How to Make the Most of Mentors
I spend a lot of time mentoring founders. I would guess that I've easily spent 2,500+ hours mentoring founders over the years through my role as a VC, programs like Creative Destruction Lab and Barclays Global Connect and just generally trying to be helpful. And I’m far from alone.
One of the things that makes the startup world so special is that the vast majority of people genuinely enjoy helping others. Most of us sincerely want to see founders succeed. As a result, it's easier than you might expect for resourceful entrepreneurs to get face time with experienced founders, investors and subject matter experts.
Unfortunately, I've found that many founders don't know how to make the most of these opportunities.
Here are 5 common mistakes founders make when meeting with mentors:
1. Not Preparing
Founders spend countless hours preparing for pitches and fundraising meetings, but many are shockingly unprepared when they meet with mentors whose insights could potentially change the trajectory of their startup.
If you’ve taken the initiative to ask a mentor to speak with you and are allocating 30 minutes or more of your incredibly limited time to the meeting, why wouldn’t you research their background and experience and come prepared with a list of specific questions/topics to discuss?
2. Talking Too Much
One of the most common mistakes I see founders make during mentorship meetings is they spend way too much time talking. They’re so used to being in “sales” mode that they don’t know how to turn it off.
From a founder’s perspective, the goal of a mentorship meeting should be to extract as many insights as possible from the mentor in the time you have with them. If you spend 10 or 15 minutes out of a 30-minute call sharing your entire company and life’s story with them, then you leave only 15 minutes to get actual value from the meeting.
Of course, this relates to being prepared. If you’re not asking the mentor for product advice, then you don’t need to give them the full breakdown on what the product is and how it works. If you’re not speaking to them about founder dynamics, then it doesn’t matter who your cofounders are or how you met. And so on.
3. Not Controlling the Meeting
Another corollary of being unprepared is that many founders allow mentorship meetings to be pulled into random directions based on the natural flow of the conversation. This can sometimes be good, but in many cases you eat into your limited time with the mentor by discussing unrelated topics that pop into your head, are outside of the mentor’s area of expertise and/or could easily be answered by Googling.
Mentorship meetings are conversations, so there needs to be a certain degree of organic flow, but it’s up to you to focus and refocus the conversation towards the issues that are most important to you.
I promise, the mentor won’t be offended.
4. Late / Bad Location / Poor Connection
I can’t tell you how many mentorship calls I’ve had where the founder dials in late or from a bad location with questionable WiFi.
Mentorship meetings might not be your top priority, but if you’ve gone through the effort to secure a meeting with a mentor, why on earth wouldn’t you plan the call at a time and location that ensures an optimal outcome?
Two things typically result from this:
Founders don’t get the most out of the mentor’s time (“can you hear me now..?”)
The mentor tends to leave the meeting with a poor impression of the founder
The latter might not matter in the long run, but if you’re hoping that the mentor might help you on an ongoing basis or make introductions in the future, first impressions matter.
5. Doing Exactly What the Mentor Says
pinball / ˈpɪn.bɑːl / verb. - to move abruptly from one place to another
A common mistake that first-time founders make is to leave a mentorship meeting and do exactly what the mentor said that they should.
A few weeks later, they speak with another mentor, who contradicts the first one. The second mentor was incredibly compelling, so they change directions completely and do exactly what the second mentor advised.
And so on.
One of the biggest challenges for founders is learning how to reconcile strongly-voiced, contradictory opinions from experienced mentors. Learning to filter advice through the lens of understanding the mentor’s lived experience is crucial to not being reactive.