The Orbits of Startup Supporters
Founders need mentors, sponsors, and champions, which all function differently and on different frequencies.
Nice to meet you, please be my mentor
One common mistake founders make — including me — early in their startup journey is rushing into mentor relationships with people they’ve just met. It’s understandable, really.
Founders are often sponges, looking to learn from people who can shorten the painful learning curves of starting a business. And, it’s not necessarily intuitive that the best mentor relationships often evolve organically. I believe that is doubly true for founders where the entire idea of mentorship is novel.
While it makes sense that human relationships do evolve as a function of time and interaction frequency, words like “advisor” and “mentor” suggest a formal and structured relationship. Of course, it can be confusing that, on one hand, we’re told to grow relationships over time and, on the other, we’re told we need to have a board of advisors ASAP.
This begs the question: what is a mentor, exactly?
Three types of supporters
On a recent call in which Lolita Taub was speaking, she broke down how she thinks about this. In short, your startup supporters fall into different categories. Because of that, establishing relationships with each other may take a different amount of time and different approaches.
As she described the three types as she sees them, I immediately pictured them like a solar system. With concentric rings, the three types of startup supporters looked like their own orbital system. In the startup world, we use the word ecosystem exhaustively. Well, planetary systems are ecosystems orbiting around a star.
The more I thought about this, the more the analogy felt right for what she was describing. The gravitational center of any early-stage startup’s own ecosystem is the founder or founders — the star. Sometimes stars are an agglomeration of multiple stars. (There’s an apt metaphor for cofounder enmeshment.)
While the solar system is full of celestial bodies, the three Lolita described seemed most analogous to:
- The Earth — Mentors
- The Moon — Sponsors
- Outter Planet — Champions
Mentors
Relative to the sun, mentors are like Earth because they are just a few steps removed from the immediate inner circle of a founder’s everyday life. Healthy founders have friends and family relationships that enrich their daily lives. My husband and sister are my Mercury and Venus. If speed dial was still a thing, they’d be in those spots. They’re my most intimate support system.
But, the first folks I go to for help or support when I’m stuck on a startup problem, those people are are my mentors — they’re right there at arm’s length. As a huge believer in near-peer mentoring, these are often fellow founders with more (or different) experience than me. Sometimes it is an old colleague I’ve kept up a strong relationship with or an operator-angel I trust and think can roll up their sleeves to help.
Sponsors
Sponsors are a bit different from mentors in that they likely offer the most utility (“value”) in introductions or vouching for founders when fundraising. An example of who might fall into this category is an existing investor. Sponsors can be particularly important when applying to accelerator programs, too.
I see sponsors as being like a moon, relative to the earth (mentors) as they likely have overlapping networks. That may be through industry experience, investor relationships, or personal connections. Like the moon keeps the earth’s tides in balance and predictable, sponsors are in the Goldilocks Zone of the startup ecosystem where epic highs and lows don’t disrupt their signature steady-state role.
Champions
Champions are farthest removed from the center of the startup universe and function like planets on an elongated, elliptical orbit. They don’t come around often, but when they’re nearby their gravitational influence is felt.
Jupiter and Saturn are good analogies for Champions. The biggest planets in the universe, these two have immense social capital and mind-boggling amounts of responsibility. The best way to harness their energy is to make easy and infrequent, but high-value, asks of champions. An example that comes to mind is asking a “friendly” (a VC whose thesis is outside your startup’s area, but who likes the founder and offers to help) for a critical introduction to a Tier 1 firm.
Map your universe of supporters
After the call I was on where Lolita mentioned all of this, I sat down and mapped out where each of my supporters falls. This was a very helpful exercise for clarifying how often I should schedule touch-points with certain folks, and how I might approach my asks in 2021 of certain supporters differently.
Annette Miller is the Cofounder and CEO of Enriched Couples, a financial therapy platform that uses psychology to guide couples through unifying their values, financial priorities, and future goals.
