their situation gravity and not able to decide the right time to take professional help.
7. Opening business lines and opportunities: A young founder lacks relationship of his idea and its utilities. A mentor can guide him in growing their product utility to target new customer segments. He can also hand hold him throughout the sales process. SPANCO, Initial discussion, proposal writing, price/value negotiations, payment terms, legal agreement preparation, tax implications, vendor registration, purchase order, raising invoice and finally receiving fund in their bank account.
8. Investment preparations: To raise an Investment, a startup has to go through a long list of activities. For which founders have no experience and understanding. An experienced mentor can guide them starting from preparing their pitch deck to researching right fit investors, to cold communication, to meeting them, to valuation discussion to term sheet negotiation to SHA term discussions to financial and legal due diligence to cap table formalization & preparing shareholding agreement, etc. With mentor, founders can discuss all these processes and save lots of time & efforts.
9. Investor introductions: A well connected mentor can introduce founders to investor community. Having mentors onboard put lots of gravity on startup valuation & SHA terms negotiation. Mentors can also be involved in these discussions to help founders to take rational decisions for the best of their startup.
10. Peace maker: If required, for the best interest of organizations, there are situations where a Mentor can play a critical role of mediator between founders, founder-investors, etc.

Mentoring Modus Operandi:

1. Mentoring frequency should start with 1 session in every 2 to 3 weeks to progressively goes to once in 3 months.
2. In initial sessions, a mentor should take active role in facilitating the discussions to ensure progress. Later ward, the responsibility should be transferred to the Mentee to control the discussion.
3. At the end of every session, mentor-mentee should agree on a clear action plan on how to move forward. Founder should share their startup status along with experience about what worked/didn’t work and why.
4. A mentor focus should be on widening mentee’s thinking to go through all angles and find solutions.
5. Evaluation: There should be a mentoring feedback system in respect of the quality of mentorship. Mentors should rework their approach based on the feedback, if it is not effective or give desired outcomes for startups

Difference between a Mentor and an Advisor: Both advisor and mentor provide time, expertise and connections to a startup with an objective to prepare them for success. However, where Mentor has no tangible expectation from mentee startups, an Advisor comes with a formal association as Board of Advisors with a compensation for their valuable time in terms of equity & cash.

Mentor - Mentee future: Based on the value creation, chemistry, interests and alignment, a mentor can join the founder team as an advisor, investor or as an evangelist in future.

Bonus:

(1) Contemporary mentor – mentee examples are:

1. Steve Jobs - Mark Zuckerberg | In 2011, upon Job’s death, Mark Zuckerberg posted: ‘Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.’
2. Warren Buffett mentoring Bill Gates | Gates admits that over the years he has turned to Buffett for advice on various subject and has referred to Buffett as a one-of-a-kind.
3. Gopal Krishna Gokhale mentoring Mahatma Gandhi | Gandhi received mentoring on issues such as knowledge, understanding of Indian and the issues facing common Indians.
4. Sachin Tendulkar mentoring Virender Sehwag | Tendulkar is known to have mentored Sehwag, teaching him the importance of becoming the best Sehwag he can become, instead of trying to become like Tendulkar.
5. Sir Freddie Laker mentoring Richard Branson | Branson once said, ‘If you ask any successful business person, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the road. It’s always good to have a helping hand at the start. I wouldn’t have got anywhere in the airline industry without the mentorship of Sir Freddie Laker.’

(2) Ashutosh as Mentor:

Happy to help any startup founder, who is going through some startup challenges. You can write to me at [email protected] 

Thank you.