The Last Thing A Start-Up Needs From Its Mentors
A matter of opinion
I am writing this article today for a new audience. So if you are a new reader, welcome! That said, be warned — my articles are direct and chock full of sarcasm and analogy. Of course, my articles are essentially my opinion, so use them at your own discretion.
Every start-up needs a mentor … or ten. I don’t need to tell you that. Everyone else already is… repeatedly. Seriously, people won’t shut up about the need for mentors and advisers.
The only thing is , not all mentors are helpful. Further, if you are an entrepreneur who did the corporate thing first (like me), you need to understand that external mentoring is very different than internal mentoring. Your old mentors may really disappoint you. The ones you really need may not be as apparent as you think.
I spent nearly 25 years as an analyst and executive at some of the world’s largest banks and Fortune 500s. As the Head of Decision Science, I spent my days thinking a lot about … well, decisions.
When I looked for mentors inside my companies, I had some simple criteria. I looked for individuals with greater experience, higher position, OR a greatly different perspective than I had. Any of those three items made someone’s perspective and opinion helpful to me. I worked with a half-dozen or more mentors at all time.
Corporations and Start-Ups are different
After two years focused on both building and mentoring start-ups, I have come to a realization — corporations and start-ups are different. I am sure that is neither surprising, nor helpful. What I offer that is helpful is further definition of that difference.
Corporations are typically well-formed, highly predictable entities. Where that is a relative statement, it is critical. It is also science — research the Information Theory of Economics for more (or start here). Within a corporation there are processes, feedback loops, known hierarchies, and other relatively easily modeled systems. As a result, the opinion of smart and experienced people is worth a lot!
Start-ups, again relatively speaking, have almost none of those things. As a result opinion is almost worthless. Yes — I wrote that. Stay with me.
Corporations allow you to take poorly formed information (opinions) and measure them against fairly well-formed systems in your organization. Using that process, opinions can be cultivated into insight.
This value is emphasized whenever you seek market advice. While your company is well-formed, many markets are not. There is a reason so many people become disenchanted with the advice they get in this specific area.
That same disenchantment is in full effect for Start-ups. Start-ups don’t offer the luxury of structure and frameworks to help you. Because of that, most opinion is really just noise. Worse still, with little to judge against, this is not apparent. Many start-ups deafly follow this advice never realizing in is nothing more than good intention.
This is analogous to anecdotal data in analytics. For me, it should have been obvious. Sadly, I spent many months following a good deal of noise.
What Start-Ups Need From Mentors
What start-ups need more than opinion is a framework. You can call it structure. You can call it facts and context. It may even be a bit of opinion. The key is that it is information that helps the start-up to build out the structure it needs.
Said differently, my most effective mentors, my most effective advice have focused on the development of structure and process. Not what to do, but HOW to go about figuring it out. How to judge success. How to benchmark results. How to collect the data and information you need. How to think it all through. Not what to do, but the best ways to judge if what you are doing is actually working for you. Not what to focus on, but how to build an infrastructure that helps you figure that out.
This Is Mostly Opinion — Do With It What You’d Like
I use that tagline a lot now — whenever I am asked for an opinion by other entrepreneurs and start-up leaders. This article is not an exception. The format does not support me providing a deep dive into How I came to these insights. There is certainly a lot preventing me from running some real “test & control”.
That said, there is little preventing you. Use my “theory” as a framework for judging the advice you are receiving. Consider whether advice that is framed as developing structure out-performs that which is framed as “this is what you should do”. Of course, you may find you are in need of a stronger framework to figure that out… I am willing to bet that effort will be highly rewarded. Thanks for reading.
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