Do People Seek Mentors to Learn or to Fit In?

Unfinished thoughts on mentorship

Something has really been bothering me recently. So I live in Phoenix and mentoring is a pretty big deal here, as it is in most places. We have had people who have success give back to the community by mentoring young founders. It’s awesome. There are dozens mentorship programs in Phoenix, including the place where I work, Galvanize. I never really questioned why people seek mentors in the first place.

It wasn’t until Y Combinator opened up registration for their Startup School that I started to see something weird happening. For context, YC is the best accelerator in the world. By the end of this year, they will have created over 100 billion dollars worth value to the world, through their companies. These people know their shit better than any of our mentors, or any other mentor network in the world.

So, when they open up their doors for anyone in the world to listen in on world class lectures from people who have built a billion dollar business, you would think we would go crazy over that, seeing that we like to seek advice from mentors already. Even more, they are allowing a couple thousand startups to get direct mentorship from a YC partner. That’s an incredible opportunity. You’d expect everyone to be drooling over this opportunity for mentorship from the best in the world.

But no.

We actually aren’t. There has been very little buzz or talk about the classes in our communication channels. There have been conversations here and there but it hasn’t sparked up much. This is weird to me. You have relatively mildly successful mentors locally who seem to be in high demand but when you have the smartest people in the world at building startups offering content and mentorship for free, only a few notice. That’s fucking weird.

There are a few assumptions on why that might be the case.

• People didn’t know about the Startup School opportunity in the first place
• People need a mentor, just to tell people they have a mentor, not actually to improve.
• People don’t recognize the value of one opportunity to learn over another

I don’t know if i’m going to go farther into this, as doing a full study might take up a fair amount of time. But, it does interest me. Here are some questions that i’m pondering….

Do people like the idea of having a mentor more than the outcomes that come from a mentor?

Do people get a mentor out of guilt, because not having a mentor in business seems unpopular?

Do people take into consideration what a mentor has done, before they accept their mentorships or all all mentors treated the same?

If you enjoyed this blog post, please click that ❤ button below. It really helps us out :) Thanks!